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In just seven years from today it will be the centennial of Paul Newman's birth! We should get to planning a great big party right now. Get your glitter-encrusted towel-crutch combos ready, folks. But until then we've got to make due with just the 92nd anniversary of our lord and savior's birth, and so we'll make due with a little poll - here's an indisputable fact: Paul Neman remained hot for longer than pretty much anybody else on-screen. We're talking fifty straight years of fuckability. But which Paul Newman is your favorite Paul Newman? I know you're all going to be inclined towards one specific Tennessee-Williams-heavy period, but let's try to be open-minded...
Paul got his start with a lot of TV in the early 1950s but by 1954 at the age of 29 he starred opposite Jack Palance in the religious epic The Silver Chalice.
But within a couple of years his heat was undeniable and the late 50s were what took him into the stratosphere with The Long Hot Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
The early 60s weren't too shabby either, what with little titles
like Hud and Sweet Bird of Youth and The Hustler.
(Oh and What a Way To Go in 1964
shouldn't be over-looked either!)
(Oh and What a Way To Go in 1964
shouldn't be over-looked either!)
By the late 60s his youthful glow had hardened a little bit into an icy-eyed manliness with Cool Hand Luke and Butch and Sundance cementing his place among the all-time greats.
The early 70s gave us The Sting, The Towering Inferno, and the terrifically underrated and strange The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Seek that one out - among many pleasures Paul's beard in that is enviable, to put it mildly.
The late 70s brought about the full-on silver fox Paul Newman years, beginning with The Drowning Pool in 1975 (see more from that movie here worth seeing).
My crush on Paul Newman was born in the early 80s, given that was the first time I ever saw him in anything, with the disaster movie When Time Ran Out!, which I have posted a loving ode to previously.
Paul was slowing down by the late 80s, only doing a three films during this period, but his billiards shark in The Color of Money (Martin Scorsese's sequel to The Hustler) still managed to make Tom Cruise look like a wee little boy.
I'm going to stop there because his work through the 90s gets much more sporadic, although he remained eminently fuckable straight up through Sam Mendes' 2002 film Road to Perdition as far as I'm concerned - heck I would have humped the hood of Doc Hudson, the car that he voiced in Pixar's Cars, if we're being honest. But I ask you (and let's not all vote for Brick, okay?)...
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7 comments:
It has to be The Long Hot Summer without question. You watch that, and it's pretty clear as to why Joanne Woodward married that living Greek statue the same year. (Boy, she must've been the envy of so many people during those fifty years.)
Look, I know you can't pit anyone against Paul Newman, it wouldn't be fair to them, but HOW THE HELL DO YOU CHOOSE BETWEEN PAUL NEWMANS it is all gorgeous, all of it, all the time, forever, the end.
Great post, but wouldn't he have turned 93 today, meaning seven years? I ask only b/c I posted about his birthday today somewhere and hope math hasn't failed me.
Yes you're right I got the "26th" of the day mixed up with the "25" of the year when I did my math! Thanks for the heads-up, i will fix mine :)
My favorites are hud and from the terrace
All of the above, please.
For me it’s Somebody Up There Likes Me. He was never more beautiful than in that film. But Paul was great face. Not great body.
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