Paul Newman was a legendary Oscar winning actor.
He also played sports characters better then anyone in Hollywood land ever did.
Better then anyone ever.
And his range in the world of sports was wide.
Newman's break through role was his Oscar nominated performance as the alcoholic, broken, ex SEC football all star Brick Pollit in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
The blue eyes are bitter as Newman battles estranged wife "Maggie the Cat", the luscious Liz Taylor, and his over bearing father, Burl Ives as Big Daddy, while trying to drown his own inner demons with drink.
Before his break out Newman was lauded for playing real life middle weight boxing legend Rocky Graziano in his acclaimed bio pic Somebody Up There Likes Me.
The Rock lived a rough life before making money with his fast fists. Replacing the deceased James Dean in the title role Newman did a great job and handled the boxing scenes extremely well.
Acquittances of the real Rocky said Newman made a very brutally mean man likable on screen. Quiet an accomplishment. Also look for Steve McQueen in his first role also.
In Hemingway's Adventures as a Young Man, based on Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, Newman also played a boxer, "The Battler."
In an underrated performance, under heavy make up, the young Newman plays a sad, punch drunk fighter with severe brain damage.
Now that would have made a fine final Rocky. And more realistic also. But Hollywood no longer takes chances.
Newman did a bit part as a New York Yankee baseball player in the TV series Bang the Drum Slowly.
Perhaps his most famous role came shortly after as Fast Eddie Felson the young pool shark battling Minnesota Fats in The Hustler.
Newman nabbed another Oscar nomination as the hubris fueled hustler.
25-years later playing the same character, though wiser and beaten down by life, Newman won the best actor award in The Color of Money opposite Tom Cruise.
So maybe some folks say pool isn't much of a sport.
But what about poker?
Maybe Newman's best and funniest role was as the lovable grifter Henry Gondorff, opposite Robert Redford's Johnny Hooker, in The Sting.
The Sting has poker, it has horse racing, and it has the great Robert Shaw as Doyle Lonnegan being stung.
Newman had memorable forays into poker in John Huston's Life and Times of Roy Bean, as the violent, irritable, poker playing old west judge, and in another of his legendary Oscar nominated roles as Luke in Cool Hand Luke.
"Sometimes nothing can be a pretty cool hand." Newman's Luke sadly says
Everyone remembers the egg eating contest. But Newman also boxed the brutish, Oscar winning George Kennedy and played a bit of poker.
But back to "real" sports.
Who can forget the cult hockey hit Slap Shot?
The hilarious tale of a failings semi-pro hockey team, the Charleston Chiefs, with those geeky looking thugs the Hanson brothers and Newman as their aging player coach Reg Dunbar.
Every sport fan should catch it. But beware the fouls, and foul language, Newman said after making Slap Shot
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