In Tribute: 'Paul Newman Remembered'

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (0)

IT MAY SOUND strange to longtime film fans, but when he died last fall, there was already a generation unfamiliar with Paul Newman except as a face on salad dressing. AFI Silver is running "Paul Newman Remembered" through April 30 to refresh everyone's memory.

Newman made his mark as an amoral rogue getting by on his looks in the Southern gothic "The Long Hot Summer." It's iconic young Newman: With a slight smile, he informs Joanne Woodward that "the world belongs to the meat eaters, Miss Clara, and if you have to take it raw, take it raw." No failure to communicate there.

By 1973's "The Sting" (April 24-56), Newman's consummate con man was being played for laughs, and in "Slap Shot" (April 24, 25, 27, 28, 30), you knew his lying, cheating coach would eventually be redeemed. If you really want Newman at his best (i.e. worst) in a disturbingly timely film, don't miss "Hud" (Fri.-Sun., April 14 & 15).

As the title character, Newman's cynical Texas cattleman drives a pink Caddy, publicly cavorts with the neighbor's wife and reclines in his housekeeper Patricia Neal's bed with a flower in hand and cigarette dangling. When his father's cows come down with hoof-and-mouth disease, Hud suggests selling the toxic assets anyway because "epidemics are big business!"

As Hud's greed alienates friends and family, Dad smacks him down: "You live just for yourself, and that makes you not fit to live with," and admonishes his Hud-worshiping grandson: "Little by little, the look of the country changes because of the men we admire."

» AFI Silver, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring; through April 30, $10; 301-495-6700. (Silver Spring)

Written by Express contributor Paul Stelter
Photo courtesy Universal Pictures