Don’t Forget to Thank Joanne Woodward
The upcoming release of HBO’s The Last Movie Stars inspires reflection on two American icons — but they deserve shared credit.
Viewers young and old of the trailer for The Last Movie Stars may find themselves doing so through misty eyes.
The upcoming six-part docu-series by CNN Films, which premieres on HBO Max July 21st, sifts through the legendary romance of movie stars Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward: two American icons who fell in love…and stayed there.
The hype for the series inspires reflection on the marriage of Newman and Woodward, as well as the careers of two acting icons — there are too many awards to count among them both. What truly cemented the movie-star couple’s legacy was their philanthropic work with Newman’s Own organic foods, the 100%-for-charity nonprofit that has funded programs for physically and mentally ill children in over 50 countries.
There will be a lot of retrospectives in the coming weeks about Newman — who died in 2008 at the age of 83 — as the blue-eyed boy-next-door leading man, Civil Rights Advocate, and charitable hero, but it is imperative that the public give credit where it is due to Woodward, who is alive at 92 but enduring the final blows of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Born in rural Georgia, Joanne Woodward was the movie star *before* Paul Newman. In 1958, she won the Oscar for Best Actress for The Three Faces of Eve, a harrowing tale of a woman battling multiple-personality disorder (one of the earliest films to thoroughly depict such a subject). One year later, she married Newman. However, the two first met six years earlier in 1953, where they acted together in a play on Broadway.
In a scene that plays out almost like an old Hollywood movie, Woodward, an understudy, entered her then-agent’s air-conditioned office and promptly stumbled upon her future husband. Her first impression of Newman was far from overwhelming, in fact it was dismissive. Woodward, a strong, progressive Liberal who worked her way out of the digressive south, found him to be a one-dimensional, conservative good-old-boy with twinkly eyes…or, as she put it, “disgusting”.
This would all change when the two were tasked to play lovers in The Long, Hot Summer (1958). Woodward helped Newman uncover empathetic values and ideals perhaps curmudgeon within him; a byproduct of being a hunky male actor in Hollywood. Such treasures, when discovered, build precious bridges between people: and that’s exactly what happened. They were wed on January 29, 1958.
“He’s very good looking and very sexy and all of those things, but all of that goes out the window and what is finally left is, if you can make somebody laugh… And he sure does keep me laughing.” — Joanne Woodward
Woodward didn’t just walk away from the year 1958 with stardom, an Academy Award, and a husband. She was gifted a project within all three of those things, with one underlying question: How can one use fame to share those aforementioned empathetic treasures in a bigger way?
The flood of movies came, not to mention countless magazine covers, TV interviews, and children, but Woodward was never fully comfortable. This wasn’t due to her immediate world, but the one around her. Staying consistent to her beliefs, Newman and Woodward would march with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963’s March on Washington, campaigning for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act (both of which came to pass). She and Newman also campaigned for Gore Vidal’s unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives, and publicly opposed the Vietnam War. Most of the credit for this advocacy is given to Newman (he’s in most of the historic photos of said events), but in 2017 it was revealed Woodward — not Newman — scared Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon so much that they added her to the National Security Agency’s “Watch List” for “Questionable Practices”, and had evidently tracked her every move. It isn’t a coincidence that her film roles dwindled.
Woodward “retired” from acting in 1978 (she made several appearances in film and TV afterwards, but not as the star that she once was).
What is rightfully credited to her husband is the Newman’s Own brand, which Paul established in 1982. What began as a small business is now engrained in American Society — Newman’s Own products are sold at every major retailer and half a billion dollars have been raised for children’s funds, schools, summer camps, homes for Military Veterans, hospitals, and clean water organizations.
This is not to discredit the work that Paul Newman accomplished in his titanic life, but far too often when we speak of “the Newmans”, we immediately think of two entities: Paul, and Paul & Joanne. The truth is, while there was a marriage that defied the psychotic celebrity odds by living and loving together for 50 years, there were no “Newmans”. There was Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, two individuals from different worlds that were brought together to learn from each other about themselves and the world. Both were students, both were teachers.
When asked in a 1984 interview with the Washington Post what Woodward wanted herself to be seen as (actress, advocate, etc.), she responded, with her iconic deep-southern draw, “a concerned citizen”.
What have we learned from American history that trumps all other lessons? The biggest movements toward justice are made as a result of one concerned citizen. People like Joanne Woodward embody that principle and work through others (and vice versa). Without her, we wouldn’t have the Paul Newman, nor the “Paul Newman+Joanne Woodward” union, that we have today.
When you watch the upcoming series or read articles about their marriage, view their movies for the first or umpteenth time, or scroll through a Twitter thread about how hot or awesome Paul Newman was, don’t forget to thank Joanne.
Don’t forget to give her credit while we still share soil with her, in this fledgling amount of time before the Newmans — I mean, Newman and Woodward — are finally together again.
