Celebrity Mound

Broadway theaters will dim their lights Friday at 8 p.m. curtain time in honor of the late Paul Newman, the Associated Press reports.

Although he was known for his film roles, he also appeared in five Broadway productions, starting in 1953 in William Inge’s Picnic.

He teamed up with wife Joanne Woodward in James Costigan’s comedy Baby Want a Kiss in 1964.

His last Broadway appearance was as the stage manager in a 2002 revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (he received a Tony nomination).

Newman died last Friday of cancer at the age of 83.

PAUL Newman’s cancer-stricken body was cremated, and a private funeral service was held by his family, his friend and business partner A.E. Hotchner told The Post. “It’s all over,” he said. Hotchner said their food business, Newman’s Own, has given away $150 million and will give away $26 million more to “a wide variety of charities” in October. Asked what he remembered most about Newman, Hotchner said, “The great fun we had – the mischief. Everything we did was a lark.” Newman was fondly remembered by Shane Barbi, the wife of Ken Wahl, who co-starred with Newman in “Fort Apache, The Bronx” (1981). “Because he had just lost his son Scott, Paul took Ken under his wing like a son,” the Playboy pin-up told us. “Ken told Paul he never wanted to be an actor, and instead wanted to play for the White Sox. So Paul wrote a letter asking owner Bill Veeck to let Ken try out. In the letter, Paul says, “My boy would rather play baseball even though I think he is a natural at acting.”

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Paul Newman broached the subject of his philanthropic legacy several years ago while fishing with friends Robert Forrester and David Horvitz off the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Even though he was a Hollywood icon — a 10-time Academy Award nominee known for his performances in such classic films as “Cool Hand Luke” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” — it was a rare moment in which Newman reflected on how he would be remembered after his death, Horvitz recalled Sunday.

“Most of the time he didn’t think about legacy,” he said. “He was pretty much in the moment.”

But Newman, who died Friday of cancer at age 83, told the men he wanted to be remembered for the “Hole in the Wall” camps he helped to start across the world for children with life-threatening illnesses and to make sure that 100 percent of the profits from his popular food company, Newman’s Own, would continue to benefit such camps and thousands of other charities.

Horvitz is chairman of the Association of Hole in the Wall Camps, which has 11 camps across the globe. Newman told him that he had been lucky in life, born with piercing blue eyes and gift for acting, and how it was unfair that so many innocent children were unlucky to have been burdened with devastating diseases such as AIDS or leukemia.

“He felt a need and an obligation to try to give back,” Horvitz said.

“He loved the camps. He loved being there. He loved being with the kids,” he added. “He loved their smiles and their laughter.”

In 1982, Newman and writer A.E. Hotchner started Newman’s Own to market Newman’s original oil-and-vinegar dressing. It began as a joke and grew into a multimillion-dollar business.

Newman and his food company have given more than $250 million to charity over the years. Last year, $28 million from the sale of pasta sauces, salad dressings, popcorn and other products was distributed to a variety of social causes, including the Safe Water Network, which Newman helped start to provide safe drinking water to impoverished communities in places like India and Africa.

Until two years ago, Newman had the task of personally distributing the company’s profits. But he and Forrester set up a private, independent foundation, known as Newman’s Own Foundation, to carry on the work without Newman.

“Really, everything is in great shape,” Forrester said of the foundation and the company after Newman’s death.

“He said, ‘When I’m not here, this foundation is to continue the tradition of giving all of this money away,’” Forrester said.

Forrester joked how such planning wasn’t part of Newman’s nature. A sign famously hangs in Newman’s Westport, Conn., offices that reads, “If I had a plan I would be screwed.”

Newman welcomed the opinions of others as he pursued the business and his philanthropic efforts. Forrester explained how the actor believed in the benefit of “creative chaos,” where, as in a movie set, different people offer ideas about how a scene should be handled.

“That was Paul’s enduring philosophy, and it worked,” Forrester said. “It sounds awful, but it was part of Paul saying everybody had a voice.”

At Forrester’s request, Newman came up with what he wanted the Newman’s Own company — he hated the word “brand” — to stand for. Newman listed quality food, fair labor practices, a mission focused on philanthropy and not profit, and an open environment in the workplace, not a bureaucratic one.

Forrester said that mission will continue, even though Newman is gone.

Also, his smiling face will still appear on bottles of marinade and boxes of frozen pizza, and his wife, actress Joanne Woodward, will still sit on the Newman’s Own Foundation Board of Directors. Newman typically sat in on all the board meetings, with the exception of the most recent one, about a week ago.

Forrester said Newman’s friends at Newman’s Own — some who have worked there from the early days of the company — plan to look for ways to expand the business in order to carry out the actor’s wishes and give away even more money.

“We’re stewards of this legacy,” he said.

In Hollywood, Paul Newman was royalty. But in Westport, Conn., where he lived with his wife of 50 years, Joanne Woodward, he was just “a regular guy,” says AJ Izzo, part owner of Crossroads Hardware on Main Street, where Newman had been a customer for more than 20 years.

“He’d walk in and say, ‘How are you, AJ?’ And I’d say, ‘Hey, Paul.’ He probably gave more than he took in life, and you don’t find many people like that.”

Newman, who will be remembered in town as upbeat, generous, and down-to-earth, often popped into the store to buy supplies to fix common household problems.

“He was a gadget guy in many ways,”" says Izzo. “He’d buy light bulbs or a new screw for a hinge just like an average guy would do.”

Izzo says he last saw Newman about two months ago when he came in alone to buy some masking tape. “He looked really thin,” recalls Izzo, adding that Newman did not discuss his illness. “He was the kind of person who liked his privacy.”

A Beer Man
However, Izzo says he saw one of Newman’s friends less than a week ago, and when he asked how Newman was doing the friend replied, “Good. He’s having a beer and glass of milk because he needs to gain weight.”

About a month ago, Newman treated himself to a cold beer during dinner with Woodward at Pane Vino Restaurant, says owner Marty Levine. The couple sat at their usual corner table, and though Newman appeared frail and had a smaller appetite, he remained his usual cheerful self. “His personality was about the same,” Levine recalls. “He was always upbeat. He didn’t seem dour or depressed.”

As a customer, Levine says Newman was “honorable and courteous. I never felt like he gave off the aura of a big celebrity.”

Bryan Malcarney, chef/owner of Blue Lemon Restaurant, another favorite spot, agrees: “He’d joke a little with the staff. He was never a pompous Hollywood kind of person-neither is Joanne-and that was nice.”

Newman-who often ordered Dover sole-came in to eat about three weeks ago. “We’re really sad to see him go,” says Malcarney.

‘A Loss for the Whole Town’
Newman supported the town’s small business, including Oscar’s Deli, where he had been a loyal customer for the past 40 years, says owner Lee Papageorge.

“It’s a loss for the whole town,” Papageorge explains. “He was very generous, nice to have around, always approachable and very friendly.”

In addition to his humility and his kindness, Ramze Zakka, owner of Acqua restaurant, remembers the actor for another of his best features: “His baby blue eyes were brilliant across the dining room.”

Albert DeAngelis, Acqua’s executive chef, added: “He’s just one of the finest human beings I’ve ever been around.”

Elias Vlandis, owner of Coffee and Donut shop, says the whole community is affected by the loss. “There are a lot of regular people coming in today who are really sad about it,” he says.

But Newman will never be forgotten in Westport.

“We have a picture on the wall here,” says Vlandis. “We’re not taking it down. We’re proud to have it.”

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Paul Newman never much cared for what he once called the “rubbish” of Hollywood, choosing to live in a quiet community on the opposite corner of the U.S. map, staying with his wife of many years and – long after he became bored with acting – pursuing his dual passions of philanthropy and race cars.

And yet despite enormous success in both endeavors and a vile distaste for celebrity, the Oscar-winning actor never lost the aura of a towering Hollywood movie star, turning in roles later in life that carried all the blue-eyed, heartthrob cool of his anti-hero performances in “Hud,” “Cool Hand Luke” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

The 10-time Academy Award nominee died Friday at age 83, surrounded by family and close friends at his Westport farmhouse following a long battle with cancer, publicist Jeff Sanderson said Saturday.

In May, Newman dropped plans to direct a fall production of “Of Mice and Men” at Connecticut’s Westport Country Playhouse, citing unspecified health issues. The following month, a friend disclosed that he was being treated for cancer and Martha Stewart, also a friend, posted photos on her Web site of Newman looking gaunt at a charity luncheon.

But true to his fiercely private nature, Newman remained cagey about his condition, reacting to reports that he had lung cancer with a statement saying only that he was “doing nicely.”

As an actor, Newman got his start in theater and on television during the 1950s, and went on to become a legend held in awe by his peers. He won one Oscar and took home two honorary ones, and had major roles in more than 50 motion pictures, including “Exodus,” “Butch Cassidy,” “The Verdict,” “The Sting” and “Absence of Malice.”

Newman worked with some of the greatest directors of the past half century, from Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston to Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese and the Coen brothers. His co-stars included Elizabeth Taylor, Lauren Bacall, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and, most famously, Robert Redford, his sidekick in “Butch Cassidy” and “The Sting.”

“There is a point where feelings go beyond words,” Redford said Saturday. “I have lost a real friend. My life – and this country – is better for his being in it.”

Newman sometimes teamed with his wife and fellow Oscar winner, Joanne Woodward, with whom he had one of Hollywood’s rare long-term marriages. “I have steak at home, why go out for hamburger?” Newman told Playboy magazine when asked if he was tempted to stray. They wed in 1958, around the same time they both appeared in “The Long Hot Summer.” Newman also directed her in several films, including “Rachel, Rachel” and “The Glass Menagerie.”

“Our father was a rare symbol of selfless humility, the last to acknowledge what he was doing was special,” his daughters said in a written statement. “Intensely private, he quietly succeeded beyond measure in impacting the lives of so many with his generosity.”

With his strong, classically handsome face and piercing blue eyes, Newman was just as likely to play against his looks, becoming a favorite with critics for his convincing portrayals of rebels, tough guys and losers. New York Times critic Caryn James wrote after his turn as the town curmudgeon in 1995’s “Nobody’s Fool” that “you never stop to wonder how a guy as good-looking as Paul Newman ended up this way.”

But neither his heartthrob looks nor his talent could convince Newman to embrace the Hollywood lifestyle. He was reluctant to give interviews and usually refused to sign autographs because he found the majesty of the act offensive.

“Sometimes God makes perfect people,” fellow “Absence of Malice” star Sally Field said, “and Paul Newman was one of them.”

Newman had a soft spot for underdogs in real life, giving tens of millions to charities through his food company and setting up camps for severely ill children. Passionately opposed to the Vietnam War, and in favor of civil rights, he was so famously liberal that he ended up on President Nixon’s “enemies list,” one of the actor’s proudest achievements, he liked to say.

A screen legend by his mid-40s, he waited a long time for his first competitive Oscar, winning in 1987 for “The Color of Money,” a reprise of the role of pool shark “Fast Eddie” Felson, whom Newman portrayed in the 1961 film “The Hustler.”

In that film, Newman delivered a magnetic performance as the smooth-talking, whiskey-chugging pool shark who takes on Minnesota Fats – played by Jackie Gleason – and becomes entangled with a gambler played by George C. Scott. In the sequel – directed by Scorsese – “Fast Eddie” is no longer the high-stakes hustler he once was, but an aging liquor salesman who takes a young pool player (Cruise) under his wing before making a comeback.

He won an honorary Oscar in 1986 “in recognition of his many and memorable compelling screen performances and for his personal integrity and dedication to his craft.” In 1994, he won a third Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, for his charitable work.

His most recent academy nod was a supporting actor nomination for the 2002 film “Road to Perdition.” One of Newman’s nominations was as a producer; the other nine were in acting categories. (Jack Nicholson holds the record among actors for Oscar nominations, with 12; actress Meryl Streep has had 14.)

As he passed his 80th birthday, he remained in demand, winning an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the 2005 HBO drama “Empire Falls” and providing the voice of a crusty 1951 Hudson Hornet in the 2006 Disney-Pixar hit, “Cars.”

But in May 2007, he told ABC’s “Good Morning America” he had given up acting, though he intended to remain active in charity projects. “I’m not able to work anymore as an actor at the level I would want to,” he said. “You start to lose your memory, your confidence, your invention. So that’s pretty much a closed book for me.”

Newman also turned to producing and directing. In 1968, he directed “Rachel, Rachel,” a film about a lonely spinster’s rebirth. The movie received four Oscar nominations, including Newman, for producer of a best motion picture, and Woodward, for best actress. The film earned Newman the best director award from the New York Film Critics Circle.

In the 1970s, Newman, admittedly bored with acting, became fascinated with auto racing, a sport he studied when he starred in the 1969 film, “Winning.” After turning professional in 1977, Newman and his driving team made strong showings in several major races, including fifth place in Daytona in 1977 and second place in the Le Mans in 1979.

“Racing is the best way I know to get away from all the rubbish of Hollywood,” he told People magazine in 1979.

Newman later became a car owner and formed a partnership with Carl Haas, starting Newman/Haas Racing in 1983 and joining the CART series. Hiring Mario Andretti as its first driver, the team was an instant success, and throughout the last 26 years, the team – now known as Newman/Haas/Lanigan and part of the IndyCar Series – has won 107 races and eight series championships.

“Paul and I have been partners for 26 years and I have come to know his passion, humor and, above all, his generosity,” Haas said. “Not just economic generosity, but generosity of spirit. His support of the team’s drivers, crew and the racing industry is legendary. His pure joy at winning a pole position or winning a race exemplified the spirit he brought to his life and to all those that knew him.”

Despite his love of race cars, Newman continued to make movies and continued to pile up Oscar nominations, his looks remarkably intact, his acting becoming more subtle, nothing like the mannered method performances of his early years, when he was sometimes dismissed as a Brando imitator.

Off the screen, Newman was beloved in Westport, the upscale community about an hour north of New York. One of his favorite haunts was Mario’s Place, an eatery that Newman frequented with pals actor James Naughton or writer A.E. Hotchner. He preferred medium-rare hamburgers, with an occasional Heineken.

“He’s such a great human being,” owner Frank DeMace said. “I can’t say enough about him.”

Former patrolman John Anastasia says Newman regularly played the annual softball game between local celebrities and the town police department. Newman played on the police department’s team.

“He was very much into it, very athletic,” Anastasia said. “He didn’t play the part of a celebrity, he played the part of a ballplayer. He was not just there for his good looks.”

In 1982, Newman and Hotchner started a company to market Newman’s original oil-and-vinegar dressing. Newman’s Own, which began as a joke, grew into a multimillion-dollar business selling popcorn, salad dressing, spaghetti sauce and other foods. All of the company’s profits are donated to charities. The company had donated more than $250 million, according to its Web site.

“We will miss our friend Paul Newman, but are lucky ourselves to have known such a remarkable person,” Robert Forrester, vice chairman of Newman’s Own Foundation, said in a statement.

Hotchner said Newman should have “everybody’s admiration.”

“For me it’s the loss of an adventurous friendship over the past 50 years and it’s the loss of a great American citizen,” Hotchner said.

In 1988, Newman founded a camp in northeastern Connecticut for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. He went on to establish similar camps in several other states and in Europe.

He and Woodward bought an 18th century farmhouse in Westport, where they raised their three daughters, Elinor “Nell,” Melissa and Clea.

Newman had two daughters, Susan and Stephanie, and a son, Scott, from a previous marriage to Jacqueline Witte. Scott died in 1978 of an accidental overdose of alcohol and Valium. After his only son’s death, Newman established the Scott Newman Foundation to finance the production of anti-drug films for children.

Newman was born in Cleveland, the second of two boys of Arthur S. Newman, a partner in a sporting goods store, and Theresa Fetzer Newman. Following World War II service in the Navy, he enrolled at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he got a degree in English and was active in student productions.

He later studied at Yale University’s School of Drama, then headed to work in theater and television in New York, where his classmates at the famed Actor’s Studio included Brando, James Dean and Karl Malden.

Newman’s breakthrough was enabled by tragedy: Dean, scheduled to star as the disfigured boxer in a television adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Battler,” died in a car crash in 1955. His role was taken by Newman, then a little-known performer.

Newman started in movies the year before, in “The Silver Chalice,” a costume film he so despised that he took out an ad in Variety to apologize. By 1958, he had won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for the shiftless Ben Quick in “The Long Hot Summer.”

In December 1994, about a month before his 70th birthday, he told Newsweek magazine he had changed little with age.

“I’m not mellower, I’m not less angry, I’m not less self-critical, I’m not less tenacious,” he said. “Maybe the best part is that your liver can’t handle those beers at noon anymore,” he said.

Newman is survived by his wife, five children, two grandsons and his older brother Arthur.

Paul Newman has finished chemotherapy treatment for cancer and has told his family he wants to die at home.

The Oscar-winning star was pictured being pushed from a New York cancer hospital in a wheelchair looking thin and frail.

It was reported in America that Newman, 83, had only weeks to live and had returned home to his wife Joanne Woodward.

‘Paul didn’t want to die in the hospital,’ a source said. ‘Joanne and his daughters are beside themselves with grief.’

The source, described as a ‘close family friend’ said that the star – who co-owns a motor racing team and has his own salad dressing brand – had spent the past few weeks getting his affairs in order.

It was claimed that some of Newman’s actions had caused tension among of his children.

‘He gave a prized car – a Ferrari with his racing number 82 on it – to a long-time pal,’ the friend said. ‘The sudden move angered his children. It’s especially hard for them to come to grips with what’s going on.

‘The word they’ve been given is that he has only a few weeks to live.’

Newman married Miss Woodward in 1958 and the couple have three daughters.

It was reported last month that he had been readying their oldest child, Nell, to take over his Newman’s Own salad dressings company, the profits of which are given to a charitable foundation.

He also has two daughters from his first marriage to Jackie Witte.

Newman has so far declined to comment on his condition, apart from saying he is ‘doing nicely’.

Rumours about his health surfaced in January. Three months ago, he withdrew from directing a production of Of Mice and Men in his home town of Westport, Connecticut.

He was pictured leaving the Weill Cornell Medical Centre in New York, which specialises in cancer treatment, in a wheelchair on July 31.

He retired from acting in 2006 after a 50-year career that included Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Sting (1971), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963) and Cool Hand Luke (1967).

Newman was nominated for ten Oscars, winning best actor for his role in The Color of Money in 1986.

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Paul Newman, the legendary actor and philanthropist, is battling cancer, his longtime neighbor and business partner said Wednesday. Newman, 83, has recently appeared gaunt in photos, and dropped plans to direct a play in his Connecticut hometown.

Writer A.E. Hotchner, who partnered with Newman to start Newman’s Own salad dressing company in the 1980s, said the actor told him about the disease about 18 months ago. He did not specify what kind of cancer, but said Newman is in active treatment.

“I know that it’s a form of cancer,” Hotchner told The Associated Press. “It’s a form of cancer and he’s dealing with it.”

Newman issued a statement late Tuesday that he’s “doing nicely” but didn’t specifically address questions about cancer. A call was placed to his spokesman Wednesday seeking comment.

The Oscar winner appeared to have lost weight when he was photographed during practice for the Indianapolis 500 auto race last month. Martha Stewart, in an entry dated June 6, posted a photo on her blog of herself with the actor, who looked thin, at a luncheon to benefit the Hole in the Wall Gang camps for critically ill children. (The Hole in the Wall Gang was led by Newman’s affable outlaw character, Butch, in the 1969 film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”)

Newman won an Oscar for his leading role in 1986’s “The Color of Money.” His screen credits also include “Hud,” “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Verdict” and “Road to Perdition.”

Hotchner said Newman had an operation a few years ago. “It was certainly somewhere in the area of the lung,” he said.

“He’s battling,” Hotchner said. “He’s doing all the right stuff. Paul is a fighter. He seems to be going through a good period right now.”

Asked about his prognosis, Hotchner said, “Everybody is hopeful. That’s all we know.”

In 1982, Hotchner and Newman started a company to market Newman’s original oil-and-vinegar dressing. Newman’s Own, which began as a joke, grew into a multimillion-dollar business selling popcorn, salad dressing, spaghetti sauce and other foods. All the company’s profits are donated to charities. By 2007, the company had donated more than $200 million, according to its Web site.

Last month, officials at Connecticut’s Westport Country Playhouse cited unspecified health issues when they announced that Newman would not direct “Of Mice and Men” this fall.

Newman lives in Westport with his wife, Joanne Woodward.

Two friends said Tuesday that Newman appeared to be doing well.

“I think he’s feeling quite well,” said actor James Naughton, who spoke to Newman on Monday night. “As far as I can tell he’s doing very well.”

Newman had an infection over the winter, but seems to have that under control, Naughton said. He was lively at this month’s Hole in the Wall Gang camp fundraiser, he said.

Michael Brockman, Newman’s racing team partner, said Newman told him recently that he wants to get back into his race car for a test run and possibly another competition. His last race was last fall, he said.

“I think he’s doing better than he was,” Brockman said, noting that Newman had regained most of the weight he had lost.

“I think he looks great,” said Brockman, who saw Newman last weekend. “I wish I looked that good.”

Brockman called Newman “one of the best guys I ever met.”

“He’s just a regular guy,” Brockman said. “He’s humble.”

Movie star Paul Newman has quietly turned over the entire value of his ownership in Newman’s Own — the company that makes salad dressing and cookies — to charity.

Completed over a two-year period in 2005 and 2006, the amount of his donations to Newman’s Own Foundation Inc. comes to an astounding $120 million.

This is unprecedented for any movie star or anyone from what we call Hollywood. Of course Newman and actress wife Joanne Woodward have never been Hollywood types. They’ve lived their lives quietly in Westport, Conn., for the last 50 years. (They were married in January 1958. And people said it wouldn’t last!)

This column learned about this extraordinary gift as news started coming out recently about Newman’s battle with lung cancer. This is not news to my readers. I told you several months ago that Newman — who has five grown daughters — was seeing an oncologist, that he’d been in and out of Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital on many visits from Westport. Like everything else, the Newmans tried to keep Paul’s illness a private matter.

But a tip-off that he was maybe not doing so well came in late May. Newman announced that he would not direct a production of “Our Town” later this summer at the Westport Country Playhouse, where Woodward is the artistic director.

News of his illness seems to have been exacerbated by none other than neighbor Martha Stewart. She recently published pictures of Paul on her Web site from a party she hosted. He looks gaunt but nevertheless smiling his trademark smile. Nothing will set him back. This racecar driver and adventurer should not be written off as “dying.”

“He’s a fighter,” one of his close friends told me Tuesday morning. “And he’s going to keep fighting.”

In the meantime, I also told you last August that in Botswana, the Newman name is known not for being a movie star. It’s known for his famous Hole in the Wall Gang camps. The camps go to Africa every summer to run programs for impoverished and ill children. It’s the same program they run in dozens of similar camps all over the United States.

The Hole in the Wall camps are just a few of the places the hundreds of millions of dollars have gone that Newman has raised since he got the idea to bottle salad dressing for charity.

According to Newman’s Own federal tax filing for 2006, the actor personally gave away $8,746,500 to a variety of groups that support children, hurricane relief in the Gulf Coast, education and the arts.

Some of Newman’s recipients are well-known: He gave Rosie O’Donnell’s children’s program $5,000 and even donated $25,000 to his pal Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. But most of them are for the kinds of programs that we never hear about, the kind that simply keep people alive.

But don’t think that Newman — who received his Kennedy Center honor in 1992 and deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom — did this because he suddenly thought he was dying. When he set up the new foundation, he hadn’t yet been diagnosed with lung cancer. It was just in honor of his 80th birthday, and an acknowledgment that he wanted to make sure his charities would continue receiving his largesse.

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WE reported that Paul Newman was absent from his Hole in the Wall Gang charity party on Monday night because, according to his rep, “he’s been having trouble with his back.” Newman has quipped he’s being “treated for athlete’s foot and hair loss.” But sadly, the legendary star’s health problems might be more serious. For the past seven months he’s been seeing an Upper East Side oncologist whose confidentiality we are protecting. “He’s been there a lot, he’s even worked out in the waiting room, doing squat thrusts. Last time, he was in there he had a long beard,” said our spy. “Joanne Woodward is there waiting for him and being very sweet with the assistants.”

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