Part confessional, part self-analysis, Paul Newman’s memoir, THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF AN ORDINARY MAN, is an extraordinary read.
Begun as a project in 1986 as a collaboration with friend and confidant, two time Oscar nominated screenwriter Stewart Stern, it is a book full of revelation, by the subject himself, and the bluntly truthful interviewees that corroborate or contest Newman’s recollections and thoughts.
Hooked from the opening paragraph, “It’s all there to be remembered, things I thought were dead and buried, things I never thought I’d recall…”, readers are treated to extraordinary revelations about his childhood and relationship to his mother, his seemingly aimless youth, his first marriage to Jackie Witte and relationship with their children.
Of his chosen career, he was variously in fear of being found a fraud.
“I never enjoyed acting, never enjoyed going out there and doing it. I enjoyed all the preliminary work – the detail, the observation, putting things together. Every once in a while I’d do a scene that might come together in some unusual way and I would be astonished.. but that was a tiny percentage of the time I actually spent doing it. it’s probably a reason why I drank as much as I did. The exuberance, the danger, the exultation of performing was multiplied by a factor of eighty. If I got it just from acting, I wouldn’t have had to go out and get bombed.”
Josh Logan, the director of William Inge’s PICNIC on Broadway was introduced to Paul Newman in 1953. “My first impression of Paul Newman was that he was way too much of a gentleman to be a good actor, and that it would take too much effort to break down all his politeness to get to the real core of the man. But when we were casting the show, Paul’s good looks made him right for the part of the one line character, Bomber, who makes a pass at Madge after the picnic……I also ended up making Paul the understudy for the lead role of Hal…and I said he’d be fine if he could wiggle his ass a little bit when he danced.”
Newman’s recollection is: “..I asked Josh Logan if I could take over the part, Logan patted me in a fatherly way on top of my head and said ‘I’d like to kid, but you don’t have any sex threat.’”
It was on the set of PICNIC that Newman met Joanne Woodward. “..in the wings, Joanne, pearly of skin and sensitive to touch” teaches him to dance.
“I was nursing an ailing marriage and this thing I carried around in my trousers every time we danced backstage together. Every day.”
He cites Joanne as birthing him as a sexual creature. She taught him, she encouraged him, she delighted in the experimental. He was in pursuit of lust. “I’m simply a creature of her invention.”
Without Joanne, he alludes, there would not be the sex symbol that Newman became.
There are of course celebrity titbits laced through the book. For instance, Sean Connery’s visit to the set of Hombre to visit wife, Diane Cilento, where he showed an asbestos taste-bud ability for chilli that left Paul awed. And the sad, sobering encounter with Pia Angeli, ravaged face with black circled eyes and a head the size of a pumpkin, that appalled.
“There are two parts of me out there, the ornament and the orphan.
Acting gave me a sanctuary where I was able to create emotions without being penalised for having them. Presents a very clear picture that there is no clear picture. There is not a statement or a series of statements, that simply define a person.
“The thing that defines a person, I think, a set of serious contradictions that you get from splashes of colour.”
THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF AN ORDINARY MAN is just that – a series of contradictions that you get from spectacular splashes of colour. Actor, drinker, race car driver, philanthropist, Paul Newman aspired to a life well lived and with this book inspires readers to do likewise.
Well worth the colour of your money, the verdict is considered – THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF AN ORDINARY MAN is a memoir memorable, insightful and introspective, candid and complex.
THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF AN ORDINARY MAN a memoir by Paul Newman is published by Century part of the Penguin Random House Group .