About Paul

Paul L. Newman, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on January 26, 1925. His father, Arthur Sr., and mother, Theresa, raised Paul and his brother in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Arthur Sr. was a successful sporting goods store owner, and a person highly regarded for his business ethics, whom Paul credited for much of his own tenacity and standards. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, his father’s store was financially-hard pressed, but he extended store credit to customers, and likewise was extended credit by his suppliers. This experience contributed to shaping Paul’s sense of the mutual benefit of people helping others.

Paul enlisted in the Navy to become a pilot, but was later disqualified from flight school because of color blindness - ironic for a person whose eye color later became a distinguishing physical feature. He completed his military service as a radioman/gunner on a torpedo plane in the Pacific during World War II.

His experience as a young man in a combat arena helped shape his overarching philosophy of luck: the acknowledgement of the benevolence of it in his life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others. It was a perspective that motivated him to help offset this imbalance.  

Paul attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and played football and majored in Economics. His future success in business was presaged as a student when he opened a laundromat. To encourage students to bring in their dirty clothes, he offered free beer — a marketing coup in a college town. It also was in college where his passion for acting bloomed.  Paul graduated in 1949 and sold his laundry business for a profit.

Film and Stage
Following the death of his father in 1950, Paul returned home to help manage the family sporting goods store, but after eighteen months, he turned the business over to his brother and moved east to study at the Yale Drama School.

In 1952, he joined the Actors Studio and was elected its president in the 1980’s. He made his Broadway debut in the original New York production of William Inge’s “Picnic,” in which he met his future wife, Joanne Woodward whom he married in 1958.

His first appearance on the big screen was in “The Silver Chalice,” which he described as his “cocktail dress” picture because of the short toga he had to wear. For years later, whenever it was scheduled to play, he would take out an ad in Variety apologizing for his performance. It was Paul’s portrayal of boxer Rocky Graziano in 1956’s “Somebody Up There Likes Me” that catapulted him to stardom.

Over the decades, he starred in numerous films including: “The Long Hot Summer,” “Exodus,” “Sweet Bird of Youth,” and “The Hustler.” In 1969, he teamed with Robert Redford in George Roy Hill’s smash-hit western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Four years later, Newman, Redford, and Hill reunited for the Academy Award-winning Best Picture “The Sting.” Paul had received his first Oscar nomination in 1959 for his work opposite Elizabeth Taylor in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and was subsequently nominated for his performances in “Hud,” “Cool Hand Luke,” “Absence of Malice,” “The Verdict,” “Nobody’s Fool,” “Road to Perdition,” and was awarded Best Actor Oscar for his role as Fast Eddie Felson in “The Color of Money.”

Also recognized for his work behind the camera as a director, Paul earned wide praise for “Rachel, Rachel,” “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds,”“The Glass Menagerie,” and the tele-film “The Shadow Box.”

At the age of 78, Paul received a Tony nomination for his inventive and precedent-changing performance as the Stage Manager in the Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” which also aired as a TV production for which he received an Emmy nomination.  

In 2005, he was awarded an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild award for his performance in the mini series “Empire Falls,” for which he also served as executive producer. He was awarded an Honorary Oscar in 1986 for his outstanding contributions to film, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in 1984. In 1992, he and Joanne received Kennedy Center Honors in Washington. In 1994, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented him with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.  

Upon turning 70 years old, Paul made the decision to not accept future awards for his charitable work. He was personally reluctant to acknowledge that his charity was anything special, and true to his character, he burned his tuxedo in a front-yard ceremonial bonfire attended by family and friends.

Racing
Paul had both a passion and talent for race car driving. In 1975, he came in second at the twenty-four hours of Le Mans. He won four “Sports Car Club of America National Championships,” and at age seventy, he was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as being the oldest driver to win a professionally sanctioned race - 1995’s twenty-four hours of Daytona. He raced his Corvette regularly in the GT1 Series with the number of his car rising each year to reflect his age. In 2007 his car number was 82 and he won two races at Lime Rock Park.

In his words, “I was never very good at sports - almost clumsy - racing was different, it’s the one thing I could do well and be graceful at.”

Philanthropy
Paul applied his greatest commitment and derived his deepest satisfaction from his quiet work in philanthropy. He used his influence, gave of his financial resources, and personally volunteered to advance humanitarian and social causes around the world. He accomplished this with an uncanny ability to break new ground. In 1982, he founded Newman’s Own, Inc., which was one of the first food companies to use all natural products. Today, Newman’s Own, Inc. is a successful food business of which all net royalties and profits after taxes are donated to thousands of charities worldwide through Newman’s Own Foundation. As of 2012, over $340 million has been awarded to grantee recipients in all 50 states and in 31 countries around the world.

While Paul Newman was a Hollywood star of extraordinary celebrity and a person recognized for exceptional commitment and leadership for philanthropy, he lived his life as an ordinary person, which he always considered himself. He was a man of abundant good humor, generosity, and humility.

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