When it comes to absolute movie stars, for me, I’m a big Newman guy. When it came however to looking at the entirety of Newman’s work, the task seemed daunting and so instead I thought I’d focus on one my personally favourite director and actor relationships of all time, that of Paul Newman and George Roy Hill and the trilogy of sometimes genre subverting and often genre perfecting feature films they made across the a period of just under a decade starting in 1969 with the classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

(Newman, Roy Hill and Redford)  Credit

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Dir. George Roy Hill, 1969)

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The essayist, author and screenwriter, William Goldman, is one of my great idols and there is no greater distillation of his talent than his Oscar winning screenplay for the 1969 western classic, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The movie is timeless and the two lead performances are still the finest distillation of on-screen charisma available. The Newman love-fest will never end when you’re dealing with such classics like these. Newman and Redford are the greatest on-screen duo outside of the world of romance, there’s just no argument for me. But in regards to romance, Katherine Ross, in the ambiguous three ring circus of the three leads is similarly excellent. But Goldman’s words, through Roy Hill and Conrad Hall’s camera, gives us the greatest western ever put to film, or at least my favourite, and certainly the most knowing (whilst still offering us a fine true-blue western all the same). The real Butch Cassidy had enough charm to win over a judge into letting him off for multiple bank robberies, as long as he didn’t commit anymore locally – Newman’s wit, subtlety and smile alone makes the semi-ridiculousness of Cassidy’s bravado completely plausible and not the least bit unrealistic. There’s not many actors that could take such a mythic character and put him upon the screen and completely encapsulate all of the aura of such a person, with the ease that Newman does here. One could comment that despite it only being 13 years since his critically acclaimed film breakout in 1956’s Somebody Up There Likes Me, that Newman was accepting the ‘older’ role, akin to the fear of many actresses of the time when it came to playing ‘mothers’. But Newman has no shame about it and instead takes the great pleasure of putting Redford under his shoulder and making an immensely believable friendship on screen, and off. The acceptance of death in the final scene, despite the dialogue telling us much different, gives Newman his peak moment in the film and is the one that people usually jump to talk about. However I feel no greater Goosebumps whilst watching than when Cassidy admits that he’s too old to farm. It’s these sort of moments that would colour Newman’s middle career and lead to some of his best work, but you can still see the start of it here.

The Sting (Dir. George Roy Hill, 1973)

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Following Butch, it seemed that reuniting the powerhouse coupling of Newman and Redford would be a sure fire hit to more success, that sure-fire hit assumption was certainly correct and came in the form of The Sting. A film that not only was a huge critical and commercial hit but also bested Butch in one particular way, The Sting won Best Picture and got Roy Hill his sole Best Director Oscar too. Now personally this has always felt like Oscar politics to me, with the Academy rewarding the lesser film in order to right the wrong of failing to award the rightful winner. As always of course with the Oscars all of these terms mean nothing and almost entirely superfluous and do nothing for the films legacy if the film itself isn't of an already timeless quality - The Sting does have that timeless quality in spades, it just comes down to personal choice for which of the two you prefer. As aforementioned, I personally prefer Butch. For me with the western outing Roy Hill's direction is more experimental and takes more chances, plus the fact you're dealing with one of the richest and most dynamic comedy-drama scripts of all time, which does of course help. Here Roy Hill's direction is clearly taking a backseat to tell and show the complexities of David Ward's screenplay as simply and effectively as possible, instead adding its own panish to punctuate humour with action as was the case with Butch. Ward's screenplay is the perfect heist formula and has long since been seen as painfully cliched due to the simple fact that it does contain every heist film trick in the book. Of course one has to remove themselves from the modern film landscape to acknowledge that The Sting itself created half of these cliches, or itself perfected them in the perfect comedically infused tone and genre that so many heist and con movies follow in today. Newman and Redford are of course the perfect couple to bring the daring and devilishly charismatic couple of cons leading this whole affair to its ultimate twist filled conclusion. With Robert Shaw as the deeply anger led manically compulsive foil. It's a sublime outing at the movies that relishes in construction and delivery of each of its dastardly delivered twists and turns. The Sting may be my personal least favourite of these three films, but if your least favourite is one of the most original and entertaining Best Picture winners of all time - then it's fair to say that whatever combination Newman and Roy Hill had, was a pretty good thing they had going. 

Slapshot (Dir. George Roy Hill, 1977)

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Often commented on by Newman as the most fun film he ever made and his own personal favourite, Slapshot is one of the finest sports comedies of all time and places Newman in a part that would shape a rather different period for him in the upcoming 80’s, that of the man past his prime. Now Slapshot isn’t exactly Verdict level over the hill, but we begin to see the glimpses of this sort of Newman figure in this film and it’s an exciting departure from the ultimate suaveness and ruggedness that defined him until this point, and in certain roles still after. All three of Newman and Roy Hill’s collaborations combine a fine tone of dry witty comedy with genre sensibilities, previously the western and the heist film (in some fashion), now the sports flick. Written by Nancy Dowd, one of the finest unsung heroes of the 70’s film writing, despite winning an Oscar for her screenplay for Hal Ashby’s sensational Coming Home, Dowd seems to have slunk away in the annals of film history as a bit of an unknown figure. However here with her insanely vulgar, yet heartfelt at times, and often deeply lonesome tale of a group of hockey players awaiting news on whether or not their team will be bought, sold or liquefied sending them out into the world not unlike the recently severance paid mill workers of the town. Newman as Reggie is a philanderer, a cheat and a worryingly insensitive hockey player who has no issue employing the sort of goonery that is both frowned upon and critical to hockey play in the contemporary period depicted. But of course, it’s Newman and his silver tongue makes all dialogue, no matter how vulgar or offensive become charming and deliberate in delivery, no matter how off the cuff or frequently inarticulate it may be. The film is rather loose in plotting and narrative, however has a singular arc of discovering who the owner of the club is and what state the team will end up in, this arc reaches a truly perfect climax in one of the best scenes in Newman’s career and a down-right perfect moment of schadenfreude for Newman’s Reggie. The other facets of the film, it’s stellar ensemble and it’s rapturously funny sports sequences all come together to make Doyd’s screenplay sing like a dream. It really can’t be underestimated just how vulgar this script was seen at the time the film first came out, and it’s nature is still vulgar in certain new ways to viewers now I would have no doubt. However Doyd and Roy Hill, and Newman even, aren’t presenting heroes in their sports film, there is no grand winning slapshot, nor is there any lesson learned (when a lesson is attempted the team are instead thwarted by their previous reputation to return to their old ways in a delightfully funny twist of fate). Instead we are presented with a true-blue gang of vulgar and coarse misfits as they struggle to make respectable a game that strives in a world of violence in its lower echelons.

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When you look at the career of Newman as a whole, it’s a startling endeavour. To put it plainly he truly was a blue eyed wonder. I leave you with some final words from Newman himself.

“I had no natural gift at anything – not an athlete, not an actor, not a writer, not a director, a painter of garden porches – not anything. So I’ve worked really hard, because nothing ever came easily to me”. 

The true and sincere modesty is frightening in the face of a career of such pure and undiluted excellence.

-        -  Thomas Carruthers