Paul and Joanne with two of their daughters, Lissy and Clea, in 1974.
If you know me at all, you know I have no pretense about movies, books, TV, or music. If it’s good, I don’t care if it was made last month, five years ago, or sixty years ago. Good art is good art, good artists are good artists. I’m open minded like that. I even minored in film in undergrad, so a lot of my favorites are old. Suffice it to say, Paul Newman is one of my favorite actors of all time. Like, easily in the top five. I know that’s not a revelation; his career was heading into the third act when I was born. I just hope I’m not one of the last people to say that.
I come by this honestly: my grandma, a child of the 1950s, loves him. She’s probably had a crush on him since he was playing beautiful but shallow and empty men under contract for Warner Brothers. When she took us to see Cars as kids (where you don’t even see his face!), she gushed about him. In the 70s her parents lived in Westport, Connecticut, and my mom remembers seeing him and Joanne Woodward in the teeny airport. I’m sure they were stunning, even from a distance… especially considering I think they were at the peak of their hotness from the late 60s to the late 70s. It was around the time he died that I finally took to Google to see what the big deal was.
Teenage me got it; he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, no question. In terms of aesthetics, he probably still is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen eyes get picked up by the camera the way his did. I don’t even know if that color exists anywhere else on earth. It’s mesmerizing, it draws you in. I should quit while I’m ahead and not start a complete tangent about his looks. Because I could.
After going through pages and pages of the internet just looking at him, I did what I always do: find all the information I could about him. I read the Wikipedia article top to bottom, I read news articles about him, I watched clips of him at the Actor’s Studio in the 90s. The thing that grabbed my attention wasn’t just how long his career was, or how easy he was to listen to speak (though both are true), it was what he did on and off screen.
Method acting has a terrible reputation now, mostly thanks to Jared Leto and his Suicide Squad nonsense, but I don’t think it deserves a bad name. Newman and Woodward are two of the actors who used it to their advantage from beginning to end, and I think it paid off for them. I find it both funny and fascinating that they used their couplings onscreen to hash out their issues in their married life, in a sense. The energy they were really feeling was put into their performances. In most cases it didn’t come off as over the top or silly. They gave a shit, but made it look like they didn’t. They made it look as natural as breathing. I think a lot of actors today really lack that kind of honesty. I think the industry as a whole has forgotten that acting is a craft, but that’s an entirely separate topic I could write about on its own.
Together and apart, they took chances. I think coming up on their peak as actors during the end of the studio era actually helped them. They didn’t confine themselves to one part of film making. They did projects that had a chance of failing, and let themselves fail. They saw the times changing and didn’t fight it. The episode(s) about their politics (led by Paul, unsurprisingly) really grabbed me. I don’t think any actor, regardless of gender, could be so outspoken about their politics and participate in it so publicly today without being dragged through the mud, cancelled, and essentially ignored. They did not (and pardon the slight pun here) stay in their lane as “just actors.” I think it would’ve been impressive if he’d actually followed through and gone into politics seriously, but I understand why he didn’t. I completely forgot he was on Nixon’s enemies list; I had a good cackle about that.
That’s the thing: they didn’t see themselves as “just actors.” Both Paul and Joanne had lives off screen and off stage. Entering their careers during the studio era gave them a kind of untouchable status (my inspiration for the essay’s title), but they were human. There’s no way they could’ve succeeded in films like Rachel, Rachel, Buffalo Bill, …Marigolds, The Verdict, and even Cool Hand Luke or The Long Hot Summer without humanity. They probably wouldn’t have lasted as long as they did in Hollywood without the ability to define themselves otherwise. Those other definitions might not have always been great (a boozer, stubborn, a mother, a father, unemotional, etc.) but they were necessary. And they were willing to show it, albeit on their own terms.
I know this is a pretty tired phrase at this point, but Paul and Joanne are honestly relationship goals. They clearly cared about each other, even when they didn’t. They were willing to be imperfect as a unit — they fought, they found each other annoying, they made up, they were disgustingly cute, and back around again. They had their own interests; they claimed to have nothing in common, but they supported each other anyway. Joanne brought her knitting to his races, Paul watched her dance and paint. They knew they had to be a team. They knew it took work, and they did the work. (The story about Joanne’s “fuck hut” and the double locked doors had me screaming, I won’t lie). For better or worse, they didn’t hide it.
I really wish Paul hadn’t decided to burn the recordings the series came from. What Ethan Hawke chose to do in their absence was interesting, but I would’ve liked to hear more from him, Joanne, their families, and their friends in their own voices, and not just in archival interview footage. Don’t get me wrong: the actors picked to read the transcripts were great, but it made things a little… cold at certain points, knowing it was just George Clooney and Laura Linney reading the lines. I’m so thankful their daughters and grandsons chose to participate; that brought things a little more down to earth.
I’m definitely not as starry-eyed about Paul as I was in high school; I go through phases with my fixations. At the same time, knowing so much about him and Joanne as human beings kind of made me fall in love again. Seeing people like him and Joanne for who they are makes me want to pour myself into my own work. I can’t stop thinking about how much artists like them inspire me to not forget myself in what I do, and that it’s better with me in it. My care, my feelings, my experiences. I won’t be watching and re-watching their filmography in chronological order… but I think I’m gonna start with Cool Hand Luke :)