Graceful tribute to one-of-a-kind man Paul Newman

Late in his career, the actor Paul Newman prepared a boilerplate statement to go out to anyone wishing to write about him, invite him to an event, or honor him in any way:

On January 26, 1995, which was my 70th birthday, Joanne [Woodward, his wife] and I resolved not to accept any more honors. Not, you understand, out of arrogance, just a mellow belief that we had been honored in gracious sufficiency and that more would constitute excess. As the daughter says in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," "Momma, am I pretty?" Momma replies, "You're pretty enough for all normal purposes." Joanne and I have been fortunate to be honored enough for all normal purposes.

It's a statement worth quoting in its entirety, as it says so much about the man: the regular-guy modesty combined with eloquence (the phrase "in gracious sufficiency" is lovely); the reference to Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," a play in which Newman played the Stage Manager both early in his career (1949) and late (2003); the wit; the gentle finality — you can almost see the blue eyes twinkling.

Though most of us never met Newman other than on a screen or a salad-dressing label, we knew him as a good guy who might have been fun to hang out with. His death last September from cancer at age 84 shook us up, as if we'd lost a friend.

Shawn Levy, the film critic for The Oregonian, received this statement when attempting to contact Newman for a proposed biography in 2005. As he writes in the book's epilogue, he tried a few more times but gave up upon hearing that Newman was ill, wishing to respect his privacy.

So his new book "Paul Newman: A Life" (Harmony Books, $29.99) is shaped from others' impressions of the actor (gathered from published interviews), personal reminiscences (though not from the Newman family) and close watching of the films.

The result is a biography that at times struggles with pacing (the classic biographer problem: a tendency toward a monotonous and-then-he-did-this chronology), but ultimately is a graceful tribute to a one-of-a-kind man. Newman, writes Levy in an introduction, embodied certain characteristics of the American male: "active and roguish and earnest and sly and determined and vulnerable and brave and humble and reliable and compassionate and fair."

Blessed with dazzling good looks and unexpected talent, the world was "his for the claiming — and he claimed only the bit that he felt was reasonably due him, and he gave back more, by far, than he ever took."

The man depicted in these pages is no saint: Levy writes candidly of an affair that rocked Newman's long marriage to Woodward in the early '70s, and of how Newman's fame affected his relationship with his six children (one of whom, his only son Scott, died of an accidental drug and alcohol overdose in 1978).

But the overall portrait that emerges is admiring and affectionate. Newman's good deeds extended far beyond the pleasures of watching his films: His Newman's Own food business, launched in 1982 with salad dressing, raised more than $400 million for children's charities, and continues to thrive. (Newman had long been particular about his salads: In an anecdote included in the book, Woodward remembered his restaurant habit of taking already oiled salads to the men's room to wash off and re-dress properly at the table.)

Newman, who had never endorsed a product before, was horrified when marketers told him that his face needed to be on the label, but good-naturedly agreed, thinking the whole thing was likely to disappear. Hardly.

And the book provides an opportunity for a stroll through Newman's iconic film roles: the youthful swagger of "The Hustler" and "Hud"; the recklessness of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"; the teasing fun of "The Sting"; the hard-won wisdom of "The Verdict" and "Nobody's Fool"; the icy finality of "Road to Perdition" — to name just a few.

Reading the book should inspire many living-room Newman film festivals. It would be fascinating to watch a selection of his movies in chronological order, to see him becoming the character actor he wanted to be.

Not content to be just (just!) a movie star, entrepreneur, philanthropist, husband and father, Newman was also a director (beginning with directing his wife in "Rachel, Rachel" in 1968), a race-car driver, an activist, and a world-class practical joker. During the shooting of Robert Altman's "Buffalo Bill and the Indians," Levy writes that Newman filled Altman's trailer with several hundred live chickens, deep-fried the director's beloved calfskin gloves, and hired a helicopter to drop invitations to a party at Altman's rented home.

His was a long and rich life of artistic fulfillment and prosperity, touched by tragedy yet leaving much good work and goodwill behind. It seems right that "Our Town" was a touchstone for him, gracefully bookending his career. The plain-spoken final words of the Stage Manager, as darkness falls on Grover's Corners, seem an appropriate farewell to him: "You get a good rest, too. Good night."

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com