RIP Paul Newman

Hockey lost one of its all-time greats when the Johnstown Chiefs Reggie Dunlop passed today.  I had to tie Paul Newman’s death to sports in some way to stay on topic so there you have it.

Newman was by far my favorite actor of all time and I was pretty emotional when I saw the news that he was gone.  I got seriously into movies in high school when I took a film study course.  We watched and dissected the all-time greats from Kurosawa to Fellini to Orson Welles.  Mixed in with all those immortals was the movie Cool Hand Luke with Newman.  On the surface, that movie didn’t seem to be in the class of Citizen Kane or Seven Samurai.  But after watching it and discussing it in class with Mr. Pember (who was one of my most influential teachers whether he knows it or not), it became my all time favorite movie and probably helped shape me as a person as much as any other piece of literature or media.

Newman played the ultimate maverick in the movie, a guy who literally was willing to die for his principles no matter how absurd.  The movie had a deep existential undercurrent as Newman was sent to jail not for some earth shattering cause.  No, he was drunk and was cutting the heads off of parking meters.  A very Camus moment if there ever was one.  Once inside, he survived a serious power struggle with “Dragline” (George Kennedy) and slowly established himself as the leader of his prison gang with a singular purpose to break out of prison…or so it seemed.  Ultimately his real mission was to get the gang to recapture their dignity and sense of purpose and to have them believe in themselves as opposed to looking for a savior to follow.

Newman is without question the last of the old time Hollywood actors and his death definitely marks the end of an era.  Again, if you’ve been reading this blog, you know that like a lot of guys from my generation, I’m a big believer that the old days were definitely better…especially in the world of sports.  I’m happy to say that’s not the case in Hollywood today.  Newman is gone, but DiCaprio, Hanks, Denzell Washington, Tom Cruise and Daniel Day Lewis are every bit as powerful on screen and I’m thankful for that.

I certainly hope that he went out today just like old Luke…

“He was smiling… That’s right. You know, that, that Luke smile of his. He had it on his face right to the very end. Hell, if they didn’t know it ‘fore, they could tell right then that they weren’t a-gonna beat him. That old Luke smile. Oh, Luke. He was some boy. Cool Hand Luke. Hell, he’s a natural-born world-shaker”