3 photos (below the jump) from the extensive Vanity Fair slideshow made up of photos from Patricia Bosworth’s personal collection. Patricia Bosworth is a playwright and author, longtime member of the Actors Studio, and biographer of Montgomery Clift – excerpt of her magnificent here). There are two images in particular that really struck me: the one of Newman and Woodward putting their handprints in the cement outside of Grauman’s … You can see how the faces around them are vaguely serious, maybe even bureaucratic … but the two of them are howling with laughter. It almost seems to be a private moment. Speaking of private moments: the second image in the slideshow I love with the passion of a burning supernova – is the two of them dancing together at home. Goofballs. But look at the fun they’re having!
Bosworth’s article about Newman in Vanity Fair can be read here. Small excerpt:
The first time I saw Paul Newman he was dancing with Marilyn Monroe. It was the summer of 1959 at a noisy Actors Studio party in New Yorkâs Greenwich Village. I had just passed my audition and was being introduced to everyone as a new member by the Broadway producer Cheryl Crawford, one of the Studioâs heads.
Nobody was paying me much attentionâunderstandably, since they were all watching a barefoot Marilyn, in a skintight black dress, undulate around the living room with Newman, lithe and sinewy in chinos and T-shirt.
They seemed to be dancing with such rapture; they both kept changing rhythms and sometimes they walk-stepped to the beat. They didnât dance for very longâmaybe three minutesâbut what a hot, pulsing three minutes it was! They broke apart, Marilyn gave a giggle and a curtsy, and Newman bowed and moved directly past me through the crowd to get a beer.
Speaking of the Actors Studio, there is also a link in the slideshow to one of my favorite pictures of Newman ever (it’s one that shows up in many of the books I have at home) – the one of him in class at the Actors Studio, 1955.
His face in the second picture is killing me. The whole pose, actually. And is that woman — I can’t tell who she is — dancing with a phone or an ice cream scoop??
Tracey – I know! His face! That woman with him is actually Joanne Woodward – quite a babe, right? – I think it’s from 1962 or 63 – a couple of years into their marriage. Is she carrying a bone for the dog? Or an unconnected telephone receiver? I’ve been trying to figure out what it is, too.
But I love that this is a picture of them, on a night off, at home. Hahahaha
I can’t believe I didn’t recognize her! I’m embarrassed! It doesn’t look like her to me. The nose or something.