Goodbye, And Thank You

I don't know what to say, so I suppose "goodbye" and "thank you" are a good start. Growing up, I always knew where my mother stood on Paul Newman. He was simply the best-looking, most amazing specimen of human maleness in the universe. My parents had a funny faux arrangement- they could each pick their fantasy celebrity sexual tryst person and if either of them, as unlikely as it would be, ever actually had the opportunity, well, they'd be given a pass. Mom's pick was Paul Newman. I believe Dad's was Sophia Loren, or as he claimed was stated on her birth certificate, Sophia Claudia Cardinale Gina Lollabrigida Loren.

Back to Paul, though. Yeah, he was a great looking guy. Those looks got him into the movies. He really was just a pretty face back in 1952 when he got his start. But he grew to become one of America's finest film actors. He is truly part of the fabric of our lives. Part of mine, anyway. I've seen Cool Hand Luke at least a dozen times. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Hud. The Hustler. The Sting. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Absence of Malice. The Verdict. The Hudsucker Proxy. The Road To Perdition. All the great moments. Taking a pipe-cutter to parking meters. Punching Charlotte Rampling in the face for betraying him. Staying up all night getting bested at 9-ball by Jackie Gleason. Spending another night in the box. Taking on the Bolivian federales. Pulling off the incredible long con. And the lines. He sure delivered a lot of great lines. In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Butch and Sundance meetup with the Hole In The Wall Gang, whereupon a big man among them (played by Ted Cassidy, a.k.a. Lurch from the Addams Family) challenges Butch to a knife fight for supremacy in the gang. "What's this all about?" asks Butch. Ted's character responds, "I'm fighting you for the leader spot." "The gang's already got a leader." "You always said, any time any one of us feels man enough to take the reins to step on up and take it from you." "Well, that's only because I figured nobody ever would." My favorite, I think, is from Cool Hand Luke, from the scene in which Luke and the film gets its name. Luke gets in on the prison farm's weekly poker game and wins by betting huge and forcing his opponent to fold. As he collects the pot he shows his cards. The loser exclaims, "You got nothin'! You bet it all on nothin' cards?!" Paul flashed that cool, easy smile and replied, "Sometimes nothin' is a real cool hand." We'll miss you, Paul.