Stewart Stern was the screenwriter of legendary 50’s Hollywood movies like Rebel Without a Cause. He was also very close friends with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Newman wrote the screenplay for Rachel, Rachel’s first feature film (1968) and Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973), starring Woodward. There was that much confidence around 1986 when Newman offered Stern to interview his partner, first wife, children, psychiatrist, friends, and professional colleagues he worked with. From these interviews, a multiple and third-person version of Newman will emerge. After the material was edited, Newman would have Stern dictate his version of the event in first person.
It’s a unique way of thinking about an autobiography. As singular as Newman, he was one of the male icons of rebellious Hollywood in the 50s, along with James Dean, who died very early, and Marlon Brando, who was involved in many wars and controversies.
A star who never wanted to be and who wanted to challenge and question the myth through this autobiography. An ordinary man who could not escape the pressure of being the biggest movie star of his generation, he was seen as the coolest alongside Steve McQueen, the tormented hero of the Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner adaptations. A man who doesn’t want to age like everyone else and assures that he won’t age in style. He would also admit that he drank too much, didn’t know how to describe himself, and was a sexual creature at some point in his life who left a trail of lust.
All of these and more appear in the book that is about to disappear. In five years of the daunting mission, Stern and Newman found themselves completely overwhelmed, overwhelmed by the material at hand. Newman got fed up and burned the tapes on which they recorded the interviews in 1998. The actor and director passed away in 2008. Stern died in 2015. Woodward survived them.
Nothing was known about the project until a friend took an inventory of one of their family properties in 2019, with more than 15,000 pages found containing transcripts of these conversations. Twenty years later, the couple’s daughter, Melissa Newman, and David Rosenthal, who was in charge of editing the final text, shaped these authoritative memories that also formed the basis of The Last Stars in Hollywood, directed by fellow actor Ethan Hawke. and premiered on HBO Max last November.
Shell
This unusually created book doesn’t get a better name than The Extraordinary Life of an Extraordinary Man by Libros Cúpula. The text perfectly explains how Newman builds a kind of shell to protect himself from the world through the charming and violent, tough or battered, sarcastic or honest characters he embodies in Marked by Hate, The Lefty, The Long Hot Summer. , Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Sweet Bird of Youth, Cool Cool and Two Men and One Fate, opposite Robert Redford.
By sprinkling the comments of others on Newman’s story, he also reveals sections of his private life and the way he understands cinema. Eliza Kazan, for example, assures that Newman has always been a very honest actress: “He’s nothing but a mask, but underneath is a pure soul that wants to do a lot of things.”
Another director, Richard Brooks, said he was extremely pragmatic about it. They met in 1973, and Newman told him he was working on The Burning Colossus. The movie of disasters with the chorus. “Oh, on top of that,” Brooks said, and Paul Newman said, “Yeah, and I think it’s not that bad. It’s possible that it will do well at the box office, maybe even successful.
His older brother, Arthur Newman Jr., believes the actor can succeed as a businessman because he has “a great capacity to please everyone.” Particularly relevant is how his relationship with Woodward began while he was still married to his first wife, Jackie White.
Newman writes: “Joanne and I have not stopped wondering about the moral side of what we do. Ours was based on passion. Months of indecision and questioning passed. But yeah, we did all that movie star crap, the lust thing, and hanging out all over the place. Jackie didn’t get any warning, didn’t get a chance to get stronger or defend herself.”
Woodward adds that that period was like a long movie script. “Even for someone who has lived in fantasy all his life, there was something wonderful about living that fantasy.” She spent 50 years with him in an unusual way in Hollywood. By contrast, Woodward describes the painful experience of his first son, Scott’s death of an overdose at the age of 28: “Paul went straight to the morgue and reassured me that it was quite an experience. It was enough to come in and be with him, and suddenly she could cry and see him and love him.