The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man: A Memoir

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The man with the fifty year marriage, the man of many and successful movies, the man who created celebrity philanthropy, the man who designed camps for terminally ill kids…was a closed book, a cypher, a functional alcoholic whose epic marriage was set by his cheating on his first wife for years with Joanne Woodward. Paul Newman is also candid about his own alcohol addiction and the abandonment of his children from his first marriage, but he seems to have pulled it together after Scott's death, devoting more time to his philanthropic endeavors (yep, I've got a bottle or two of Newman's Own salad dressing in my fridge), his passion for auto racing, and his family. And still his acting roles just seemed to get better as he aged ( The Color of Money, The Verdict)... Then all this was put together for a book about Paul Newman, contributions and stories from his co-stars and directors.

In 1986, Paul Newman and his closest friend, screenwriter Stewart Stern, began an extraordinary project. Stuart was to compile an oral history, to have Newman’s family and friends and those who worked closely with him, talk about the actor’s life. And then Newman would work with Stewart and give his side of the story. The only stipulation was that anyone who spoke on the record had to be completely honest. That same stipulation applied to Newman himself. The project lasted five years. Newman's often traumatic childhood is detailed. He talks about his teenage insecurities, his early failures with women, his rise to stardom, his early rivals (Brando and Dean), his first marriage, his drinking, his philanthropy, the death of his son Scott, his strong desire for his daughters to know and understand the truth about their father. Perhaps the most moving material in the book centers around his relationship with Joanne Woodward - their love for each other, his dependence on her, the way she shaped him intellectually, emotionally and sexually. This unforgettable and extraordinary memoir, one of the best and most compelling books of 2022, is a breathtakingly honest mea culpa from a complicated man striving to excavate his demons; according to Newman's daughter Clea, who writes the memoir's afterword, he succeeded in his final decades. This is pieced together from work Newman did for a memoir project earlier in his life that he never ended up finishing. It does help you feel like you know him as a person, and in compiling it they've done a good job of bringing in a few other voices from other people he had interviewed. This isn't an industry memoir. The first half or so is his life before fame, and the second half is less linear story and more anecdotes and thoughts around particular topics. I didn't mind it, and Jeff Daniels reading it is a nice choice. W]hen news emerged that an unpublished memoir, once thought lost, had been discovered by Newman’s family and would be “revealing and surprising”, fans braced themselves for the worst. Were we to be subjected to tales of Paul Newman, abuser of small animals? Paul Newman the devil-worshipper? Must every hero fall?But Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man, which was published last week, only burnishes his reputation. Not because he bangs on about his glorious deeds – in fact, he barely mentions them at all – but because this once very private man reveals so much of his fascinating, never disappointing self. He was constantly questioning himself, riddled with guilt about the past, deeply in love with his wife and trying to learn from his mistakes. Human, in other words, but better.” —Hadley Freeman, The GuardianI was glad to get an inside look at an amazing actor who was a flawed human being who managed to make it to the top in Hollywood – one of the hardest places to make it at all. I felt no closer to understanding Newman after reading this book than I did before. He would agree with my assertion and nod and shrug. I have been a huge fan of Paul Newman since I saw my first of his movies, The Long Hot Summer, which also happened to feature his wife Joanne Woodward. Those baby blues led to my major infatuation on my part and even to this day, I consider Paul Newman to be a celebrity crush. When I heard a posthumous memoir was created from his writing and interviews, I knew I needed to get my hands on it. Much later in his career, Newman’s voice became an equally striking feature. Unlike the eyes, the voice had to be earned; it was no pretty boy’s birthright. Decades of smoking, drinking and pain produced a rusty baritone that could narrate its way to the very soul of a man’s regret. Newman’s voice settled into its terminal register in the 1980s, in movies like “Absence of Malice” and “The Color of Money.” His world-weary characters could still get the girl, but the right one had long since gotten away. By the end of his career, Newman spoke with a lovely white-haired softness as a sort of national grandfather, teaching a boy to use a watch in “Nobody’s Fool” (1994) and describing the rules of the road in Pixar’s animated “Cars” (2006). Millions of children know him by his voice alone.

Read by Jeff Daniels, Melissa Newman, Clea Newman Soderlund, Ari Fliakos, January LaVoy, John Rubinstein and Emily WachtelWhen Joanne and I went to Paris to shoot a few scenes of Mr. and Mrs. Bridge there were photographers at the airport, and Joanne said to me: “Don’t be a jerk. Pose for them and then they’ll leave us alone.” So you agree to stand there and smile for a minute or two, hold your wife’s arm, etc. and you tell them, “I’ll see you, goodbye.” Then you walk to your car and about two-thirds of them follow and do exactly what you thought you were getting away from. They honor nothing, and they even chase the car.