Stewart Stern stood beside the era defining films of the 1950s, shaping screen history with Rebel Without a Cause and many others. He shared a close friendship with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, a bond that linked their careers and confidences. Newman herself wrote the screenplay for Rachel, Rachel, his first feature in 1968, and Summers Wish, Winter Dreams in 1973, featuring Woodward. In a moment of audacious trust in 1986, Newman invited Stern to conduct interviews with his partner, his former wife, their children, a psychiatrist, and colleagues from the industry. The project grew into multiple, layered narratives that interwove third person and first person perspectives as Stern dictated Newman’s voice after a rigorous editing process.
That approach to autobiography stands out for its singularity. Newman embodied a generation of rebellious male icons in Hollywood, a constellation that included James Dean, who died young, and Marlon Brando, who stirred controversy through many eras and battles. He presented himself as a star who did not fully seek stardom but preferred to challenge the myths that surrounded him.
A man who seemed reluctant to grow old yet refused to surrender to the ordinary. He was widely regarded as one of the coolest figures alongside Steve McQueen, a tormented hero in adaptations drawn from the works of Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner. He admitted the strains of aging and the pressures of fame, and he acknowledged moments of excess, a fluid sense of self, and the lasting currents of desire that marked certain periods of his life.
All of these facets appear in a book that risked disappearing yet endured. Over five strenuous years, Stern and Newman confronted an overwhelming volume of material. Frustration grew until Newman decided to burn the interview tapes in 1998 and the actor-director later passed away in 2008. Stern followed in 2015, while Woodward outlived them and continued to carry the memory of those conversations.
Details about the project remained scarce until 2019, when a friend catalogued a family estate and uncovered more than 15,000 pages of transcripts. Two decades later, the couple’s daughter, Melissa Newman, and editor David Rosenthal compiled the final text, shaping what would become The Last Stars in Hollywood. The work served as the genesis for a film project directed by Ethan Hawke, adapted for HBO Max and released the previous November.
Shell
This remarkable book carries a straightforward title: The Extraordinary Life of an Extraordinary Man, published by Libros Cúpula. It explains how Newman built a protective shell around himself while inhabiting a string of characters that ranged from charming and violent to tough and battered, sarcastic or candid. Characters like Marked by Hate, The Lefty, The Long Hot Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Sweet Bird of Youth, Cool Hand Luke, and Two Men and One Fate reveal the spectrum of a life lived in front of and beyond the camera, often alongside Robert Redford.
By weaving the voices of others into Newman’s story, the book reveals intimate glimpses of his private life and his understanding of cinema. Elia Kazan, for instance, described Newman as one actor who wears a mask, yet beneath it lies a pure, ambitious soul. A director like Richard Brooks noted Newman’s pragmatic edge, mentioning a project called The Burning Colossus and weighing its potential box office success against the risks.
Newman’s older brother, Arthur Newman Jr., believed he could succeed as a businessman because he possessed a unique ability to please many. The connection with Joanne Woodward began while Newman was still married to his first wife, Jackie White, a detail that shapes much of the later storytelling.
In Newman’s own words, the couple frequently wrestled with moral questions. Their relationship began in earnest through passion and months of uncertainty, followed by the era’s familiar glamour, with the realities of life occasionally intruding. The couple acknowledged the weight of their choices, including the consequences for those around them. Woodward later described that period as a long movie script that translated into lived experience, offering a glimpse into a life spent inside Hollywood’s luminous yet demanding orbit. She spent fifty years with him in a way that felt both extraordinary and ordinary, while also bearing the sorrow of their shared losses. The painful memory of their first son Scott’s death from an overdose at age twenty-eight remains a defining moment, a stark reminder of the human cost behind the celebrity.