The most epic love story in the history of cinema: Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward

They are two Hollywood legends and also one of the most fascinating and enduring couples the film industry has ever produced. Between the two they amassed 14 Oscar nominations. He won it first, in 1958, as the protagonist The three faces of Eve. She only received it in 1987 for her role in the color of money. the of Paolo Newman Y Giovanna Woodward It is an inspiring life story.

Here because Ethan Hawke He didn’t hesitate to pick up the gauntlet when the couple’s daughters (they had three) asked him to retrieve transcripts of some interviews that Paul had ordered to do, thinking they were writing his memoirs and being encouraged to decode the story. love.

It did so in docuseries format, six chapters that HBO MAX will broadcast. It was a famous writer, Gore Vidal, who named them in honor of the last two movie stars. And this is the title that Hawke chose for the project, who worked as director in the pandemic and from Zoom a group of prominent actors who lend their voices to the couple and their famous friends: George Clooney in the role of Newman, Laura Linney giving his voice to Woodward.

A love without barriers

When they met, performing on a Broadway show in 1953, the actor was married and chemistry was apparently on hold. In 1957 they return to work together and it seems impossible to hide the feelings that emerged on the set. Paul divorced his first wife and married Joanne in Las Vegas in 1958, amid a scandal at the time, with headlines saying “an idyllic family built on adultery”.

Both came from the forge of the famous Lee Strasberg Institute, a theater school where James Dean and Marlon Brando also studied. At that time she was more successful than he, that same year she had won her Oscar than hers. In the photos of the ceremony, she is seen in a dress made by herself. From there, luck would change. Audiences would begin to love Paul for his role in the film version of The cat on the hot zinc roofwith Liz Taylor as co-star.

The marriage between them lasted exactly 50 years and, as in the most romantic fictions, only death separated them. In 2008 they came to celebrate the golden anniversary, but Paul was very ill and it would only last a few months. Lung cancer. They say she became so depressed that she could no longer recover and eventually she got caught up in the haze of Alzheimer’s.

Behind the scenes of a life together

Hawke, who appears in several films this year, says it was an honor to have been chosen to bring this “philanthropy and love” story to life. The daughters say that until the end their parents respected each other very much and that they always laughed together. One also had a hard time choosing a partner because her level was too high.

The docuseries, based on tapes apparently lost in a fire, glosses over several moments of the couple. Both very talented, they starred in films together and she let herself be directed by him. There have been ups and downs, but they’ve been through storms. There is a reporter who says she had a long relationship with Newman after interviewing him in 1968 on the set of Butch Cassidya story of two famous robbers in which he starred alongside Robert Redford.

Very few couples in Hollywood have managed to survive this long. Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have been together for 34 years. Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are 40 For Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, the successful formula for relationship longevity seems to come from making good decisions just in time.

Even though as soon as they were successful they moved to Los Angeles and filmed the contracts with the big studios, they quickly changed their minds and decided they would settle on the other coast to watch the family grow up, in quieter Connecticut, far away. from the glamor and the heart print.

Paul insisted until the end that it cost him to conquer her. “Joanne was independent and I was very conservative. It took me a long time to convince her it wasn’t that boring. “

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