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This movie premiered on March 28th - 57 years ago - hard to believe. If you look at just about any list of best movies it is always there along with "Citizen Kane" and many,many others. I have seen and enjoyed most of them. Coloured pictures from the link above, with many thanks to IMDB. The makeup for Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon didn't show well in colour so it was filmed in black and white.
It is an hilarious comedy and I watch it regularly. It hasn't dated at all. Here are a few stills from it via Twitter with thanks to @ClassicCinema:
He was smiling… That’s right. You know, that, that Luke
smile of his. He had it on his face right to the very end. Hell, if they didn’t
know it ‘fore, they could tell right then that they weren’t a-gonna beat him.
That old Luke smile. Oh, Luke. He was some boy. Cool Hand Luke. Hell, he’s a
natural-born world-shaker. –Dragline
In
just 83 years, The Mighty Paul Newman accomplished what most of us couldn’t in
three lifetimes. Newman was a film actor Oscar-nominated 9 times, the director
of a movie nominated for Best Picture, a respected stage actor, a war veteran,
an accomplished race car driver, a wildly successful manufacturer of a food
products line, and a philanthropist’s philanthropist.
His
Hollywood marriage to Joanne Woodward lasted until his death — a full half
century.
Most
of all, Paul Newman was a one-of-a-kind movie star who, unlike anyone else in
his generation, started out in the Golden Age of the studio system and remained
a top star and leading man for another five decades.
Despite all the changes in the world, Paul Newman was never an
anachronism. Kirk Douglas couldn’t make the leap. Brando became a self-parody.
Beatty worked too infrequently. James Dean and Monty Clift seemed awfully eager
to die young, and did.
To
young people in the turbulent sixties, “Harper” (1966), “Hombre” (1967), “Cool
Hand Luke” (1967), “Winning” (1969), and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”
(1969) were as counter-culture and subversive as “Easy Rider.” Even with all
that gray hair, Newman spoke to a restless, reckless, and ultimately lost
generation.
In
1969, Paul Newman was the biggest star in the country to those who believed you
should never trust anyone over 30. He was 44 years old.
Because these films were timeless (as were Newman’s performances
in them), over the bridge of generations, they still speak out loud for anyone
who bristles at authority or the idea of drinking someone else’s
Kool-aid.
The
same goes for Newman’s legendary performances that led straight into the 21st
Century: “The Hustler,” “The Long Hot Summer,” “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof,” “The
Sting,” “Slap Shot,” “Fort Apache the Bronx,” “Absence of Malice,” “The
Verdict,” “The Color of Money,” and “Nobody’s Fool.”
Newman portrayed outlaws, drunks, criminals, failures, losers,
hustlers, rogues, grifters, working class bums, and outright bastards. We
admired them all because beneath it all his characters were always what every
man should be — their own man.
This
was true of the real Newman, a functioning alcoholic (he drank a case of beer a
day) and fitness freak who decided in his forties to take up racing. Over the
decades not only would he (and his teams) win a number of prominent races, he
would win something even more important to him than trophies: the respect of the
other drivers who at first laughed him off as a dilettante.
In
1986 Paul Newman was a 61 year-old six-time Oscar nominee who had never taken
home the gold. That year, the Academy gave Newman the consolation prize it gives
to all Oscar-less legends at the end of their careers: an Honorary
Oscar.
The
very next year, Newman showed everyone what he was made of by winning a
competitive Best Actor Oscar for “The Color of Money.” Newman would work for
another two decades and go on to win two more Oscar
nominations.
At
the age when most of us would be longing for retirement, Newman started and
built Newman’s Own into an unbelievably successful gourmet food company that
went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits — every cent of which
has gone to charity.
Paul
Newman was genetically gifted with masculine beauty and still one of the guys;
a Democrat who put his fortune where his mouth was; a classical liberal who
loved America and who admired and was friends with John Wayne; a sex symbol who
called his wife between takes … because he missed her.
Far
from perfect, nothing close to a saint, Paul Newman was still a good man, and
his own man.
In
his definitive biography, Shawn Levy
writes that “Just days before he succumbed [to cancer], sitting in the garden
at Westport with his daughters, he spoke his last recorded words and spoke about
how he felt about it all.”
