Once labeled a Brando or a James Dean imitator the 76-year-old Paul Leonard Newman has matured into a suave debonair man whose confidence still lies behind those baby blue eyes.
Born September 26, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, to parents (Arthur and Theresa) with mixed German and Hungarian heritage. Paul was the second and youngest child to a father who ran a lucrative sporting goods business.
Paul's first stage appearance was at the age of seven as a jester in the school play Robin Hood. He was raised in the swanky Shaker Heights suburb and graduated high school and even sold door-to-door as a salesman for Collier's Encyclopedias before enlisting in the Naval Air Corps.
Newman had enrolled in Ohio University and found the frat college life and was expelled for denting the college president's car with a beer keg. The summer of 1943 he was called to the Navy and was denied pilot training due to the fact that he was colorblind. Newman was reassigned as a radio operator aboard torpedo bombers in the South Pacific (WWII) for the next three years.
After his service term in 1946 he enrolled in Ohio's Kenyon College as an English major and played on the football team. During his junior year at Kenyon he landed in jail for one night during a bar fight and was dismissed from the football team for his conduct.
With football no longer a past time option he turned to acting and finished his B.A. from Kenyon in 1949 and found work acting in summer stock stage performances which led to a job with the Woodstock Players Company in Chicago.
In 1949 he met and married Jackie Witte his first wife. His career detoured from acting in 1950 when his father died and his mother needed help running the family sporting goods business. Newman returned and held the business together until the store was sold a year later.
Newman moved with his wife and new son Scott (born in Ohio) to New Haven, CT where he enrolled in Yale University's graduate program of acting. There Newman and his wife had two daughters (Susan and Stephanie), but New York called and Paul left Yale for Broadway.
In New York he landed some television parts and found his way to Broadway in the production of Picnic. This play spotlighted him to be discovered for his first film role inThe Silver Chalice a biblical epic that was not a hit. In time, he returned to television and appeared in an Ernest Hemingway short story The Battler. The role had been slated for James Dean but due to his sudden death Newman was cast for the lead role.
Born September 26, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, to parents (Arthur and Theresa) with mixed German and Hungarian heritage. Paul was the second and youngest child to a father who ran a lucrative sporting goods business.
Paul's first stage appearance was at the age of seven as a jester in the school play Robin Hood. He was raised in the swanky Shaker Heights suburb and graduated high school and even sold door-to-door as a salesman for Collier's Encyclopedias before enlisting in the Naval Air Corps.
After his service term in 1946 he enrolled in Ohio's Kenyon College as an English major and played on the football team. During his junior year at Kenyon he landed in jail for one night during a bar fight and was dismissed from the football team for his conduct.
With football no longer a past time option he turned to acting and finished his B.A. from Kenyon in 1949 and found work acting in summer stock stage performances which led to a job with the Woodstock Players Company in Chicago.
In 1949 he met and married Jackie Witte his first wife. His career detoured from acting in 1950 when his father died and his mother needed help running the family sporting goods business. Newman returned and held the business together until the store was sold a year later.
Newman moved with his wife and new son Scott (born in Ohio) to New Haven, CT where he enrolled in Yale University's graduate program of acting. There Newman and his wife had two daughters (Susan and Stephanie), but New York called and Paul left Yale for Broadway.
In New York he landed some television parts and found his way to Broadway in the production of Picnic. This play spotlighted him to be discovered for his first film role inThe Silver Chalice a biblical epic that was not a hit. In time, he returned to television and appeared in an Ernest Hemingway short story The Battler. The role had been slated for James Dean but due to his sudden death Newman was cast for the lead role.
