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Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 - September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, race car driver, racing team owner and humanitarian. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an Emmy award, along with many honorary awards. He won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing and his race teams won several championships in open wheel Indy Car racing. He was also the founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all profits and royalties to charity. As of May 2007, these donations have exceeded US$220 million. Newman died at his long-time home in Westport, Connecticut after a battle with lung cancer.

Early life

Newman was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland), the son of Theresa and Arthur S. Newman, who ran a profitable sporting goods store.His father was Jewish and his mother was born to a Slovak Catholic family at Ptičie (formerly Peticse) in the former Kingdom of Hungary, now in Slovakia,and converted to Christian Science when Paul was five. Newman had described himself as Jewish, stating that, "it's more of a challenge." Newman's mother worked in his father's store, while raising Paul and his brother Arthur (who later became a producer and production manager).

Newman showed an early interest in the theater, which his mother encouraged. At the age of seven, he made his acting debut, playing the court jester in a school production of Robin Hood. Graduating from Shaker Heights High School in 1943, he briefly attended Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he was initiated into the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity.

Military service

Newman served in the Navy in World War II in the Pacific theater. Newman was sent to the Navy V-12 program at Ohio University, with hope of being accepted for pilot training, but this plan was foiled when a flight physical revealed him to be colorblind. He was sent instead to boot camp and then on to further training as a radioman and gunner. Qualifying as a rear-seat radioman and gunner in torpedo bombers, in 1944, Aviation Radioman Third Class Newman was sent to Barber's Point, Hawaii, and subsequently assigned to Pacific-based replacement torpedo squadrons (VT-98, VT-99, and VT-100). These torpedo squadrons were responsible primarily for training replacement pilots and combat air crewmen, placing particular importance on carrier landings.[12] He later flew from aircraft carriers as a tail gunner in the Avenger. As a radioman/gunner, he served aboard the USS Bunker Hill during the battle for Okinawa in the spring of 1945. He was ordered to the ship as radioman/gunner in an Avenger with a draft of replacements shortly before the attack, but by a fluke of war was held back because his pilot had an ear infection. The rest of his detail died.

After the war, he completed his degree at Kenyon College, graduating in 1949. Newman later studied acting at Yale University and under Lee Strasberg at the Actors' Studio in New York City.

Oscar Levant wrote that Newman was initially hesitant to leave New York for Hollywood: "Too close to the cake," he reported him saying, "Also, no place to study."

Film career

Newman made his Broadway theater debut in the original production of William Inge's Picnic, with Kim Stanley. He later appeared in the original Broadway productions of The Desperate Hours and Sweet Bird of Youth with Geraldine Page. He would later star in the film version of Sweet Bird of Youth, which also starred Page.

His first movie was The Silver Chalice (1954), followed by acclaimed roles in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), as boxer Rocky Graziano; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), opposite Elizabeth Taylor; and The Young Philadelphians (1959), with Barbara Rush and Robert Vaughn.

Newman appeared in a screen test with James Dean for East of Eden (1955). Newman was testing for the role of Aron Trask, Dean was testing for the role of Aron's older brother Cal Trask (although Newman is older than Dean). Dean won the part of Cal, while the role Newman was up for went to Richard Davalos. The same year Newman would co-star with Eva Marie Saint and Frank Sinatra in a live — and color - television broadcast of the Thornton Wilder stage play Our Town. In 2003 Newman would act in a remake of Our Town, taking on Sinatra's role as the stage manager.

Major films

Newman was one of the few actors who successfully made the transition from 1950s cinema to that of the 1960s and 1970s. His rebellious persona translated well to a subsequent generation. Newman starred in Exodus (1960), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Harper (1966), Hombre (1967), Cool Hand Luke (1967), The Towering Inferno (1974), Slap Shot (1977) and The Verdict (1982). He teamed with fellow actor Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973).

He appeared with his wife, Joanne Woodward, in the feature films The Long, Hot Summer (1958), Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!, (1958), From the Terrace (1960), Paris Blues (1961), A New Kind of Love (1963), Winning (1969), WUSA (1970), The Drowning Pool (1975), Harry & Son (1984) and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990). They also both starred in the HBO miniseries Empire Falls, but did not have any scenes together.

In addition to starring in and directing Harry & Son, Newman also directed four feature films (in which he did not act) starring Woodward. They were Rachel, Rachel (1968), based on Margaret Laurence's A Jest of God, the screen version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972), the television screen version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Shadow Box (1980) and a screen version of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie (1987).

25 years after "The Hustler", Newman reprised his role of "Fast" Eddie Felson in the Martin Scorsese directed The Color of Money (1986) for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Last works

In 2003, he appeared in a Broadway theatre revival of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. He received his first Tony Award nomination for his performance. PBS and the cable network Showtime aired a taping of the production, and Newman was nominated for an Emmy Award, for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or TV Movie.

His last screen appearance was as a conflicted mob boss in the 2002 film Road to Perdition opposite Tom Hanks, although he continued to provide voice work for films. In keeping with his strong interest in car racing, he provided the voice of Doc Hudson, a retired race car in Disney/Pixar's Cars. Similarly, he served as narrator for the 2007 film Dale, about the life of the legendary NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt.

Retirement from acting

Newman announced that he would entirely retire from acting on May 25, 2007. He stated that he didn't feel he could continue acting on the level that he would want to. "You start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So I think that's pretty much a closed book for me."

Philanthropy

With writer A.E. Hotchner, Newman founded Newman's Own, a line of food products, in 1982. The brand started with salad dressing, and has expanded to include pasta sauce, lemonade, popcorn, and salsa, and wine among other things. Newman donates the proceeds, after taxes, to charity. As of early 2006, the franchise has resulted in excess of $200 million in donations.[3] He co-wrote a memoir about the subject with Hotchner, Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good. Among other awards, Newman co-sponsors the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award, a $25,000 reward designed to recognize those who protect the first amendment as it applies to the written word.

One beneficiary of his philanthropy is the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a residential summer camp for seriously ill children, which is located in Ashford, Connecticut. Newman cofounded the camp in 1988; it was named after the gang in his film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Newman's college fraternity, Phi Kappa Tau, adopted "Hole in the Wall" as their "national philanthropy" in 1995. One camp has expanded to become several Hole in the Wall Camps in the U.S., Ireland, France and Israel. The camp serves 13,000 children every year, free of charge.

In June 1999 Newman donated $250,000 to the relief of Kosovo refugees.

On June 1, 2007, Kenyon College announced that Newman had donated $10 million to the school to establish a scholarship fund as part of the college's current $230 million fund-raising campaign. Newman and Woodward were honorary co-chairs of a previous campaign.

Auto racing

Newman was an avid auto racing enthusiast, and first became interested in motorsports ("the first thing that I ever found I had any grace in") while training for and filming Winning, a 1969 film.

Newman's first professional event was in 1972, in Thompson, Connecticut. He ran the 24 hours of Le Mans once in 1979 and finished second in Dick Barbour's Porsche 935.

From the mid-'70s to the early '90s, he drove for the Bob Sharp Racing team, racing mainly Nissans. He became heavily associated with the brand during the '80s, even appearing in commercials for them. At the age of 70, he became the oldest driver to be part of a winning team in a major sanctioned race, the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1995. Newman told an Associated Press journalist in March 2005 that he'll "probably race for another year".

Newman co-founded Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing with Carl Haas, a Champ Car team, in 1983. He was also a partner in the Atlantic Championship team Newman Wachs Racing. The 1996 racing season was chronicled in the IMAX film Super Speedway, which Newman narrated. His team Newman/Haas/Lanigan announced a partnership with Robert Yates Racing of the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series, but that partnership collapsed when Yates announced his retirement from racing in September 2007.

Illness and death

Newman was scheduled to make his professional directorial stage debut with the Westport Country Playhouse's 2008 production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, but he stepped down on May 23, 2008, citing health issues.

In June 2008 it was widely reported that Newman, a former chain smoker, had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was receiving treatment at Sloan-Kettering hospital in New York City. Photographs taken of Newman in May and June showed him looking gaunt. Writer A.E. Hotchner, who partnered with Newman to start Newman's Own salad dressing company in the 1980s, was quoted in the media as saying that Newman told him about the disease about 18 months ago.Newman's spokesman told the press that the star is "doing nicely," but neither confirmed nor denied that he had cancer.In August, Newman reportedly had finished chemotherapy and had told his family he wished to die at home. His daughter, Nell, is poised to take over Newman's Own.

Paul Newman died of lung cancer on September 26, 2008 aged 83 at his long-time home in Westport, Connecticut. He was surrounded by his family and close friends.