His love of fast cars got him enshrined as a car, a wise old Hudson named Doc, in the Pixar cartoon "Cars." (He rode a motor scooter to the set of "The Hustler" until his director, Robert Rossen, found out and put a stop to it for fear of losing him in an accident.) His good works outside his profession are well known, though not because he was given to self-promotion. The Newman's Own brand of food and condiments that he co-founded as a sort of joke with the writer A.E. Hotchner proved a surprise success, and funneled all of its substantial profits to charity. He set up the Scott Newman Foundation to fight drug abuse after his only son, Scott, died from an overdose of Valium and alcohol in 1978. What's entirely Newman's own is an unblemished reputation for being a good man—a remarkable thing for someone who was the cynosure of all eyes for more than 50 years.
Read the rest of Joe Morgenstern on Paul Newman.
No comments:
Post a Comment