On this day in 1967, Cool Hand Luke, starring Paul Newman as a tough, anti-authoritarian, poker-playing prisoner, debuts in theaters. Newman received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the jail-breaking Luke Jackson, whom the American Film Institute in 2003 named one of the top 50 greatest movie heroes in history. For his role as the chain-gang boss, Dragline, co-star George Jackson collected a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg (Voyage of the Damned, The Amityville Horror, The Pope of Greenwich Village), Cool Hand Luke contained the now-famous lines: “What we have here is a failure to communicate” and “I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I have my plastic Jesus, right here on the dashboard of my car…”
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At the time of Cool Hand Luke’s debut, Paul Newman was already on the path to becoming one of Hollywood’s greatest leading men. The actor, who was born January 26, 1925, in Cleveland and raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and later graduated from Kenyon College. He acted on Broadway in the early 1950s and made his big-screen debut in 1954’s The Silver Chalice. Newman received his first Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance as Brick Pollitt in 1958’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, based on the Tennessee Williams play and co-starring Elizabeth Taylor. Newman’s next two Best Actor Oscar nominations came for The Hustler (1961) and Hud (1963).
In 1969, the famously blue-eyed actor teamed up with Robert Redford to play a pair of Old West bank robbers in the hit Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which earned seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. The two handsome screen icons collaborated again in 1973’s The Sting, which collected seven Oscars, including Best Picture. Newman went on to star in such movies as Absence of Malice (1981) and The Verdict (1982), both of which earned him Best Actor Oscar nominations, and The Color of Money (1986), for which he took home his first Best Actor Oscar. In the film, directed by Martin Scorsese, Newman plays Fast Eddie Felson, a pool hustler who finds a protege in a young player portrayed by Tom Cruise. In the later years of his acting career, Newman also received Oscar nominations for his performances in Nobody’s Fool (1994) and Road to Perdition (2002), with Tom Hanks.
Newman, who outside of acting was known for his avid interest in race-car driving and his Newman’s Own line of foods (the profits of which go to charity), also stepped behind the camera to direct such movies as Rachel, Rachel (1968), which starred his second wife, Joanne Woodward (the couple married in 1958 and starred in 10 movies together) and earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination, and The Glass Menagerie (1987), which featured Woodward and John Malkovich. Paul Newman died at his home in Westport, Connecticut, on September 26, 2008, at the age of 83.
A REgressive, no doubt about it, but fuck it, I enjoyed his movies. One not mentioned and one of my favs, in fact an all time fav, is Hombre.
“Tell me please, what was his name?”
Maybe I can take these REgressives a little better if they’re not shoving their horseshit in our faces. Compare Newman to his bud Redford and tell me which one you’d want to take a cross country trip with. Same deal with Jeff Bridges, another REgressive but I don’t see him on a soapbox excoriating me.
Jessie: “Mr. Russell, we’re getting more and more worried about you. If you can tell them to shoot Mrs. Favor without flickin’ an eyelash, we’re beginning to wonder how you feel about the rest of us.”
John Russell: “You’re in a lot of trouble.”
Jessie: “Then will you tell me why we keep trotting after you?”
John Russell: “Because I can cut it, Lady.”
But the trotters couldn’t cut it. & the one who could got cut on their behalf.
Dr. Favor: “You’ll learn something about white people. They stick together.”
John Russell: “They better.”
If only to make things worser.
“Lady, up there in those mountains there is a whole people who’ve lost everything. They don’t have a place left to spread their blankets. They’ve been insulted, diseased, made drunk and foolish. Now, you call the men who did that Christians, and you trust them. I know them as white men, and I don’t.”
Only a fool would.
I like these older movies – helps me recall who I was screwing at the time.
Was Wizard Of Oz your first fuck?
It was before there were ‘Talkies’ – Girls from NJ were an easy lay.
I hope history.com does a story on when Newman first appeared on a bottle of salad dressing.
I love those kind of stories.
Saw a Paul Newman movie last week on TMC I had never seen called Judge Roy Bean or something like that..It’s a Western. Had some comic relief.
“For his role as the chain-gang boss, Dragline, co-star George Jackson ..”
Poor George Kennedy got punked, at least he got a promotion to ‘boss’.
The author of CHL complained about that famous ‘failure to communicate’ line. He said all the men were rednecks and never spoke like that. He also had some things to say about that pretty boy playing Luke. Hmm, some hard boiled eggs sound good right about now.
EC
Nah, author of this piece punked himself with that error. Kennedy was un-punkable, great character actor that often stole the show. Same goes for Strother Martin.
Pretty boys (& girls) flock to Hollywood, Broadway, all the lesser venues, too. Sex\appeal sells. Gets sold, quid pro quo, too, as has been in the news lately.
Edison invented motion picture cameras, tried to monopolize the motion picture biz, lower east side jewish immigrant-gangsters (anti-monopolists…until they could get their own fixes in) took the tech, put up nickelodeons all over showing sexier, more violent, more entertaining stuff than the Edison Trust (which pledged to make only movies that promoted wholesome Christian & American values…yeah, right) & eventually all those same people moved out to Hollywood, erected the studios, tacked morals clauses into contracts (for pr purposes). But even before movies, still photography started cashing in on sex about a nanosecond after being invented. And before that, drawings, paintings, sculptures.
Kennedy’s last role, before escaping the chain-gang, I didn’t recognize him. (right at the beginning)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vITn9CJRTuY
Loved him in Nkit Gun series, along with Leslie Nielsen.
EC
Here is my Paul Newman story.
In 1972, filming was underway on the Siletz River on the Oregon Coast for the movie “Sometime’s a Great Notion” based on the novel by Ken Kesey. It was about an Oregon Gyppo logging company.
Our family used to go to the mouth of the Siletz bay to fish and hang out often back then. We heard a movie was being filmed on the river so we drove up the two lane highway that followed the river to check it out. There were a lot of cars parked along the road and nothing much was happening. Just a tugboat going up and down the river (It had a carved hand flipping the bird at the top of it’s mast).
I was a bored teenager, so I was poking around in the roadside ditch and found a little green snake. I was just standing there, minding my own business playing with my snake when I got a tap on the shoulder. I turned around and there was Paul Newman! He very politely complimented me on finding such a fine specimen and asked if he could have it. Of course I said “sure,” and gave it to him. I watched him walk away with it toward a group of people who were standing around and talking. He went up to some woman, who was wearing a flowered dress and without saying a word, he slipped the snake down the back of her dress.
The woman screamed, turned around and slapped his face and then stormed off somewhere. All the others started laughing.
I never saw the snake again. I hope it came out okay.
You wrote, “…Sometime’s a Great Notion” based on the novel by Ken Kesey. It was about an Oregon Gyppo logging company.”
Whoa, that is about the most compendious review I’ve ever seen of this magnificent American novel.
Cool Hand Luke was a good movie IN SPITE of Paul Newman. Strother Martin as the warden stole every scene he was in with Newman as did George Kennedy as the leader of the prisoners.