BLUE EYED BOY by Dennis Doph

beyond beyond . 68

When first I encountered the blue eyed boy I was hardly more
than an impressionable child. I'd seen handsome men before
Never repeat never had I seen a man onscreen who could come up
to this paragon of beauty laboring opposite Virginia Mayo while she
pretended to be Princess of Something.

The blue eyed boy had gravitas and a chiseled face and the body
from hell. The picture (Silver Chalice) sank without a trace but
two years later Amazingly I saw the same man impersonating
Rocky Graziano in a low budget Metro picture Somebody Up There
Likes Me There is no particular reason to remember Somebody
Up There Likes Me.

Other than the blue eyed boy who displayed for the first time
a pithy interior quality (along with the body from hell) which
indicated he was one of those .... those unusual theater devils
who put brain before clout.

What really tied the can to Paul was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Here finally he was able to repeat a stage role written for him
by America's most famous publicly homosexual playwright.
We watched him reel through it, pushing voluptuous Elizabeth
Taylor away with his crutch, sobbing and flailing at Burl Ives
in the basement of that foul old antebellum mansion, embodying
the twisted soul of Brick Pollett, beloved of "Skipper" -- broiling.

We knew Brando and Clift had been joined by a third sensational
film presence -- Paul Newman would be heard from, and heard from,
and heard from. He was blasting his own individual way through the
cieling of the film pantheon. Great roles fell to him like plums.

He returned to the stage and Elia Kazan to create another flipped-out
Tennessee Williams antihero -- Chance Wayne in Sweet Bird of Youth.
Here at last was the core of the blue eyed boy -- a down-and-out
hustler, pandering his own perfect body to the debased lust of a has-been
movie star (Geraldine Page as Alexandra del Lago; words cannot convey
the impact).

Paul was on his way to glory. Marrying Joanne Woodward , another
Actor's Studio drama icon, didn't hurt. They clung together in picture
after picture, some bad (Rally 'Round the Flag), some very good (Long,
Hot Summer). What they put onscreen was the core of their simmering
heterosexuality -- amusing, hip, and cooked to the core.

The Sixties proved a prize for the blue eyed boy as he scored one valuable
difficult role after another: Hud, the Hustler, Harper, Cool Hand Luke,
Butch Cassidy. He WAS the Pantheon. Brando had fallen into disarray
and fat. Clift was dead.

The blue eyed boy became for besotted American men and women
what no one had yet attempted: a devastatingly handsome, intellectually
transparent totally involving antihero who could bring audiences to their
knees. When he and Bob Redford sailed off the top of the cliff at the end
of Butch Cassidy, we suspected the worst. And prayed for it.

The Seventies tarnished his impreturbable escutcheon as Newman, like
so many, fell victim to the super-action movie (Towering Inferno) the
romantic epic (the Sting), and one meritorious but commercially unsuccessful
low-budget independent movie after another. He was a whole new game plan.

Just when we thought the blue eyed boy's professional luck had run out, he
redeemed himself throughout the 80s with one jaw-dropping, intellectually
coherent success after another: Fort Apache, the Bronx; Absence of Malice;
the Verdict; Mr and Mrs Bridge with Joanne. And directed his own wonderful
adaptation of Glass Menagerie (yes, Tenn!) once again starring Joanne.

He finally received his only competitive Oscar for the Color of Money which
everyone agreed, was a reward for all which had gone before. His final glorious
and frightening contribution was Road to Perdition, in which he sent Tom Hanks
to his death with a killer's smile.

Last fall we saw him on the Showtime presentation of "The Iconoclasts" leading
Redford through the bosky dells of his and Joanne's Connecticut getaway, and her
treasured theater. Newman was twelve years older than Redford, and looked
twelve years younger.

Paul Newman was the very last intelligent, significant movie star. There is no one
to replace him. All over the world men and women are re-living their favorite wet
dream: the blue eyed boy who said Take me to all of us.