Paul Newman gives $120M fortune to charity

I did not know Paul Newman had lung cancer.

I believe when Paul started his salad dressing business the intent from the beginning with to give it all to charity.

Ailing Paul Newman Turns Over $120M to Charity
Tuesday, June 10, 2008

By Roger Friedman
AP

Movie star Paul Newman has quietly turned over the entire value of his ownership in Newman’s Own, the company that makes salad dressing and cookies, to charity.

Completed over a two-year period in 2005 and 2006, the amount of his donations to Newman’s Own Foundation Inc. comes to an astounding $120 million.

This is unprecedented for any movie star or anyone from what we call Hollywood. Of course Newman and actress wife Joanne Woodward have never been Hollywood types. They’ve lived their lives quietly in Westport, Conn., for the last 50 years. (They were married in January 1958. And people said it wouldn’t last!)

This column learned about this extraordinary gift as news started coming out recently about Newman’s battle with lung cancer. This is not news to my readers. I told you several months ago that Newman — who has five grown daughters — was seeing an oncologist, that he’d been in and out of Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital on many visits from Westport. Like everything else, the Newmans tried to keep Paul’s illness a private matter.

But a tip-off that he was maybe not doing so well came in late May. Newman announced that he would not direct a production of “Our Town” later this summer at the Westport Country Playhouse, where Woodward is the artistic director.

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Billy Preston Tribute News of his illness seems to have been exacerbated by none other than neighbor Martha Stewart. She recently published pictures of Paul on her Web site from a party she hosted. He looks gaunt but nevertheless smiling his trademark smile. Nothing will set him back. This racecar driver and adventurer should not be written off as “dying.”

“He’s a fighter,” one of his close friends told me Tuesday morning. “And he’s going to keep fighting.”

In the meantime, I also told you last August that in Botswana, the Newman name is known not for being a movie star. It’s known for his famous Hole in the Wall Gang camps. The camps go to Africa every summer to run programs for impoverished and ill children. It’s the same program they run in dozens of similar camps all over the United States.

The Hole in the Wall camps are just a few of the places the hundreds of millions of dollars have gone that Newman has raised since he got the idea to bottle salad dressing for charity.

According to Newman’s Own federal tax filing for 2006, the actor personally gave away $8,746,500 to a variety of groups that support children, hurricane relief in the Gulf Coast, education and the arts.

Some of Newman’s recipients are well-known: He gave Rosie O’Donnell’s children's program $5,000 and even donated $25,000 to his pal Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. But most of them are for the kinds of programs that we never hear about, the kind that simply keep people alive.

But don’t think that Newman — who received his Kennedy Center honor in 1992 and deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom — did this because he suddenly thought he was dying. When he set up the new foundation, he hadn’t yet been diagnosed with lung cancer. It was just in honor of his 80th birthday, and an acknowledgment that he wanted to make sure his charities would continue receiving his largesse.

I wonder who Bill Gates will leaves his billions too.

I just last month heard that Newman was ill, but didn't realize he is THIS sick.

Apparently he was due to to a play in some small town theater and cancelled out. It was leaked the cancellation was due to health issues.

I hope he pulls through... he's probably my favorite all-time actor.

S.C, your absolutely right. Paul Newman is an excellent actor, and when the day comes we'll miss him.

Love Road to Perdition!

I just heard this today too. What a shame. I have always liked Paul Newman. I haven't seen most of his later films (not even sure when his last film was to be honest), but absolutely loved much of his work.


I believe in faith & hope. You never know, perhaps he'll surprise everyone.


TIS

TIS, You MUST check out "Nobody's Fool". He was great in it, and it's a truly charming movie (Jessica Tandy's last).

Newman, from what I've read of the man, always seemed to have been a sincere guy, and in a rare-breed in Hollywood....not full of bullshit.

If anything, a turning-point movie that nobody ever talks about is TORN CURTAIN, and its not important because of the flick (its rather forgettable)....but because its when you had director Alfred Hitchcock of "Old Hollywood" having to deal with Newman, one of the big emerging screen actors of the "method" school of acting.

Unlike say Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant, Newman questioned Hitch on his characterization, his motivation, and so on.

"I think Hitch and I could have really hit it off, but the script kept getting in the way." - Paul Newman

I once had the good fortune to meet him. He and wife, Joanne Woodward, were monthly regulars at a bar/restuarant which I went to every night after work.

One night, after drinking for a few hours, I stumbled my way to the Men's room and literally bumped into him as he was heading to the john, too. I said, "Excuse me", to which he replied, "Oh no, it was my fault". I responded, "Well, in that case don't let it happen again", and he laughed and said "OK".

Aside from being thrilled to have actually talked to him I was really taken with his genuine, down-to-earth manner. Very unusual for someone of his stature.

SC,

Looking at it from a woman's perspective (if that's possible).......were his baby blues to die for or what??????

Even as he got older, his eyes still were cool.



TIS

This happened about ten years ago, and I was struck by two things. The blue eyes were definitely BLUE and his "swagger" was still very evident. He was already quite gray at the time but still a good looking man.

Joanne Woodward has aged quite well, too.

Paul Newman Comments on Cancer Rumors
By Stephen M. Silverman

Originally posted Wednesday June 11, 2008 08:30 AM EDT
Paul Newman has responded obliquely to a number of published reports that say he is gravely ill with cancer.

The 83-year-old Oscar winner's spokesman in Los Angeles, Jeff Sanderson, told Reuters and other media outlets on Tuesday: "Newman says he's doing nicely."

Without elaborating, Sanderson added: "He says he's doing nicely, and this is the statement I wanted to share with you, and that's what I have. I spoke to his office [in Connecticut]. This is the statement that came directly from him."

According to numerous but unconfirmed media accounts, the screen hero is undergoing outpatient treatment for lung cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.

A spokeswoman for the medical facility told Reuters she had no information about Newman's being a patient there.

Possibly helping to stir the current concerns about Newman's condition was a photo that appeared last Friday on Martha Stewart's blog, in which, standing beside the domestic expert at a fundraiser for the Newman-launched Hole in the Wall Camp Gang, for kids battling severe diseases, the handsome leading man looked like a shadow of his former self.

Born in Cleveland and raised in the Midwest, Newman was a Broadway actor before making his first movie in 1954, the ancient costume drama The Silver Chalice, which he has called one of the worst movies of all time.


A Screen Giant
He is much better known for a progression of hits in the later '50s and continuing through the '90s, including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, The Sting and 1986's The Color of Money, which brought him his Oscar.

And all of these movies showed off his beautiful blue eyes to their best advantage.

One recent role was his distinctive voice only, as "Doc" Hudson in Disney-Pixar's 2006 Cars.

Last year he announced his retirement from acting, saying on Good Morning America, "I'm not able to work anymore ... at the level that I would want to."

Last month, citing unspecified health issues, he withdrew as director of a stage production of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" at Connecticut's Westport Country Playhouse – whose artistic director is Newman's wife of 50 years, The Three Faces of Eve Oscar-winning actress Joanne Woodward.

Besides acting and directing, Newman has two great passions that have long driven him: racecar driving and doing charitable acts. Through his food company Newman's Own – whose motto is, "Shameless exploitation for the common good" – the star and his Newman’s Own Foundation have "donated all profits and royalties after taxes for educational and charitable purposes," according to the Newman's Own Web site.

In all, that has amounted to more than "$200 million to thousands of charities worldwide since l982."

Here is the picture of Paul with Martha Stewart mentioned above.

SC, Way to come through with a great line in the presence of a great man...especially with a good number of drinks in you.