Dinner With Paul Newman

Where to Begin With So Many Beginnings

They say every cell in our body is replaced every 7 years.  My life has felt kind of like that - one scenario replaced by another, leaving me with more a series of anecdotes then a long and steady path to the finish line. And because these anecdotes are so loosely tied together, if they are tied together at all, maybe I can make sense of it if I put them down one anecdote at a time. 

No better place to start than randomly selecting the first thing that pops into my head, so I'll begin with:

Dinner with Paul Newman

Paul Newman and Joel Grey on the set of BB & the I

Paul Newman's secretary got sick. So sick that she couldn't be with him for the filming of Buffalo Bill and the Indians, which he was shooting in Canada, so she organized someone to take her place.  I had been plucked from my meaty receptionist job at an insurance company to assist the Casting Director and photograph the making of the film, and we were all put up at hotels in downtown Calgary.  Paul's fill-in secretary, let's call her Linda, and I became friends, and she invited me to dinner in her hotel room, saying Paul would join us.

There was more drama on that set than I'd experienced in a long time and one of the little dramettes was Linda's infatuation and passionate affair with Will Sampson, an American Indian who was a well known actor as he'd done One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I arrived for dinner and Paul answered the door. Linda had made chili on a hotplate, but she was in a panic as she had gotten a phone call from Sampson, and said she had to run up to his room but she would be right back and we should start without her.

I wish I could tell you something more interesting happened, but Linda never came back and we ate our chili while Paul mostly talked about racing. He loved car racing more than anything else in the world except his wife, who he missed terribly, and who he hoped would visit as soon as she could arrange it. He had the enthusiasm and gusto of a 12-year old boy. I was surprised his eyes weren't bluer, and that he was so slight. I was surprised at how friendly and open he was. So, we talked about car racing, Mrs. Newman, more car racing, and types of racing engines.  

This is mostly how it goes - you get to meet someone famous and very little happens. Maybe your mind embellishes it later, makes it grander and more entertaining, but honestly, it was a mostly one-sided conversation with a very enthusiastic race car driver who acted for a living...and if it hadn't been dinner with Paul Newman, in a hotel room, all by ourselves, it would be one of those anecdotes I would never remember.