gd
2019-03-26 02:37:49 UTC
A poster calling himself "Tom Hens" posted, on Feb. 23, a rebuttal to
my earlier claim that Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward are bisexual.
First, he quotes heavily from a 1995 book called "Palimpsest," the
autobiography of writer Gore Vidal. I have read the book and I have a
copy handy. Mr. Hens leans heavily on the portion of the book about
Joanne Woodward wanting to marry Vidal in the 1950s before she married
Newman. That doesn't mean all three parties were straight. Also, Mr.
Hens says Vidal isn't openly gay as I had said earlier. All right,
maybe I was too liberal about his openness, but many people believe
that he's gay or bisexual and that he now lives in Italy with a young
man he describes in the prologue of "Palimpsest."
Enough of that. Let's stick to published material about Paul Newman
and A. E. Hotchner, the writer respected for his credits in four types
of writing: the novel, the TV or feature film screenplay, the stage
play and the biography. (His books on Ernest Hemingway have made
Hotchner an authority on Papa.)
As I said in my last post, Newman and Hotchner are the founders and
manufacturers of Newman's Own salad dressing, their other original
foods whose profits they give to charity as well as a summer camp for
very sick children. The many articles in the New York Times and other
papers that have reported these facts call the men "longtime friends"
and "neighbors." (They both live in Westport, Connecticut, but nobody
ever says how close their houses are. Could be next door.) It's also
a fact that they had to have known each other as far back as 1956,
when Hotchner wrote the script for a television drama in which Newman
starred as a boxer.
I shall quote from several *published* newspaper profiles of Newman
and Hotchner. String together the excerpts and you must entertain in
this group speculation about the sexuality of each man.
One more thing before I delve into the non-tabloid publications. Did
you ever see Newman do a serious love scene with a woman? He did a
few 1950s studio - manufactured chaste kisses before "The Hustler"
gave him power in Hollywood in 1961, then he kept a curious distance
from the leading ladies in the high-quality films he did subsequently.
In "Hud" (1963) he makes two passes at Patricia Neal, knowing she
doesn't want him. After one pass Brandon De Wilde physically removes
Newman from her. No more heterosexual affection in that film.
In "The Hustler" Newman never gets very busy with Piper Laurie. He
shows absolutely no heterosexuality in "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance
Kid" or "Cool Hand Luke." (So you say prison blocked Luke from pining
for or lunging at a woman? It didn't stop him from spending five
minutes with his mother out of earshot of the prison guards. What
kind of affection did Luke seek when he escaped and fled a thousand
miles to New York where his good looks got him photographed for a
magazine that his fellow inmates saw?)
Consider that all of these films were tailor - written for Paul
Newman. One of his very few deep kisses with a woman other than
Joanne Woodward (and they never got very busy, either) was with Julie
Andrews, who has been called bisexual, in "Torn Curtain." That's a
1966 Alfred Hitchcock film that flopped. Maybe it flopped because
Newman's sensitive loner-rebel persona didn't come through in it.
All right then, let's look at the print media. If you missed my last
post, consider that a 1982 Time magazine cover story says Newman
"wandered into a gay bar" at an indeterminate time after "The Hustler"
played theaters. Time used the anecdote to show that the den of
iniquity had a pool table and that another patron kidded Newman about
his pool skills in "The Hustler." Time also divulges that the place
was in Manhattan, where the actor has lived at least part-time since
1950. How could he not have known it was gay when he wandered into
it?
The Time cover story volunteers that Newman has lent his name to the
cause of gay rights, but it gives no details. It also includes a
color two-shot of Newman and Woodward in which Woodward looks very
mannish. You must admit she started looking mannish in the 1970s when
she gave up her film career to raise the kids and do occasional TV
projects in which she forged strong bonds with other women like Sally
Field in "Sybil" and an actress playing her mother in "Do You Remember
Love?"
Now let's return to Paul Newman and the acclaimed writer A. E.
Hotchner. Let's look at The New York Times edition of Wednesday,
November 18, 1998. Page G2. The Headline: "Making His Own Charity
An Acquired Taste" Here's an excerpt.
"The business [Newman's Own] was an accident and the charity an
afterthought, as Mr. Newman and his colleagues tell it. A. E.
Hotchner, a playwright and longtime friend who is the company's vice
president and treasurer, recalled going to white - tablecloth
restaurants and teasing the actor as he asked for olive oil, vinegar,
mustard and fresh pepper to prepare his own salad dressing. One night
just before Christmas in 1980, Mr. Newman and Mr. Hotchner had a few
beers and decided to make a batch in a tub, then poured the dressing
into wine bottles, wrapped on ribbons and went caroling as they gave
the bottles to neighbors. Quite a few bottles were left, and by
spring, they were a hot item in gourmet shops around Westport,
Connecticut, where Mr. Newman lives...
"Soon, the salad dressing acquired a life of its own, and a steakhouse
in Boston agreed to bottle it. Marketing experts told Mr. Newman and
Mr. Hotchner that they would have to spend $400,000 on test marketing.
Instead, they invited ten more friends over and put samples in
saucers. ...
"Mr. Newman and Mr. Hotchner are responsible for writing the cheeky
labels on the products. ..."
Now let's dip into a profile of Hotchner in the Everyday Magazine of
the St. Louis Post - Dispatch. It's in the edition of Thursday,
November 9, 1995 with the following long headline: "Hotchner's Own;
He was once renowned as much for the company he kept as his own works.
Now St. Louisan A. E. Hotchner is sailing solo on an ambitious new
project about the history of his hometown."
"[Hotchner's] accidental business adventure with his Connecticut
neighbor and longtime friend, Paul Newman, has turned into a
surprising success story. Their 'Newman's Own' products generate
millions of dollars in annual profits, all of which goes to a long
list of deserving charities.
"Hotchner confirmed that at one point he and Newman flew into St.
Louis to make a contribution of about $1 million to establish a summer
camp for children. They made their presentation to a 'large
business-related group,' Hotchner said, but became discouraged when
the groups' officials insisted on selecting committees to study the
project and committees to study the committees.
"Hotchner, divorced, is the father of two daughters and one son. His
brother Selwyn, 72, a retired executive with the long-gone Eagle Stamp
Company, still lives in St. Louis. ...
"'Oh, I knew him better than I knew my father,' Hotchner said of
Ernest Hemingway. 'Saw a lot more of him than I did of my brother.
For 14 years, he was certainly my best friend and co-adventurer. And
not only did we do exciting things together, like hunting pheasant in
the West, or following the bullfights, but we also became creative
business partners in that with his urging I adapted a lot of his short
stories and novels to television. And to motion pictures.'
"'I think that involvement certainly brought us very close together
and that's why, the last couple of years of his life, he relied more
heavily on me than he did any of his family -- his sons, for example.
...'"
That's enough printed evidence. I will close with two points. First
about Hemingway. While he did marry five times and father several
sons, his possible bisexuality has been speculated on in many books.
It's well-known that Zelda Fitzgerald accused her husband Scott of
having an inordinately close relationship with Papa Hemingway. Papa
did admit that he and Scott once compared the sizes of their penises.
As long as a man liked watching bullfights and shooting pheasant with
him, as did A. E. Hotchner, would Hemingway care what the man did when
Hemingway couldn't see or hear him? Consider that Fitzgerald didn't
like pheasant shooting or other macho pastimes.
My final point concerns Paul Newman's hobby of auto racing. If you
use that to counter the theory that he's bisexual, then how do you
explain the phone callers who hounded Jason Priestley about *his*
alleged gayness or bisexuality during the 90210 star's telephoned gig
on Howard Stern's radio show in 1998? You can find a Real Audio
Player recording of this Stern segment on the Internet. And how do
you explain the gayness of Roy Marchel, a pit crew technician for the
Indy Racing League? He made a pass at me in his hotel room on the
night before the qualifying segment of an IRL race in a city I decline
to identify. He said someone would kill me if I told certain people
about it. This man is fifty-something and never has heard of Jason
Priestley. Not every aging person can retain the intelligence that
Paul Newman and A. E. Hotchner still have.
I respect Paul Newman's intelligence and his combining it with the sex
symbol power to feed the hungry and heal the sick. I don't want to
hurt him. All I'm saying is that regulars in this group who spend so
much time on gay speculations are remiss if they ignore Newman.
Suppose he and Joanne are bisexual. Wouldn't that go a long way
toward convincing people that all the truly sensitive and truly
powerful Americans and Canadians are either gay, bisexual or totally
cool about anything their co-workers do? Even a macho Texas cowboy
like Lyndon Johnson knew that his presidential assistant Walter
Jenkins, still alive, was gay. Nobody ever has documented LBJ calling
him a faggot or what have you.
If you cite the several children of Newman and Hotchner as evidence
that they're straight, how do you explain Malcolm Forbes Senior?
my earlier claim that Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward are bisexual.
First, he quotes heavily from a 1995 book called "Palimpsest," the
autobiography of writer Gore Vidal. I have read the book and I have a
copy handy. Mr. Hens leans heavily on the portion of the book about
Joanne Woodward wanting to marry Vidal in the 1950s before she married
Newman. That doesn't mean all three parties were straight. Also, Mr.
Hens says Vidal isn't openly gay as I had said earlier. All right,
maybe I was too liberal about his openness, but many people believe
that he's gay or bisexual and that he now lives in Italy with a young
man he describes in the prologue of "Palimpsest."
Enough of that. Let's stick to published material about Paul Newman
and A. E. Hotchner, the writer respected for his credits in four types
of writing: the novel, the TV or feature film screenplay, the stage
play and the biography. (His books on Ernest Hemingway have made
Hotchner an authority on Papa.)
As I said in my last post, Newman and Hotchner are the founders and
manufacturers of Newman's Own salad dressing, their other original
foods whose profits they give to charity as well as a summer camp for
very sick children. The many articles in the New York Times and other
papers that have reported these facts call the men "longtime friends"
and "neighbors." (They both live in Westport, Connecticut, but nobody
ever says how close their houses are. Could be next door.) It's also
a fact that they had to have known each other as far back as 1956,
when Hotchner wrote the script for a television drama in which Newman
starred as a boxer.
I shall quote from several *published* newspaper profiles of Newman
and Hotchner. String together the excerpts and you must entertain in
this group speculation about the sexuality of each man.
One more thing before I delve into the non-tabloid publications. Did
you ever see Newman do a serious love scene with a woman? He did a
few 1950s studio - manufactured chaste kisses before "The Hustler"
gave him power in Hollywood in 1961, then he kept a curious distance
from the leading ladies in the high-quality films he did subsequently.
In "Hud" (1963) he makes two passes at Patricia Neal, knowing she
doesn't want him. After one pass Brandon De Wilde physically removes
Newman from her. No more heterosexual affection in that film.
In "The Hustler" Newman never gets very busy with Piper Laurie. He
shows absolutely no heterosexuality in "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance
Kid" or "Cool Hand Luke." (So you say prison blocked Luke from pining
for or lunging at a woman? It didn't stop him from spending five
minutes with his mother out of earshot of the prison guards. What
kind of affection did Luke seek when he escaped and fled a thousand
miles to New York where his good looks got him photographed for a
magazine that his fellow inmates saw?)
Consider that all of these films were tailor - written for Paul
Newman. One of his very few deep kisses with a woman other than
Joanne Woodward (and they never got very busy, either) was with Julie
Andrews, who has been called bisexual, in "Torn Curtain." That's a
1966 Alfred Hitchcock film that flopped. Maybe it flopped because
Newman's sensitive loner-rebel persona didn't come through in it.
All right then, let's look at the print media. If you missed my last
post, consider that a 1982 Time magazine cover story says Newman
"wandered into a gay bar" at an indeterminate time after "The Hustler"
played theaters. Time used the anecdote to show that the den of
iniquity had a pool table and that another patron kidded Newman about
his pool skills in "The Hustler." Time also divulges that the place
was in Manhattan, where the actor has lived at least part-time since
1950. How could he not have known it was gay when he wandered into
it?
The Time cover story volunteers that Newman has lent his name to the
cause of gay rights, but it gives no details. It also includes a
color two-shot of Newman and Woodward in which Woodward looks very
mannish. You must admit she started looking mannish in the 1970s when
she gave up her film career to raise the kids and do occasional TV
projects in which she forged strong bonds with other women like Sally
Field in "Sybil" and an actress playing her mother in "Do You Remember
Love?"
Now let's return to Paul Newman and the acclaimed writer A. E.
Hotchner. Let's look at The New York Times edition of Wednesday,
November 18, 1998. Page G2. The Headline: "Making His Own Charity
An Acquired Taste" Here's an excerpt.
"The business [Newman's Own] was an accident and the charity an
afterthought, as Mr. Newman and his colleagues tell it. A. E.
Hotchner, a playwright and longtime friend who is the company's vice
president and treasurer, recalled going to white - tablecloth
restaurants and teasing the actor as he asked for olive oil, vinegar,
mustard and fresh pepper to prepare his own salad dressing. One night
just before Christmas in 1980, Mr. Newman and Mr. Hotchner had a few
beers and decided to make a batch in a tub, then poured the dressing
into wine bottles, wrapped on ribbons and went caroling as they gave
the bottles to neighbors. Quite a few bottles were left, and by
spring, they were a hot item in gourmet shops around Westport,
Connecticut, where Mr. Newman lives...
"Soon, the salad dressing acquired a life of its own, and a steakhouse
in Boston agreed to bottle it. Marketing experts told Mr. Newman and
Mr. Hotchner that they would have to spend $400,000 on test marketing.
Instead, they invited ten more friends over and put samples in
saucers. ...
"Mr. Newman and Mr. Hotchner are responsible for writing the cheeky
labels on the products. ..."
Now let's dip into a profile of Hotchner in the Everyday Magazine of
the St. Louis Post - Dispatch. It's in the edition of Thursday,
November 9, 1995 with the following long headline: "Hotchner's Own;
He was once renowned as much for the company he kept as his own works.
Now St. Louisan A. E. Hotchner is sailing solo on an ambitious new
project about the history of his hometown."
"[Hotchner's] accidental business adventure with his Connecticut
neighbor and longtime friend, Paul Newman, has turned into a
surprising success story. Their 'Newman's Own' products generate
millions of dollars in annual profits, all of which goes to a long
list of deserving charities.
"Hotchner confirmed that at one point he and Newman flew into St.
Louis to make a contribution of about $1 million to establish a summer
camp for children. They made their presentation to a 'large
business-related group,' Hotchner said, but became discouraged when
the groups' officials insisted on selecting committees to study the
project and committees to study the committees.
"Hotchner, divorced, is the father of two daughters and one son. His
brother Selwyn, 72, a retired executive with the long-gone Eagle Stamp
Company, still lives in St. Louis. ...
"'Oh, I knew him better than I knew my father,' Hotchner said of
Ernest Hemingway. 'Saw a lot more of him than I did of my brother.
For 14 years, he was certainly my best friend and co-adventurer. And
not only did we do exciting things together, like hunting pheasant in
the West, or following the bullfights, but we also became creative
business partners in that with his urging I adapted a lot of his short
stories and novels to television. And to motion pictures.'
"'I think that involvement certainly brought us very close together
and that's why, the last couple of years of his life, he relied more
heavily on me than he did any of his family -- his sons, for example.
...'"
That's enough printed evidence. I will close with two points. First
about Hemingway. While he did marry five times and father several
sons, his possible bisexuality has been speculated on in many books.
It's well-known that Zelda Fitzgerald accused her husband Scott of
having an inordinately close relationship with Papa Hemingway. Papa
did admit that he and Scott once compared the sizes of their penises.
As long as a man liked watching bullfights and shooting pheasant with
him, as did A. E. Hotchner, would Hemingway care what the man did when
Hemingway couldn't see or hear him? Consider that Fitzgerald didn't
like pheasant shooting or other macho pastimes.
My final point concerns Paul Newman's hobby of auto racing. If you
use that to counter the theory that he's bisexual, then how do you
explain the phone callers who hounded Jason Priestley about *his*
alleged gayness or bisexuality during the 90210 star's telephoned gig
on Howard Stern's radio show in 1998? You can find a Real Audio
Player recording of this Stern segment on the Internet. And how do
you explain the gayness of Roy Marchel, a pit crew technician for the
Indy Racing League? He made a pass at me in his hotel room on the
night before the qualifying segment of an IRL race in a city I decline
to identify. He said someone would kill me if I told certain people
about it. This man is fifty-something and never has heard of Jason
Priestley. Not every aging person can retain the intelligence that
Paul Newman and A. E. Hotchner still have.
I respect Paul Newman's intelligence and his combining it with the sex
symbol power to feed the hungry and heal the sick. I don't want to
hurt him. All I'm saying is that regulars in this group who spend so
much time on gay speculations are remiss if they ignore Newman.
Suppose he and Joanne are bisexual. Wouldn't that go a long way
toward convincing people that all the truly sensitive and truly
powerful Americans and Canadians are either gay, bisexual or totally
cool about anything their co-workers do? Even a macho Texas cowboy
like Lyndon Johnson knew that his presidential assistant Walter
Jenkins, still alive, was gay. Nobody ever has documented LBJ calling
him a faggot or what have you.
If you cite the several children of Newman and Hotchner as evidence
that they're straight, how do you explain Malcolm Forbes Senior?