Renaissance rebel

September 30, 2008 12:15 am

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In 'Cool Hand Luke,' as in so many of his films, Paul Newman played a congenital rebel.

UPPER-MIDDLE-CLASS sub- urbs such as Shaker Heights, Ohio, are unpromising incubators for character actors, who are supposed to have ridden the rails or broken broncos or lost teeth in Hell's Kitchen rumbles before finding easier work on the Big Screen. But Paul Newman, who grew up in that Cleveland-area community, was an actor who was all character--and who rode that trait to the very top of the playbill.

Imitations of Wayne's drawl or Cagney's snarl or Stewart's affection-ate stutter are accessible to devoted impressionists. But who ever saw even an attempted impersonation of Mr. Newman? Each of his screen portrayals--he did almost 70--seems un-derivative. There's little that connects Hud Bannon ("Hud"), Lew Harper ("Harper," "The Drowning Pool"), and Fast Eddy Felson ("The Hustler") but Paul Newman, a mischievous rebel who was never "acting" as much as "being." And part of his rebellion was against self-satisfaction: never doing it the same way twice.

Mr. Newman always played against type--and stereotype. Consider the offbeat Western "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean." When Bad Bob, a crazed albino gunslinger, comes to town and calls out Judge Bean, played by Mr. Newman, the judge takes careful aim with a rifle from a second-story window and blows a large hole in Bob's back. When a townswoman protests, "He never had a chance," Bean says, "I didn't ask him to come here. He wants a chance, let him go someplace else."

The Duke wouldn't have done it that way. Nor would anyone else--at least with the same stylish amorality. Antiheroes, we have found your leader.

To say that Mr. Newman was a man of many parts is to talk about more than his movies. In midlife he became a race-car driver, and a fine one: He won Sports Car Club of America national titles and finished second in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1979. With money he made from Newman's Own brand foods--salad dressing, spaghetti sauce, and more--he opened Hole in the Wall Gang Camps where very sick children can camp free. (Cowboy hats are standard gear in deference to kids made bald by chemotherapy.) His marriage to actress Joanne Woodward lasted 50 years, until his death Friday at 83.

At Paul Newman's core was a firmness, a hard-tempered amalgam of defiance and principle. On screen or off, he kept finding new men inside one pretty darned good one.