Two of the most good-looking stars on the silver screen just happened to be married to one another. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were a picturesque, loving couple who stayed together for five decades until Paul’s death in 2008.
The two actors met on the set of “Picnic” in the 1950s, where they started off their blossoming acting careers. Newman was married at the time, and they went their separate ways to take on big roles in Hollywood movies.
They worked together again in 1958’s “The Long, Hot Summer,” and by the time filming ended, Newman’s divorce from his first wife was finalized. He whisked Woodward away to Las Vegas, where the two were married.
The next decades were filled with love and professional success. They had three daughters and took up residency as a happy family in Connecticut. Among it all, Newman went on to fill his biggest roles in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting.” His wife Woodward also won the best actress Oscar for her role in “The Three Faces of Eve.”
Newman was married twice in his life. First, to Jackie Witte from 1949 to 1958. They shared three children, a son named Scott and daughters Susan and Stephanie. After meeting Woodward in 1953, the two remained friends until Newman separated from his wife in 1957, the same year he and Woodward filmed “The Long, Hot Summer.”
After divorcing Witte, Newman married Woodward in early 1958. They had three daughters, Elinor, Melissa and Claire. Newman was a renowned family man and loving husband. Read on to learn more about this lovely couple and their heartwarming relationship.
Newman was a famous American actor, film director and race car driver. With more than 50 years of experience in the entertainment industry, it’s not hard to see why Newman was so loved and respected by fans, critics and his fellow peers. He is best known for his roles in major films such as “The Hustler, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and for voicing the role of Doc Hudson in Disney-Pixar’s “Cars.”
The star was born on Jan. 26, 1925, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and showed a strong interest in theater when he was just a child. Newman began performing early on, and his career only escalated as he grew older. Before he died on Sept. 26, 2008, Newman had been honored with plenty of awards and nominations.
During his life, Newman wore plenty of hats and showed off just how much talent and dedication he had to a long list of passions and accomplishments. He served in the United States Navy during World War II. Afterward, he went on to enroll in higher education and obtained his bachelor’s degree in drama and economics from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 1949.
At first, Newman pursued more business ventures, joining summer stock companies in the months following his graduation. However, he later went on to study under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio and attended the Yale School of Drama for one year. It was clear that Newman had made a choice to fully pursue his love for acting, and he was ready to show the world everything he had to offer.
Newman had moved to New York City with his first wife in 1951, just a couple of years after they tied the knot. His second marriage was a high-profile spectacle as the famous couple went on to be recognized as a golden couple in Hollywood. However, the actor’s first marriage is not as well known as it was kept a bit more private.
Newman was married to a woman named Jackie Witte. Witte was a tall, dark-eyed blonde aspiring actress who was the first woman to marry Newman, according to Rocks Off magazine. She was born in September 1929 and was just 19 years old when she met a 24-year-old Newman. The two instantly fell for each other and got married in December 1949. Together they had three children: Scott, Susan and Stephanie.
The pair met before Newman was a household name, and a good majority of their relationship was spent with him trying to finally make it in the acting industry. He started off as a stage actor but seemed to give it up following the birth of his son. According to Rocks Off, Newman attended Yale University in hopes of obtaining a degree in theater but eventually dropped out after Witte became pregnant again.
Still, he tried to make it big in the world of acting. According to the Daily Mail, it took some time, but Newman finally started to land small roles here and there before his career really took off. Finally, he found a break on Broadway.
He was cast as the understudy for the leading role in a play called “Picnic,” where his character portrayed a renegade who wreaked havoc among lonely women in a small southern town. It was a huge change for Newman, but he committed to the role. He also began to form a great bond with his co-star, Woodward.
Newman’s career only escalated from that point on, and he appeared in a screen test with James Dean in 1954 for the 1955 film “East of Eden.” However, Newman ended up not being cast in the film. Fortunately, he went on to co-star alongside Eva Marie Saint and Frank Sinatra in a TV broadcast of “Our Town” that same year.
This proved to be a great year for Newman as he was also cast in the film “The Silver Chalice,” marking his first Hollywood film appearance. Unfortunately, it was a failure at the box office, and it was clear that the movie did not resonate well with fans or critics.
Thankfully, this didn’t hamper Newman’s career too much, as he continued to find more fame and success in future roles, starring alongside beautiful women, including Elizabeth Taylor in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and working again with Woodward in “The Long, Hot Summer.” The latter film earned Newman critical acclaim, and he won the Best Actor award at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival.
Throughout the remainder of the 1950s, all the way through the 1990s, Newman led a very successful life as an actor. He starred in plenty of great films, including “The Young Philadelphians,” “The Hustler,” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
It’s clear that Newman’s talents went far and beyond acting, as he had previously shown off some other skills over the course of his long career. However, he also had a great eye behind the camera and used that to become a director. He both starred in and directed “Harry & Son,” as well as four feature films that starred his second wife, including “Rachel, Rachel” and “The Glass Menagerie.” Many of Newman’s directorial works were inspired by plays.
While Newman himself was inspired by plenty of artistic endeavors, people today continue to be inspired by the late star. In 2022, Ethan Hawke is releasing a documentary about Newman and his second wife called “The Last Movie Stars.” According to the movie’s IMDB page, there are plenty of high-profile stars set to make appearances in the documentary through a series of conducted interviews, both past and present. Some of the most recognized faces from the years include Melanie Griffith, Sally Field, Martin Scorsese and Gore Vidal.
Hawke shared that the couple probably would hate the title. “Paul and Joanne were movie stars, but it was a hard-earned title. They were students of acting in a way that you don’t have to be anymore,” Hawke said. “I also think they would hate the title because they thought of themselves as actors, not as ‘movie stars,’ but I think therein lies the reason to make it the title. You can be a movie star these days without being a great actor, and therein lies the rub.”
The actor-turned-director continued: “(Newman) and (Sidney) Poitier are really the two of their generation that really kept evolving as leaders in their community and kept continuing to grow as actors and as human beings. So he’s a great subject matter if you’re looking to tell a story about, ‘What does maturity and grace look like?’ So many documentaries have to do with how people burned out, how people kill themselves, or how people get lost… A 50-year successful marriage doesn’t lend itself to drama, but it creates this feeling that it’s impossible to do, but it’s just incredibly hard.”
Newman also started an organic line of food products called Newman’s Own and continued with this and other philanthropic ventures until his death from lung cancer in 2008. He had given back to many schools and helped other people go on to lead successful lives themselves. Newman was certainly not shy when it came to speaking his mind about important issues and encouraging others to follow in his footsteps.
Along with his time as an actor, director and philanthropist, Newman was also known as a racecar driver. He first became interested in motorsports in the late 1960s while working on the film “Winning.” He went on to host the TV special “Once Upon a Wheel” in 1971 and showcased his intelligence in the history of racing. Newman even got behind the wheel in later years, and a documentary about his racing career called “Winning: The Racing Life of Paul Newman” was released in 2015.
Newman and Witte had gotten married pretty young and pretty fast, leaving many to speculate what the reason was. However, it seemed like Newman and Witte were just genuinely in love with each other and wanted to embrace it to the fullest. Together, they started a family and had one son and two daughters. However, they did not get a happy ending as Newman ended up divorcing Witte to marry the other woman he had fallen head over heels for: Woodward.
Although Witte wanted to work on their relationship, Newman finally ended up filing for divorce, and the pair went their separate ways in 1958. Newman married Woodward later that same year. According to the Daily Mail, Newman went on to be celebrated for his long-lasting marriage to Woodward, although it had started due to the fact that his previous marriage had been failing.
“I was probably too immature to make a success of my first marriage,” Newman once admitted. “What happened to us during that period is nobody’s business.” Still, the fact that he had felt so estranged from his wife and their three children continued to haunt him. Newman confessed that he felt “guilty as hell” about how he went about his first marriage and said, “And I’ll carry it with me for the rest of my life.”
Newman is widely quoted as having said, “I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?” referring to his wife Joanne being the “steak,” as per The New York Times. And on her side, the secret to a long-lasting marriage was laughter. She told TODAY that even though beauty might fade, a man that makes you laugh every day is something to hold onto.
Other people have witnessed their electric chemistry, and for one writer in their presence at a dinner party in the 1970s, she was very much taken in.
“Up behind me, Joanne Woodward sat on the ground with her back against the trunk of a big tree, her legs stretched out in front. In her lap rested the head of Paul Newman, who occasionally reached up to touch her face and hair as he savored the music,” wrote author Carol Ross Joynt according to The Washington Post. “It’s possible I gaped. To this day it’s the most romantic thing I ever witnessed.”
After 50 years together, Woodward and Newman were the perfect partners and shared their secret to a long and happy marriage. “We really liked each other,” Woodward said. “We could talk to each other, we could tell each other anything without fear of ridicule or rejection. There was trust.”
The Academy-Award-winning actress also explained what had kept their marriage alive. “Somebody once asked, ‘What is your relationship based on,’” Woodward shared. “I said, ‘He’s very good-looking and very sexy and all of those things but all that goes out the window finally, and what finally is left is if you can make somebody laugh.’ And he sure does keep me laughing.”
Newman and Woodward welcomed three children of their own during their 50-year marriage, adding to the other three Newman had from his first marriage. They stayed together until Newman’s death in 2008, showing that no matter how their love started or what people thought of it, they stuck it out until the end.
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