Book details Paul Newman’s charmed, and charming, ‘Life’ - Book Reviews: Entertainment for the Marine Corps - Marine Corps Times

Book details Paul Newman’s charmed, and charming, ‘Life’

Readers flipping through the nearly 500 pages of the richly researched “Paul Newman: A Life” looking for juicy gossip will have to be patient. It takes until the halfway mark before pay dirt is struck.

Just to make it easy, here it is: He had a not-very-secret affair with a divorced journalist, Nancy Bacon, while making 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

Know that famous Newman quip about infidelity, “Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?” Turns out there was a sequel floating around: “Paul may not go out for hamburger, but he sure goes out for Bacon.”

That is as bad as it gets. But if Joanne Woodward, his wife of 50 years, could forgive that atypical trespass, then so can we.

Besides, Hollywood’s blue-eyed devil supreme, who died last fall at 83, excelled at flawed anti-heroes partly because he was one himself.

He was a so-so father of six and occasionally thoughtless husband who shaped up considerably after the death in 1978 of his only son, Scott, 28, from an accidental overdose. He coveted his privacy and could be brusque with snoopy reporters and pushy female fans.

He was a functioning alcoholic whose love of racing was probably the only thing that came between him and his daily nectar of choice, Coors beer.

But if there were one actor who deserved an award for world-class philanthropy and unwavering work ethic, it was Newman. He also was humble and smart enough to know his fame had as much to do with dumb luck as it did natural talent, and he rarely failed to point it out in typical self-deprecating fashion.

As he once told a reporter, “The toughest role is playing Paul Newman. My own personality is so vapid and bland, I have to go steal personalities of other people to be effective.”

Shawn Levy, a film critic at Portland’s Oregonian, has done his homework. Anecdotal sources range from Shaker Heights, Ohio, classmates (“He was no Beau Brummel”) to John Malkovich, who recalls how an army of alarm clocks went off on the set after he woke late for his first day on the Newman-directed “Glass Menagerie.”

But the author’s smartest move, after Newman rebuffed requests to speak for the book, was to collect as many of his subject’s plain-spoken and humorous quotes as he could and piece together a makeshift interview out of a half-century of press material.

Being able to bask in Newman’s Own insights is enough to bring this one-of-a-kind star back to life, however briefly. And to miss him terribly again when the final page is turned.