Paul Newman

My stepdad used to be an entertainment journalist, way before the days of US Magazine and all of those "Stars--they're just like us" photospreads. This was back when stars weren't like us--when they were bigger than Bigger Than Life, when they wouldn't be caught dead walking out of bathrooms barefoot while eating Doritos (hello Britney), when their affairs were, at best, blind gossip items, rather than gospel.

I'm not saying any of this to diss our current entertainment journalists (I have a subscription to US Magazine and I totally read Star at the grocery store checkout stand), I'm just trying to paint a picture of the type of entertainment journalist Joe was: he wrote for magazines like Life and Look and he would spend quality time with his interview subjects. He spent an entire weekend talking to Lucille Ball...he spent many afternoons at John Wayne's home in Orange County...he spent a long drunken night with Debbie Reynolds, talking about all of her husbands and romantic dalliances long after he'd run out of cassette tape. (About a month ago, Joe was in Laughlin and he noticed that Debbie Reynolds was performing in the hotel he was staying at. He decided to leave her a note asking if she wanted to get dinner--even though it had been several decades since they'd seen each other and he wasn't sure if she'd remember him. A few hours later, she left him a message, giving her regrets for not being available for dinner, and telling him she was happy to hear he was still kickin' around--"we've both survived all of these years!")

Joe recently found a box of old photographs, including a photo that was taken on the set of one of Paul Newman's movies. I think the photo's kinda cool, so I'm posting it. Here:

That's my stepdad with the white hair in the center of the photo. I don't know who he's talking to. And then, of course, that's Paul Newman doing the leg exercises. He looks lost in thought. I wonder what he's thinking about. The leg exercises seem to be the last thing on his mind, like, they're the easiest thing in the world. I would say he was showing off, only no one's even paying him any attention and you can't really show off if no one's watching you. (But maybe I'm just jealous because I'm so not in Paul Newman shape and could probably only do this exercise for a fraction of the time that Paul Newman was doing it before and after this photograph was taken.) (He was probably sitting like that for hours, just chillin', going through lines in his head.)

I have no idea what movie set this photo was taken on. Joe doesn't remember. (Though he thinks it was taken at Universal.) (If anyone wants to be a detective and figure out what movie set this photo was taken on, that would be pretty cool.) (I realize I haven't given y'all very many clues, but at least I've narrowed things down with the Universal Pictures detail.)