Paul Newman

Scott Brady, Johnny Guitar, 1953.      Joan Crawford hoped to land him the role of The Dancing Kid. “It will bebetter for him than East of Eden,” she hyped.  Newman made his debut “in a cocktail dress” as he called his BC toga for the dreadful Silver Chalice. Reviews were also rotten.  The New York World  critic even called him Jack Newman… “bears an striking resemblance to Marlon Brando” (disputed by biographer Shawn Levy, but very true at the time).  “It was  my appearance that got me in the door. Where the hell would I have been if I looked like Golda Meir? Probably no place; it was like being a guy with at trust fund who doesn’t have to work.  I always had that trust fund of appearance. I could get by on that.  But I realised that to survive, I needed something else.”  He was saved by Broadway’s Picnic before it and TV’s The Desperate Hours, afterwards.

9. – Cliff Robertson, Picnic, 1955.  In 1952,   PL to his pals, for Paul Leonard Newman was earning $200 a week in 1952 on Broadway as  Alan (rewritten to suit his age) and being Ralph Meeker’s understudy as Hal.  (Janice Rule’s was a certain Joanne Woodward).  But found himself dropped  from the film.

10 –  William Holden, Picnic, 1955. Having lost Alan, Newman craftily tested as Hal by offering to help Carrolll Baker with her Madge test. Columbia preferred her (she got a contract), but  (like Newman) not the film. He did not  have enough sexual threat, director Josh Logan told him.  “You’re not a crotch actor.”  He was when booked for Tropic of Cancer with Baker. Alas, it never happened.  ” 

11 – Christopher Plummer, Winds Across The Everglades, 1957.   Director Nicholas Ray, his star, Burl Ives, and their producers  argued over Plummer. (Newman, Ben Gazzara, even Charlton Heston were discussed as substitutes). Ray, however,  kept the faith. More than scenarist-producer Budd Schulberg did, taking over the final days of shooting and subsequent editing from the (equally) alcoholic helmer. Warners released film in 1958, despite it being incomplete.

12  – Gene Kelly, Marjorie Morningstar, 1957.     Bought for Brando, offered tp Danny Kaye and Paul Newman (must be a first!) but , finally, a way too old Gene Kelly became Marjorie Morgenstern’s  first love, a Borsht Belt entertainer,  Noel Airman (ex-Ehrman). Newman passed. Danny was rejected being, wait for it… “too Jewish”! The New York Times thought Kelly “a mite uncomfortable in his assignment.”  Obviously. He was not 14 years her senior as per the book, but  26 years  older! 

13 – Elvis Presley, King Creole, 1957.  .    Before Elvis there was… everybody!  Marlon Brando, John Cassavetes, Tony Curtis, James Dean, Ben Gazzara, Paul Newman.  No wonder Elvis was so keen on the role – Danny Fisher, created in the book, A Stone for Danny Fisher, by Harold Robbins –  a young Jewish boxer who had to become a singer in the Presley picture. Both Dean and Newman passed as the tale (when still about a boxer) was much the same as the biopic of boxer Rocky Graziano, Somebody Up There Likes Me, that Jimmy was preparing for and that Newman inherited after Dean’s shock death.  It was Presley’s fourth movie  and it showed, but he gave it his best shot kept and Danny showed what might  – should – have been if his manager, Tom Parker, had allowed him to similarly stretch in other movies before they became a succession of extremely bad jokes. 

14 – Tab Hunter, Gunman’s Walk, 1957. Head brother Jack Warner instructed Tab, “his”  star,  to report to the loathed Columbia tyrant, Harry Cohn. As fhey met in his copy-18th Century Chippendale style office, Cohn snarled: “I wanted Paul Newman… but, I guess you’ll do.” Striidng out, Hunter snarled back : “Well, then, get him!”  And that aside won  him what Hunter maintained was among his best movies.

15 – John Gavin, A Time to Love and a Time to Die, 1957.    Director Douglas Sirk  wanted Newman and was given  Universal’s contract player. – Mr Cardboard.  And made him  a star.  “He was fresh, good looking, not pretty though – earnest. And he had this little dilettante quality I figured would be quite the thing for the lead” – in the WW11 film of the book by German novelist Erich Maria Marques –  author of the WW1 classic, All Quiet on the Western Front. 1929. He also played Professor Pohlman and celebrated by marrying  Paulette Goddard.

16 – Tab Hunter, Lafayette Escradille (UK: Hell Bent For Glory), 1958.   Paul withdrew over script hassles and Hunter, Warners’ new (and gay)  tweenage idol, was drafted – proving the importance of director William “Wild Bill” Wellman’s final film!

17 – Charlton Heston, Ben-Hur, 1958.  “After The Silver Chalice, I’ll never  act in a cocktail dress again,” he told scenarist Gore Vidal. “I haven’t got the legs.” His great rival, Marlon Brando (who’d had ther right legs for Julius Caesar’s toga, 1954) also ran from the MGMighty $5m epic re-make. Director William Wyler (one of the original’s 1924 crew) also also short-listed  Richard Burton (from The Robe, 1953), Montgomery Clift, Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson (furious with Universal refusing to loan him out), Van Johnson (no, really!),  Burt Lancaster (an atheist with no interest in Christianity commercials, although he had earlier tried to mount his  own version), true Brit Edmond Purdom, who had picked up another epic dropped by Brando, The Egyptian, 1953… plus Italians, known and unknown: Vittorio Gassman  and Cesare Danova.  MGM voted Heston, CB De Mille’s Moses in The Ten Commandments, 1954. According to “contributing writer” Gore Vidal, Willie Wyler called Heston wooden. Brando, for one, would not disagree.   Yet, Judah Ben-Heston  won his Oscar on April 4 1960.

18 – Marcello Mastroianni, La Dolce Vita, Italy-France, 1959.
Producer Dino De Laurentiis wanted Paul (or Gérard Philipe).  Director Federico Fellini did not.  “He’s star. Too important. I need common face…  Like Mastroianni.”  “No,” yelled Dino. “Too soft and goody-goody: a family man rather than the type who flings women onto the bed.”  Dino quit and Fellini  asked his co-writer Ennioi Flaiano to pass the script to “cher Marcellino.” It comprised mainly the maestro’s cartoons    – one of the hero swimming along the horizon with an enormous penis almost dragging along the sea bed. “Where do I sign?” said Marcellino. Newman asked the same thing about The Voyage de G Mastorna when pushed by Dino to Manziana where Fellini was convalescing from “a diplomatic illness.” He  also considered Alain Cuny, Steve McQueen, Marcello Mastroianni, Gregory Peck, stage director Giorgio Strehler and  Oskar Werner before signing Ugo Tognazzi – for the best film Fellini never made!

19 – Alain Delon, Rocco e I suoi fratelli  (Rocco And His Brothers), Italy-France, 1960.   Luchino Visconti’s first producer wanted Brigitte Bardot – one of the reasons the maestro quit and persuaded Goffredo Lombardo to produce And then he wanted Newman!

20 – Dirk Bogarde, The Angel Wore Red, 1961.   The Brit tried to pick up the pieces dropped by Hollywood’s elite. To no avail. The “priest and a tart” number in blazing Madrid number, said Bogarde,  “opened to ten Eskimos in North Alaska  and sank without trace.”

21 – John Mills, The Singer Not The Song, 1961.    Cast as a campy bandito (or a bandito he made campy),  Dirk Bogarde fretted  that Mills would steal the (terrible) movie. The priest was the better role and, therefore, suggested to the A List: Richard Burton, Peter Finch, Laurence Harvey and the two Pauls, Newman and Scofield.

22 – Jason Robards, Tender Is The Night, 1961.    Producer David Selznick first tried to film F Scott Fitzgerald’s last completed novel  at RKO in 1951,  with his wife, Jennifer Jones and Cary Grant –  who disapproved of  Dr Dick Diver, the shrink falling for his patient.  George Cukor decided on Elizabeth Taylor and Glenn Ford (!), John Frankenheimer voted for Warren Beatty or Christopher Plummer. Veteran toughie Henry King helming Jones with a miscast Robards was a fiasco.  Other potential Dicks over the years had been Montgomery Clift, Paul Newman and true Brits Dirk Bogarde and Richard Burton.   Hmm, Burton and Taylor – now that would have worked.

23 – Laurence Harvey, Walk On The Wild Side  1962.    Newman had been set for the atrociously named Dove Linkhorn three years before. Maybe, he figfuered the whole shoddy shebang would be stolen in the opening seconds by Saul Bass’ prowling cat credits.

24 – Robert  Mitchum, Two for the See-Saw, 1961.   To have see-ed with Elizabeth Taylor. She was ill, so he was was free when Robert Rossen came a-calling with…The Hustler.  Mitchum saw-ed with Shirley MacLaine. Didn’t he though! Their affair lasted four years.

25 – Kirk Douglas, The  Hook, 1962. 

The 1953 Korean War peace talks had already begun when three GIs, led by Sergeant Douglas, are given orders to execute a POW – the Filipino Enrique Magalona giving all of them an acting lesson.     Newman not yet played Harper and begun his thing about favouring titles and roles starting with an H… Then again, Hook was hardly a  Hud, Hustler or Hombre… and one of his  his four Harrys, two Hanks and Henrys, plus the odd Hale, Hudson and Hughie.

26 – Cliff Robertson, PT 109, 1963.   JFK in WWII…   Robertson was said to be  the only actor hated by Newman – doubtless due to to him winning Paul’s Broadway role in the 1955  Picnic  film. Inexplicably, Robertson was to win  a Best Actor  Oscar  in 1969 – eons before Newman in 1987.

27 – Steve McQueen, Love With The Proper Stranger, 1963.     For the jazz musician awash with girls, Newman was ex-TV director Robert Mulligan’s first choice. Newman was everyone’s first choice! McQueen was on $50-a-day  for a bit part in Somebody Up There Likes Me – top starring Newman in 1956. “He walked into the audition, “ said director Robert Wise,  “wearing a beanie hat and that smile and within a few minutes, he’d got the part.”

28 – Sean Connery, Marnie, 1963.  After  Newman and Marlon Brando passed, Rock Hudson had a meet with Alfred Hitchcock about playing Mark Rutland.   Then, Cubby Broccoli showed Hitch some glimpses of Dr No. … and,  although, Sean hardly matched  the “American aristocrat hero,” the role was Sean’s.  Newman agreed to The Master’s next (and supposedly 50th) film, Torn Curtain.  Neither one was among Hitch’s finest.

29 – Kirk Douglas, Seven Days In May, 1963.   Wizard director John Frankenheimer wanted Newman as the heroic colonel saving the US from a seditious General Douglas. No, said Kirk, I’m the hero and Burt Lancaster is the villain general. No, said Frankenheimer, two films with Lancaster was enough… After much persuasion, he found they (finally) “got along magnificently and became good friends.”

30 – Richard Burton, The Night of the Iguana, 1963.    Nipping in quick,  producer Ray Stark paid $500,000  for the new Tennessee Williams play – before it opened as his last Broadway hut in 1961. The main character is the Reverend T Lawrence Shannon, reduced to  being a Mexico tour guide after bejng defrocked for calling God a juvenile delinquent. So who should be Shannon: Stanley Kowalski or Brick Pollit? Aka Marlon Brando from A Streetcar Named Desire or Paul Newman from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  (He’d also been  another Williams sad-sack in Sweet Bird of Youth).  Also up for the Rev were, William Holden, Burt Lancaster (too close to his Oscar-winning Elmer Gantry, 1959) and, surprisingly, James Garner  – “Just too Tennessee Williams for me!” – and Richard Harris.

31 – George Maharis, Sylvia, 1964.    Pinching the  Citizen Kane matrix,  Peter Lawford hires shamus Maharis to find the real story of his fiancee, a poet who used to be something else beginning with p… Newman passed. So did Robert Reed from The Defenders,  1961-1965 – and  George Peppard,  who made his screen debut win  in Bang The Drum Slowty with Newman on TV in 1956. And played, 17 years later, a vice cop called Newman in Newman’s Law! Maharis came from  Route 66, 1960-1963.  Carroll Baker played Sylva. Badly.

32 – Tony  Curtis, The Great Race, 1964.   Newman would hardly be first choice for a movie dedicated to Laurel  and Hardy!  Except he was. Well, he did a lot of driving. So who else was Blake Edwards gonna call for his send-up of the 1908 Greatest Auto Race,  from New York to Paris via Russia, across 22,000 miles of three continents. Second choice Charlton Heston was  too busy painting ceilings as Michelangelo  in The Agony and the Ecstasy. .

33 – Dirk Bogarde, Darling, 1964.     Julie Christie’s husband had first been written as a  US journalist  wandering around Europe.  As the film was all Julie, director John Schlesinger found that  “no Hollywood star would touch it.”  When asked which role he wanted, Laurence Harvey said: “Julie’s”!

34 – Omar Sharif, Doctor  Zhivago, 1965.   Kirk Douglas chased after the Russian novel winning  the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature. However, Rome producer Carlo Ponti secured the rights to Boris Pasternak’s book, based not only on Russia’s revolution and Stalin’s Great Purge of freedom,  but the married writer’s long affair with the poet Olga Ivinskaya.  Ponti signed David Lean to direct Mrs P, Sophia Loren as Olga. Or Lara by now.  “Too tall,” snapped Lean. They then started hunting their Yuri Zhivago through… top Brits Dirk Bogarde, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Albert Finney, Peter O’Toole(Lean’s  Lawrence of Arabia, 1961);  two Americans, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman; and a single Swede, Max von Sydow.  Caine said he suggested  Lean should use his  Lawrence find, Egyptian Omar Sharif. MGM’s pet duo, Newman and Sophia Loren, wasted their time with  Lady L, instead. 

35 – Peter O’Toole, Lord Jim, 1965.   Two years earlier, Newman was offered the lead.  And he passed!  “It was a mistake and I made the mistake because I was conservative and played safe. And that way lies failure.”

36 – George Segal, King Rat, 1965.    Blacklisted Hollywood writer Carl Foreman (High Noon) decided to film James Cavell’s tough book about his three years as a WWII prisoner of the Japanese. With the finest UK actors:  new guys Albert Finney, Peter O’Toole, veterans Trevor Howard, John Mills.  He then felt he had no more to say about war after The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Guns of Navarone and The Victors. UK writer-director Bryan Forbes made it his Hollywood debut, bravely side-stepping Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Frank Sinatra for the Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf find, George Segal – as the titular wheeler-dealer-fixer-conniver who all but ends up running the jungle camp. 

37 – Richard Burton, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, 1965. A crass, if obvious notion because  his mate Martin Ritt was directing; they’d already made five of their six films.  But Newman as a Britsh spy…  c’mon!   Burton was no better, said Ritt, calling him  (before the cast and  crew) “an old whore” delivering his “last good lay.” Author John le Carré (who’d wanted Peter Finch of Trevor Howard) said the opposite. Burton was “a literate, serious artist, a self-educated polymath “with appetites and flaws that in one way or another we all share.”

38 –  Steve McQueen, The Sand Pebbles, 1965.  Steve McQueen’s first film role – in 1956 – was opposite Pal Newman in Somebody Up There Likes Me. Nine years later, the same director Robert  Wise was chasing either of them for his Pebbles hero, Jake Holman. This time,  McQueen won – plus his only Oscar nomination.  “He was so real and so right., ” said Wise. And the film was so boring.  Another nine years further on found them co-starring in The Towering Inferno, 1974.  With McQueen making sure he had the showier role – a fire chief versus Newman’s architect – and arriving on-screen about 43 minutes after Newman had more or less run out of dialogue. They were each paid $1m plus 10% of the gross for their trouble.

39 – James Garner, Grand Prix, 1966.   When Steve McQueen backed out, Newman’s name entered the grid.  Obviously.  Same thing happened a decade later for the saga of racing driver Bobby Deerfield. (Played by Al Pacino). 

40 – Oskar Werner, Fahrenheit 451,  1966.  

Introduced to Ray Bradbury’s book in 1962, French réalisateur François Truffaut first considered shooting in America in 1964 with Newman. “He is very handsome, especially when he is filmed in colour, and I prefer him to all the Hollywood actors who have box-office appeal: Hudson, Peck, Heston, Brando, Lancaster.”  During the long financial delays, Truffaut interviewed Alfred Hitchcock, ten hours a day for six days, for their classic book, by which time Newman had cooled on the project and Truffaut felt Ray Bradbury’s story was too important to be shot in English! And contacted his past and future stars, Charles Aznavour, Jean-Paul Belmondo – and Oskar Werner as Montag’s boss. “It’s very important that it’s the first European science fiction film.” Producer Lewis Allen got him back on track, offering Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Kirk Douglas or Sterling Hayden. Producer Sam Spiegel tried muscling in by promising Richard Burton bossing a Robert Redford and loving Elizabeth Taylor! To stay in charge, Truffaut ran for cover to Terence Stamp – whose ego proved jealous of Julie Christie having a dual role! Getting desperate, Truffaut made the mistake of his life by giving the fireman to Werner, originally booked as Montag’s boss. Any of the others asleep would have been better! The Austrian’s head had been turned by Hollywood since his and Truffaut’s Jules et Jim triumph. Werner argued constantly over (his dull) interpretation, refused one “dangerous” scene (as if a fireman would not have to deal with fire), even cut his hair to ruin continuity. If not for the six years of planning the film, Truffaut would have walked. Instead, he simply truncated Werner’s later scenes – and used a double John Ketteringham, in most of them! 

41 – Yves Montand, La guerre est  finie,  France-Sweden, 1966.     Paul topped the list of French cineaste Alain Resnais, followed by Montand and Vittorio Gassman for the role  (based on Spanish writer Jorge Semprum) of a Spanish  Communist agitator – still loyal, but doubting. “My personal history,” said Montand, “gave Diego credibility.”

42 – Brahim Haggiag, The Battle of Algiers, Italy-Algeria, 1966.   Producer Saadi Yacef played his own role in the film of the  book he wrote in prison, but Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo wanted Newman as Yacef’s accomplice Ali la Pointe.  “Non,” said Yacef,  an NLF leader during the battle. “There was no Paul Newman in the Algerian war!”  Hence the more (and highly praised) documentary approach, with mostly non-actors.

43 – Warren Beatty, Bonnie and Clyde, 1966.

44 – Omar Sharif, Funny Girl, 1967.  The Jewish Barbra Streisand preferred an Arab screen lover (on and off-screen) to Cary Grant. And the others short-listed for her gambling man Nick Arnstein:  Marlon Brando,  Sean Connery, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra.  Plus three  TVstars, Robert Culp, James Garner, David Janssen, that she would have chewed up and spat out. Newman explained his refusal: ” I can’t sing a note, and as for that monster, the dance, suffice it to say that I have no flexibility below the ass at all -I even have difficulty proving the paternity of my six children.”

45 – Burt Lancaster, The Swimmer, 1967.

Lancaster called it: “Death of a Salesman in swimming trunks.” (Seventeen pairs, his only wardrobe for the film). He  went into serious  training to match his old nickname, The Build, for novelist John Cheever’s tragic hero, who suddenly decides to swim home via the pools of his Connecticut friends and neighbours.  Burt was no great swimmer but producer Sam Spiegel praised his “perception and courage and…  an intense interest in films that go beyond the obvious and ordinary.”  Hah, said Burt. “The whole film was a disaster,” he told  Take 22 magazine.  “Sam had promised me, personally promised me, to be there every single weekend to go over the film, because we had certain basic problems – the casting and so forth. He never showed up one time. I could have killed him, I was so angry with him. And finally Columbia pulled the plug on us. But we needed another day of shooting – so I paid $10,000  for it.” Montgomery Clift (!), Glenn Ford, William Holden, Paul Newman and George C Scott had all been in the swim for what became Sam’s fourth consecutive flop. Minus David Lean, Spiegel was  a zero.

46 – Albert Finney, Two For The Road, 1968.   “No” said Newman, ”it’s a director’s picture. Not for an actor.”Originally, Audrey Heburn’s husband was American and rejected bv Newman (well, he did a lot of driving) Tony Curtis  (or so he claimed in his 2008 auto-bio)..  Then, he was nearly Michael Caine before Albie rushed to work with the glorious Hepburn in director Stanley Donen’s delightful take on love and marriage, written by Frederic Raphael. 

47 – Robert Blake, In Cold Blood, 1967.   The film of Truman Capote’s book needed anonymous actors as the killers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. Columbia wanted names – as if Truman Capote and Richard Brooks were smallfry!  “They wanted Newman and McQueen,” said Brooks. “But I never write for a specific  actor,” he added, forgetting his Bogart beginnings, and penning The Happy Ending, 1969,  for his wife Jean  Simmons. Newman preferred Cool Hand Luke.

48 – Steve McQueen, The Thomas Crown Affair, 1967.  McQueen was now Then Big McCheese. His contract reflected his post-Great Escape status:  $700,000 and numerous Italian suits.  Plus his his usual McExtras: ten pairs of jeans, ten electric razors.  Huh?  Not for him  but the guys  at his alma mater: the  Boys Republic correction centre.

49 – Cliff Robertson, The Honey Pot, 1967.  And writer-director Joseph Mankiewicz’s variation on Volponesure  needed him opposite Rex Harrison, Susan Hayward, Maggie Smith,  etc.  As Chicago  critic  Roger Ebert  put it: “The leading actors are all competent, except for the wooden Cliff Robertson.”

50 – George C Scott, Petulia, UK/US, 1967.   Julie Christie’ is the   arch-kook in this requiem for well swung the 60s.  Director Richard Lester wanted Lee Marvin as her  curmudgeonly lover, while the Warner suits voted James Garner or Paul Newman. The film has echoes (and the editing) of Nicolas Roeg’s later Christie opus, Don’t Look Now, and, indeed, Bad Timing… well, he was the cameraman here.

51 – Charlton Heston, Planet  of the Apes, 1968.

52 – Rod Steiger, The Ilustrated Man, 1968.  OK, Ray Bradbury, the heavyweight  champion of science fiction writers, told Jack Smight, Hollywood’s featherweight director (not even a contender), you can film my book as long as the lead is Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman or Steiger!

53 – Rip Torn, Tropic of Cancer, 1969.    Carroll Baker’s Carpetbaggers producer Joseph E Levine tried to set her up with Newman in a 1964 version of the Henry Miller book. Torn’s wife. Geraldine Page (their mail-box read: Torn Page), had co-starred with Newman in both the 1959 Broadway play and the 1961 Hollywood film of Sweet Bird of Youth.

54  – Robert Redford,  Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, 1969.  

55 – Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry, 1970.

56 – Gene Hackman, The French Connection, 1971.    “We had a budget at the time of $2.8m,” said director Wiliam Friedkin. “And half a million of that was for Newman…  or somebody like that. Richard Zanuck, the Fox production chief like his father before him, said: “You’ll never get Newman. Who else?”  Writer Jimmy Breslin, Jackie Geason. Rod Taylor… Zanuck veteoed them all.   And mentioned  Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum and,  cheapest of all, the Fox Batman, Adam West, Holy moley!!!!

57 – Robert Duvall, The Godfather, 1971.

58 – Kirk Douglas, A Gunfight, 1971.    Western saga of  ageing hired guns (Johnny Cash was the other one – don’t ask!).  The budget was the  first (and last) supplied by the Jicarilla Apache Tribe of American Indians. 

59 – Steve McQueen, The Getaway, 1972.   Newman’s agent (friend and later production partner and, finally, producer) John Foreman, did not like Jim Thompson’s  pulp  novel. The same Foreman who – to  Paul’s delight – once said of him: “He gets up every morning, walks to the window and scans the horizons for enemies.”

60 – James Coburn, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid, 1972.

61 – Roger Moore, Live And Let Die, 1972.

62 – Ryan O’Neal, Paper  Moon, 1972.    Before director Peter Bogdanovich rolled O’Neal pere et fille, in black-and-white, the iconic John Huston was prepping it as Addie Pray Pray (the book’s title) in colour for Newman pere et fille, Nell Potts. (They quit when Huston was replaced). Paramount chief Robert Evans had wanted Warren Beatty or Jack Nicholson. Except neither one had a kid. O’Neal said he wouldn’t have made the film without Tatum. “No father and daughter can connect with the intensity of a movie, and in a way, the story is a parallel of our lives.”  Oh really? In her autobiography, Paper Life, O’Neal said when she was Oscar-niominated and Pop wasn’t, he hit her! Ten at the time, Tatum remains the youngest Oscar-winner.

63 – Michael Moriarty, Bang The Drum Slowly, 1973.   In 1956, Newman played basebell pitcher Henry Wiggen finding his close friend and player, half-wit catcher Bruce Pearson, hiding how he was dying of Hodgkin’s disease…A few year later Josh Logan planned a film of the TV play  with Newman repeating Wiggen.  Except it was 17 years before the actual movie was made.  With Moriarty and Robert De Niro.

64 – John Wayne, Rooster Cogburn, 1974.      The idea was fair – a sequel  to True Grit.  But if Wayne proved too ill, what would be the point of someone else in his titular Oscar-winning rôle? Marlon Brando topped producer Hal Wallis’ eye-patch  list of Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, George C Scott and some of Duke’s old co-stars: Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson, Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck. Plus four of co-star Katharine Hepburn’s previous partners  – Charles Bronson, Burt Lancaster, Peter O’Toole, Anthony Quinn – and as she continued trying to pick guys she’d never  worked with before… Warren Beatty, Henry Fonda, Laurence Olivier, Ryan O’Neal, Paul Scofield, Henry Winkler (!)… (McQueen turned down her Grace Quigley in 1983).   Kate wrote that embracing Duke “was like leaning against a great tree.”

65 – Christopher Plummer, After The Fall, TV, 1974.   Before it  was made for TV, a cinema movie version had been aimed at the 1965 Lady L couple, Newman and Sophia Loren as… Arthur Miller and Marilyn.  As written by Miller.

66 – Charlton Heston,  Earthquake, 1974.  The Big One hits LA. And Charlie Hero catches it… But only because Newman (and another Earthquake target,Steve McQueen) were at Warner Bros and Fox saving The Towering Inferno.   Both roles ear-marked for Newman were desk jockeys, an LA  building exec and a towering architect… and action men for McQueen, an LAPD sergeant and a towering  fire chief.

67 – Burt Reynolds, Lucky Lady, 1974

“He was 24 and he  rejected Paul Newman like you’d crush a fly!” said head Fox Richard Zanuck about his first choice director, a certain Steven Spielberg. Well, obviously, he was (a) scared of working with  big stars – when out to make his name – and (b) felt Newman was unsuitable for such farce.  If Spielberg had made it, he would never  have agreed to repeat the boats and sea headaches on Jaws. Zanuck wasn’t so impressed when Spielberg rejected Mrs Z, Linda Harrison, for the police chief’s wife in Jaws, 1974 – and gave the role to a far more important wife. Lorraine  Gary was wed to his discoverer and mentor, Universal studio chief Sid Sheinberg. In 1982, he bought the film rights to what became Schindler’s List for Spielberg – it won him his first Oscar on March 21, 1994.   Burt on Newman @ Deadline Hollywood, 2018: “He was the real deal, and I liked him enormously. He was a great deal like Johnny Carson in the sense that he was very, very private. He was a terrific driver, as good as anybody out there, though Steve McQueen maybe would’ve given him a run for his money.”

68 – Clint Eastwood, The Eiger Sanction, 1974.     Musical macho chairs… Newman was announced. Steve McQueen took it over for his  company. Clint Eastwood made it for his.

69 – Robert Shaw, Jaws, 1974.

70 – Elliott Gould, I Will, I Will… for Now,  1975.    Easy for Newman to bypass this lame comedy. Roger Ebert called it drek (“Try to imagine Elliott Gould vacuuming the curtains to music and you’ll begin to understand the true banality of this movie”) and IMDb reported it was cited as a raunchier A Touch of Class (oh really?)… by director Noman Panama’s usual writing partner, Melvin Frank.

71 – Sean Connery, The Man Who Would Be King, 1975.

72 – Robert De Niro, Taxi Driver, 1975.

73 – Robert De Niro, The Last Tycoon, 1975.    Passed on F Scott Fitzgerald’s Thalbergesque Monroe Stahr. Anyway, producer sam Spiegel insisted on De Niro. For producer Lester Cowan this was the one that got way… He first tried when  hot  to trot after his 1945 hit, The Story of GI Joe, ironically starring Robert Mitchum,  who played a studio boss in this version nearly 30 years later.  Cowan tried again in 1967 – aiming for Beatty (who started writing Shampoo on Sam Spiegel’s yacht).

74 – Donald Sutherland, Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (Fellini’s Casanova), 1975.   When Fellini didn’t fancy anyone on his 1973 wish list (Brando, Newman, Pacino, Redford, etc), producer Dino De Laurentiis brusquely quit the project in high dudgeon. Or a passing cab… Andrea Rizzoli (son of La Dolce Vita producer Angelo Rizzoli)  took over in 1974 before passing the (pricey) baton to Alberto Grimaldi and the (ten month!) shooting finally began on July 20 1975.

75  – Bruce Dern, Family Plot, 1976.   For what proved his last hurrah, Alfred Hitchcock considered  Newman for the lead – odd, after Hitch’s antipathy for him during Torn Curtain.  “I knew I was second or third choice,” said Dernsie. Fourth, in fact, after Newman,  Pacino and Nicholson. Pacino, in particular, was too pricey.  “But you,“ said Hitch to Dern,  “I can get cheap.”

76 – John Wayne, The Shootist, 1976.   Duke’s finale…  Newman, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman passed. George C Scott was signed but not  sealed when John Wayne showed interest in the dying gunfighter JB Brooks… despite  suffering heart, lung and prostate problems – and dead in three years. Passing each other on the lot, Wayne used to say: “Hey, Paul, how’s the revotution coming?“ And Newman would answer: “How can we possibly win, Duke, with you on the other side.“

77 – Sean Connery,  Robin and Marian, 1976.    If you can get Newman, said director Terence Young, then you’ve got me…  Dick Lester got better – Sean and Audrey!

78 – Peter Finch, Network, 1976.  

“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore…”  Both director Sidney Lumet and writer Paddy Chayefsky came from the golden age of US TV – and pulled no punches in detailing where the medium was going (down the drain. Indeed, their fictional USB fourth network became, well, Fox.  After tenuous thoughts about real TV News anchors (John Chancellor and the venerable Walter Cronkite),Paddy had a wish list of real actors  for the unhinged news anchor Howard Beale: the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.” Henry Fonda found it “too hysterical” (his daughter Jane was up for Faye Dunaway’s Oscar-winning role), Glenn Ford,  Cary Grant, Gene Hackman, William Holden (he played news exec  Max Schumacher, instead), Walter  Matthau, Paul Newman, James Stewart (appalled by the script’s bad language!). Plus George C Scott , who refused because he had once been “offended” by Lumet! (Yet his final film was Lumet’s final film, Gloria, 1998).   Lumet had just the one name – and this proved to be Finchy’s farewell, winning the first posthumous Best Actor Oscar. Lumet was with Peter when he died. They were in the Beverly Hills Hotel, awaiting  a joint interview,  when  Finch collapsed and died soon after in hospital, never regaining consciousness from his heart attack.  His performance won the first posthumous acting Oscar. (Ironically, the second was also for an Aussie, Heth Ledger, for The Dark Knight… 33 years later).

79 – William Holden, Network, 1976.  No? OK, then what about the middle-age news executive who becomes Faye Dunaway’s mentor, lover and victim… Chayefsky (described by Women’s Wear Daily as possessing “the look of a satyr who has retired from active duty”) had written  Newman on May 21, 1975, to offer him “any part in this picture you want.”

80 – Robert Duvall, Network, 1976.   No? OK, then what about… the  executive who, when murder is suggested, insists he wants to “hear everybody’s thoughts on this.” No!

81 – Ned Beatty, Network, 1976. No, OK, then  what about… Beatty’s  sharp-edged cameo of the  TV exec with one of the film’s other famous lines.  “It’s because you’re on television, dummy.”  Newman remained unmoved by Chayefsky’s prophetic vision of television’s future. It was unbelievable, dumb  dumb (or ill-advised) that  such a fine actor would blow off one  of the greatest  US scripts of the 70s.  And it wasn’t  as if he was still into Towering Inferno and When Time Ran Out disaster crap  at the time. He was, in  fact, making consecutive Robert Altman films.

82 – Al Pacino, Bobby Deerfield, 1976.    

Newman bought the rights because the book was about car racing. Alvin Sargent’s script was not.   Pacino’s decision  made his manager-mentor Martin Bregman drop him.  “He wanted a love story… For  him  to  do this, after all the great roles he’d played, that stuck in my throat.” Pacino identified more with the Grand Prix driver than his first $1m salary. “Bobby Deerfield was lost… I   felt very lost in my life. I just don’t think I had the acting technique to handle the part.  I found myself too subjective. Yet I felt connected.” The film failed because it was difficul to accept Pacino (or the other contenders, Newman and Robert Redford) as a boring man. The flop crushed director Sydney Pollack – who then  made Absence of Malice with Newman, 1981.

83 – Charles Durning, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, 1976.    When he could persuade Newman to be his POTUS, director Robert Aldrich went to the opposite extreme with the bulky Durning. But then this was Burt Lancaster’s movie: hi-jacking a ICBM silo and threatening tol stary WWIII unless…

84 – Roy Scheider, Sorcerer, 1976. “I was so arrogant at that time. I thought I was the star of that film.” William Friedkin on losing Steve McQueen – and indeed Paul Newman   – from the  re-tread of realisateurHenri-Georges Clouzot’s  French classic, La salaire de la peur, 1953.  “I didn’t think that a close-up of Steve McQueen was worth a shot of the most beautiful landscape. A close-up of McQueen was worth more. When McQueen dropped out, I lost Marcello Mastroianni and Lino Ventura… Only my arrogance cost me that cast.  I said: ‘I don’t need stars; I’ll just make it with four good actors. And I did.” Another of his biggest mistakes.  Film flopped. Then again, it opened one week after… Star Wars.

85 – James Caan, Un autre homme, une autre chance/Another Man, Another Woman, France, 1977.   Pretentious Claude Lelouch decided to make a Western. He didn’t, of course.  He made a Lelouchern. Complete with the hero riding to Beethoven’s Fifth!  Caan talked his way into the mess, while the realisateur was chasing Beatty, McQueen,  Newman or Pacino. None  of whom, Lelouch said proudly, said No.   Nor yes.

86 – Alain Delon, Attention, les enfants regardent, France, 1977.   “Refused  by  Newman,”  said  Delon,  “obviously as it’s about 15 minutes in a 100 minute film. But it interested me.”   About his numerous foreign flm  offfers, Newman commented: “I know that I can function better in the American vernacular than I can in any other.  In

fact, I cannot seem to function in any other.”

87- Christopher Reeve, Superman, 1977.

88 – Marlon Brando, Superman, 1977.

89 – Gene Hackman, Superman, 1977.
90 – Trevor Howard, Superman, 197.

91 – Roy Scheider, All That Jazz, 1979.   “Dumb of me.” said Newman, shooting at his head with a finger.  “I was just so stupid. I didn’t take into consideration what the contribution of the director was going to be. A terrible oversight.”  When director Bob Fosse was  convinced (by his health) not to try and play his screen self, Broadway choreographer Joe Gideon, was chased and/or avoided by… Alan Alda, Alan Bates (“too British,” said Fosse), Warren Beatty (keen, but Gideon must not die at the end!), Robert Blake, Richard Dreyfuss (“afraid of the dancing”), Elliott Gould, Gene Hackman, Jack Lemmon (“too old”), Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, George Segal, Jon Voight. Scheider just grabbed the “outrageous, assaulting, melodramatic, very funny, stupid, silly, simplistic, vulgar… wonderful movie!” Exactly.

92 – Richard Harris, Your Ticket Is No Longer Valid, Canada, 1980.   Everyone passed.  Why? The subject.   Male impotency.

93 – Nick Nolte, Cannery Row, 1980.  After reading four drafts he still said no – wisely.  Even though (or, because), Raquel Welch was due to co-star.

94 – Kris Kristofferson, Heaven’s Gate, 1980.    So he did avoid some films   starting with an H… Brash, not to say braggart director Michael Cimino obviously first sent his script to Clint – Eastwood had started the Cimino ball rolling by producer-starring  his Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, 1974. Not this time. Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Robert Redford  also passed on what became one of Hollywood’s Top Ten Financial Disasters. In the space of six years (and five Oscars for his Deer Hunter, 1978, including best Film and Director), Cimino’s career was flushed.

95- Jürgen Prochnow, Das boot/The Boat, West Germany, 1981.   Bavaria Studios was trying to go international, with John Sturges or Don Siegel helming, perhaps,  Newman…?

96 – Jack Lemmon, Missing, 1981.     Director Costa-Gavras also asked Newman (fulky booked) and Gene Hackman (not right) to play the all-American parent searching for his missing US journalist son-in-law, an obvious victim of the horrendous Allende regime in Chile. Said Newman: “I really wanted to work with [Z director] Costa-Gavras and I’m not above doing something that’s critical of our American society, politically, socially or morally. But if it’s going to be critical,I want it to be mycriticism… not to be the mouthpiece for somebody else’s criticism.” Although winning Best Film and Actor at the 1982 Cannes festival, Missing was lacking the raw passion of Z. Instead, said, Chicago critic Roger Ebert, Costa “achieved the unhappy feat of upstaging his own movie, losing it in a thicket of visual and Birth year: 1925Death year: 2008Other name: Casting Calls:  159