A great film actor and probably an even better person has died at age 83 from lung cancer. Paul Newman could play your best buddy or your complete and total sonuvabitch worst enemy, without a speck of discernible conscience  (I’m looking at you, Hud) or the guy who couldn’t decide which one he should be.

If all it took to be a genuine-article movie star was piercing blue eyes and a certain amount of acting talent, Wes Bentley would be eclipsing Leonardo and Matt at the box-office and winning mutliple Oscars, but he attributed his success to luck and the fact that he maybe worked harder than some. The fact of the matter was that Paul Newman was both a superb actor, far more talented than he gave himself credit for, and a great movie star. Of course, he was also a great philanthropist, in the full original sense of the word, which means “love of people.”

A lot of that philanthropy was accomplished as a businessman, where Mr. Newman had this wacky idea that quality products might sell pretty well. I’ve never had a Newman’s Own product that wasn’t pretty delicious and better than about 95% of the similar spaghetti sauces, salad dressings, etc., on the market. (The Newman Organics line, run by daughter Nell Newman, includes by far the best mass market pretzels and fake Oreos I’ve ever had.) Particularly on the sauces, the back of the bottles was always fun to read — charming and mildly self-deprecating. They sure sounded like they were actually written by Mr. Newman — who was an occasional pundit for The Nation, which he partially owned — though it’s always possible his writer friend and Newman’s Own partner, A.E. Hotchner, might have helped out. It didn’t matter, it had the Newman stamp all over it, right down to it’s slogan: “Shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good.”

In light of the man’s achievements, it might seem a bit silly to talk about his contribution to the world of consumer products — no doubt he was far prouder of the good he did via the money raised through those products did than the foods themselves — but they were endemic of the man himself and why he was so good at the game of being an on- and offscreen human. Though I first became enamored of him playing a good-guy con man (the movie that just might have made a film-lifer out of me), he never tried to pull one over on us in real life or as a performer. I can’t think of a less tricky, more unaffected actor than Newman — if he had a flaw an as actor at all, it was that he didn’t really dare to be the great ham that all actors should ocasionally be until very late in his career. He was the real deal. He didn’t like awards, but he did enjoy being on Richard Nixon’s enemies list. You are judged, sometimes, by the enemies you make.

And there’s the political thing. If ever there was a walking embodiment of liberalism, at it’s best and in all its manifestations, it was Paul Newman. He wasn’t perfect and did gossip worthy things once or twice in his younger days, but never made a big deal of his good works beyond what was needed to help promote them. He made his statements to the point and didn’t engage in the kind of grandstanding or rhetorical excess that would force him to engage in a metaphor-off with Stephen Colbert. There’s a reason he was held in such respect by so many (he even got the usually around-the-bend far-right film blogger Dirty Harry to behave) — he was as respectable a human being as the world of show business has seen. I’m an agnostic, but I’d still like like to think that, wherever Mr. Newman is, he’ll get to watch the election returns. It seems a small reward.

*****

Obviously, there’s been lots written and David Hudson is doing his usual great job of pulling it together, but I do want to direct your attention (as David did for me) to a beautifully complete appreciation/bio/obit by Newman biographer Shawn Levy, as well as a piece by Dahlia Lithwick about the Hole in the Wall camps for ill and disabled children, which really got to me. Also, Edward Copeland is back, and he’s got something to say.

******

“I picture my epitaph: ‘Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.’”