Paul Newman, 83-year-old film director, Oscar-winning actor, championship race car driver and successful race team owner, has reportedly been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and is receiving outpatient treatment at a NYC hospital. The actor is said to have been diagnosed at New York's Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he is currently receiving outpatient treatment and is under the care of a leading New York oncologist. Rumors of the actor's grave condition grew after he canceled several recent appearances. (Photo - PN on a TV GUIDE cover sometime in the Nixon era).
He had also pulled out of his latest project which was to have directed a screen-adaptation of John Steinbeck's classic, 'Of Mice And Men.'
Newman and his Oscar-winning wife were frequently seen at race tracks all over the world, though his wife would not go to races where Newman was a participant; his sports car racing brought him national honors in Sports Car Club of America competitions and in other racing organizations. Newman often said that he was acting only to pay for his very expensive hobby: auto racing. (And please remember that you can double-click on any and all photos to see them in a larger format).
We'll let other websites talk about him as an actor, husband, father, etc. The usual stuff. But let's get into this guy's racing career; he's one of the best race car drivers in the world. If he didn't act and focused full-time on motor racing, who knows how that career might have gone? (Photo - This 1968 film, now a video available online, featured Newman and acting/racing co-horts including Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford and James Garner, along with drivers Mario Andretti, Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, and others).
The first time I met Paul Newman, I also spoke with him for a few minutes. It was at Riverside Raceway,
which is now a shopping mall, in Southern California, and Newman was there to campaign his Datsun in a major road racing event. I don't remember much of what he said, and my questions were no doubt ill-conceived and dumb, given my lack of experience talking with "stars" of any kind and the natural nervousness which comes with those talks.
But I do remember hanging around outside his team's garage, in the very hot and bright sun, and looking inside to try and spot him and ask for an interview. Everyone in the garage was busy working on the various race cars, prepping them for the next event, when a figure leaning over one car's engine bay stood up, straight and tall and looked my way ... And those bright, laser-like blue eyes of his stared at me as if they were considering tearing my soul out of my body. You don't forget a moment like that. About 35 years later, I still clearly remember, as if it had happened earlier today.
Paul Newman first became interested in motorsports while training for and filming Winning, a forgettable 1969 film. The film might not have had any great influence on society, but it changed Newman's life, and his wife's, forever. (Photo - Newman and wife Joanne Woodward --- America's acting royalty; they've been married 50 years).
And throughout the course of his racing career, Newman made it clear through his participation, that racing cars and competing in other sports was not only possible for people above retirement age, but those people could even win.
Newman's first professional racing event was in 1972, in Thompson, Connecticut at Lime Rock Park raceway, near his long-time home in Westport, CT. He ran the 24 Hours of Le Mans once in 1979 and finished second in a Porsche 935 owned by Dick Barbour. (Photo - Newman smoking; supposedly he was a heavy smoker at one time, but gave it up; unfortunately, it appears that the cigarettes did damage to his lungs which can't be undone).
The film studios were not thrilled with Newman's participation in auto racing; he was usually the lead character in whatever movie he was in, and the companies which insured his films put clauses in contracts which were supposed to keep him away from race tracks. Newman continued to race though, often signing-in to the events under a different name, or merely as "PL Newman".
Click below to read and see more about Paul Newman and his careers ... One on-screen, one in a race car.
(Remember that you can double-click on any and all photos to see them in a larger format).
Beginning in the seventies and into the early nineties, he drove for the Bob Sharp Racing team, racing 
mainly Nissan Z-cars (which were then called Datsuns). He became heavily associated with the brand during the eighties, even appearing in commercials for them. (Photo - Newman campaigning his race car at Daytona in 2006; paint job is in support of the Disney/Pixar film CARS).
At the age of 70, he became the oldest driver to be part of a winning team in a major sanctioned race, the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1995. Newman told several journalists in 2005 that he'll "probably race for another year".
Newman's voice played a major role in 2006's Disney/Pixar mega-hit, Cars, introducing yet another generation to his dulcet tones ... and his association with cars. Newman's character was a Hudson, an American-made car which went out of production in the 1950s. His name in the film is Doc Hudson. (Photo - Poster advertising CARS; that Hudson in the picture, Doc Hudson, was voiced by Paul Newman).
Newman co-founded an open-wheel racing team now known as Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing with Carl Haas in 1983. Originally it was Newman/Haas Racing and was a major force in CART and Champ Car racing. He is also a partner in the Atlantic Championship team Newman Wachs Racing. Drivers for the Newman/Haas team have included Mario Andretti, Michael Andretti, Nigel Mansell, Cristiano da Matta and Sebastien Bourdais. Newman narrated a 1996 IMAX film, Super Speedway.
Carl Haas was a road racing great in the 1950s and left racing to focus on team ownership and the business of racing in the early 1960s. Haas became the sole US importer for Lola race cars and parts, and to this day controls distribution deals for Hewland racing gearboxes. (Photo - Guy placing decals on a Corvette-based race car which Newman has raced the past few years).
As the story goes, it was the larger-than-life Chicago businessman, Haas, who invariably is photographed
with a huge, unlit cigar in his mouth, who convinced Newman to enter race team ownership. When Newman asked what benefits he'd enjoy from owning a team, apart from the obvious of hanging around racers and race cars without having any job except to put up a lot of money, Haas told him race team ownership was a great way to show a loss when figuring one's income tax . The very successful Newman, apparently, was in the market for some losses, so he signed-on with Haas, and became a very active member of the team, in no way a "silent partner".
Those "losses" come about because some of the people involved in race team ownership and racing sponsorships can write-off a certain amount of what they spend in their endeavors as "advertising and public relations". (Photo - Racing, as Newman no doubt noted, is a great way to meet their fans; here's Paul Newman and Julia Roberts, both sporting Nomex).
Newman and friend and author A.E. Hotchner together co-founded Newman's Own, which offers spaghetti sauce, salad dressing and other items. The company donates all its earnings to charity, more than $200 million since its creation.
Newman co-founded the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, an organization that creates camps for terminally ill children, named for the "gang" which Newman and co-star Robert Redford led in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. One camp in the beginning has expanded to become several Hole in the Wall Camps in the U.S., Ireland, France and Israel. The camp serves 13,000 children every year, free of charge.
Among other awards, Newman co-sponsors the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award, a $25,000 reward designed to recognize those who protect the first amendment as it applies to the written word.
In June 1999 Newman donated $250,000 to the relief of Kosovo refugees.
On June 1, 2007, Kenyon College announced that Newman had donated $10 million to the school to establish a scholarship fund. (Photo - Publicity shot, circa 1968, for the film Winning; from the left, Newman, Woodward, Robert Wagner).
Newman and his second wife, Joanne Woodward, were married in 1958, shortly after he divorced his first
wife of nine years. A son from his first marriage, Scott, died of a drug overdose in 1978. Newman responded by forming the Scott Newman Center for Drug Abuse Prevention. Newman has two daughters from his first marriage, and he and Woodward have three daughters together.
His compilation of movie and television work, on-camera and behind it, is one of the world's greatest. From films including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to The Sting, The Long Hot Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Exodus, The Hustler and more recently Slap Shot, The Color of Money and Road to Perdition, Our Town, where he played the Stage Manager and Empire Falls, Newman is one of America's strongest actors, that rare one who played comedy, drama, romantic leading man and even villain with complete believability. He directed films ranging from Rachel Rachel to Sometimes a Great Notion to Harry & Son, and co-produced Butch Cassidy, Empire Falls, WUSA, and, the film which got Paul Newman interested in auto racing, Winning.
In something of an irony, the hospital where Newman in undergoing outpatient treatment, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, is named for two of its biggest contributors, Alfred P. Sloan and Charles "Boss" Kettering. Sloan was a longtime president and chairman of General Motors; Kettering was a mechanical genius with over 300 patents, who was head of research for GM and a founder of DELCO (Daytona Engineering Laboratories Company). Among his inventions were the electric starter for vehicles, first seen on Cadillacs in 1912, and leaded gasoline.
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