Why Paul Newman Just Got Better With Age

This week's curation at the Beast is Peter Richmond's fine 1995 GQ profile of Paul Newman:

He's never had any love for the interview process, but he is nonetheless polite enough to want to convey something substantial in a short time. Envision, if you can, a weight attached to every phrase.

"And everybody shakes their head and says 'Oh, isn't it too bad that he doesn't enjoy…more of a sense of accomplishment,' and so forth," he continues. "But it's not a false sense of modesty or self-deprecation. It's really just looking at it and saying 'Where did it come from? What do you owe it to?'"

So it should come as no surprise that the definitive question Paul Newman poses about his life is whether an entire career was forged on the pigment of his eyes.

"You're constantly reminded," he says. "There are places you go and they say 'Take off your dark glasses so we can see your beautiful blue eyes.' And you just want to…you just want to…I dunno, um…thump them."

He holds up his right hand—"A short chop right above the bridge of the nose"—and gives up a laugh.

"They could say, 'Hey, its very nice to meet you'—that's great. Or 'Thanks for a bunch of great performances,' and you can feed off that for a week and a half. But the other thing, which is always there, is a never-ending reminder."

The eyes. He proposes that if we insist on putting his picture on GQ's cover, we eschew the usual mug of shot and run one simply of his eye. His right eye. Close up. Just the eye.

"This bloodshot blue eye," he says, and he laughs. And then he says, "Or take the engine out of a stock Ford. Have the hood up. I'll just be sleeping in there."

[Image via Obscure One-Sheet]