Paul Newman’s Classic Performances in ‘The Hustler’ and ‘The Verdict’

You do your work and hope it comes out good.

– Paul Newman

We can all agree that birthdays should, in theory, be cheerful days. This year, on 25 May, instead of enjoying my celebratory cake and ice cream, I was feeling Ingmar Bergman-level melancholy. Paul Newman, arguably one of the most deserving Hollywood actors to actually deserve the title of “legend”, announced that he would retire from acting, stating that he no longer could maintain the level of quality he once achieved. The press statement issued by 82-year-old Newman said:

“You start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So I think that’s pretty much a closed book for me.”

With a career spanning nearly 60 years, it’s hard to pinpoint the true highlights. Fortunately, though, there are two recently-released special edition DVDs, The Hustler (1961) and The Verdict (1982) that manage to weigh in as two of the master’s most unique, accomplished performances. With 20 years between them, these films are able to show off Newman’s maturity as an artist as well as his personal growth; we see Newman over the course of these discs mature from a cocksure young man into middle age. At times, it’s hard to remember that it’s the same man playing these two very different characters.

The elder Newman is not afraid to be wholly unsympathetic: He explored the very real and very dark corners of society’s underbelly in his later career in such diverse films as Martin Scorsese’s 1986 sequel to The Hustler and The Color of Money in the role of an uber-grouchy patriarch in Merchant Ivory’s Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990), and again in Sam Mendes’ gangster graphic novel interpretation, The Road to Perdition (2002), where he played a dastardly Irish mob boss.

Newman’s willingness to experiment has always been something worn teasingly on his sleeve. When choosing roles, he had a penchant not only for choosing crowd-pleasers but also for remaining true to his roots and working with theater-trained playwrights and directors much like his collaborators on The Verdict, David Mamet and Sidney Lumet.

Mamet, of course, is one of the most important American playwrights of our time, while Lumet is the ageless directorial institution who helmed critically successful film adaptations of plays such as (1957), and Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (1962). After all, Newman was an Actor’s Studio-disciplined young lion at heart, who cut his teeth in plays by William Inge (Picnic, 1953), and Tennessee Williams (1958 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof earned Newman his first Best Actor nomination at the Oscars). One of Newman’s final roles was in the Broadway and PBS adaptation of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (2003).

This enthusiasm for and dedication to the traditions of the theater comes across clearly in Newman’s portrayal of alcoholic, broken lawyer Frank Galvin. Despite the many accolades he won for morally ambiguous characterizations in his later career, it was in Lumet’s film adaptation of Barry Reid’s novel The Verdict (1982) that he was given the best chance to flex his Strasberg-toned muscles. The resulting performance stands among his all-time finest.

A sad sack ambulance-chasing lawyer who is not above dropping by the local funeral parlor to pick over the carcasses, Frank is a man caught in the tail-end of a downward spiral, nearing rock bottom. Enjoying a doughnut and a shot of hard liquor as he combs the obituaries (presumably searching for his next quick buck), his hands shake uncontrollably. Instead of picking up his drink, Frank puts his lips around the rim of the glass and knocks it back using only his mouth – his alcoholic tremors are so bad that they render his hands useless until that morning shot of whiskey goes down. This loner is in bad shape, physically and mentally.

His only friend, partner Mickey Morrissey (the late Jack Warden), arranges one last big “money” job for the deteriorating legal eagle, a case that will “set him up” for retirement: the family of a pregnant young woman who was left a vegetable during childbirth (she was given the wrong anesthetic) wants closure. The Catholic Church runs the hospital where the woman was left after the incident of malpractice, and they want an easy transaction with the family, as well.

The hospital and its staff were directly responsible for all of these problems, making them culpable in the eyes of the law. Run like a corporation, the Church isn’t above a little dirty business in order to keep everything quiet: they’ve relocated witnesses and paid hush money to those who might come forward. Like most corporations, though, the Church wants to keep everything as quiet and, cheap as possible, despite being responsible for the egregious injury to the woman and the death of her baby. It would look very bad for the Church if the truth should find its way out to the court of public opinion.

As is the case with most of Lumet’s oeuvre, viewers are treated to generally the same milieu: a sleazy, corrupt big city (this time Boston), an underdog anti-hero that you find yourself unabashedly rooting for as he tangles with the evil bureaucrats and judges on the take. There are many of these clichés scattered throughout the film. It’s a big, old-fashioned genre picture, a paranoid crime thriller, and a buoyant courtroom drama all rolled into one.

What sets the autumnal-hued Verdict apart from a thousand other films like it is not only the blistering central performance of its star, but also a sprawling supporting cast that includes stalwarts like Warden, James Mason (brilliant and predatory as opposing council for the Church), Charlotte Rampling, Milo O’Shea, and Lindsay Crouse. These actors are obviously dedicated to the material and also dedicated to making the aforementioned genre clichés disappear by endowing each look, each word with gravitas and ambiguity. Lumet is a generous director (as usual), capturing each of his character’s shadings with the expertise he brought to the table with such classic, character-driven films such as Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976), and Prince of the City (1981). Each film possessed a larger social issue at the heart, primarily dealing with the battle of the “everyman” against the bureaucracy, and against other corrupt figures in power.

Church officials get wind that Frank had once been accused of tampering with a jury and they begin to bargain with him relentlessly; betting that they can force him into settling for much less than he had anticipated. Frank unexpectedly connects to this family, in particular, the comatose woman left to languish on an impersonal hospital bed. The proposition of tackling a meaningful (and profitable) case awakens Frank’s intellect and his sense of competitiveness, and once he realizes that the Church has perpetrated a gargantuan cover-up, Frank decides to go for the jugular.

It is his last case, and he wants to come out with not only money for himself, but also justice for the family and the woman. Frank wants the Church to pay for and acknowledge what they have done. He wants to do it right, with dignity and grace; as if he is trying to gain absolution for wasting his own life. Newman, whose son died of a drug overdose only years prior to this role, plays haunted achingly well. In a scene where the duplicitous Laura (Rampling) attempts to shake his coolness on the night before court, she ends up sending Frank into a fit of panic attacks while he is trying to stay on the wagon. Laura begins to mercilessly drill him on his past, his work, and his mistakes. She cuts to his core after sneaking into his life and his bed, to aid the opposition. This is prime material for any capable performer to play, but the seasoned Newman nails both the character’s icy veneer and his frightened core – in a scene that lasts only two minutes.

While he would go on to receive an honorary Oscar three years after his performance in The Verdict (and he would win the competitive award for Best Actor one year after that), it is his role as Frank Galvin that defines Newman’s middle-aged transition into his senior years. Still sharply handsome in the ’80s, Newman bravely began to show his age around this time. With Frank, he was offered a perfect showcase to display his skill as an actor and bury his often larger-than-life persona and his innate charm and likeability. As Frank, he lives on the edge as a great sort of con man and liar who, against all odds, finds redemption. The performance is both bittersweet and triumphant. And as different from the character as you would imagine Newman to be, the unshakable feeling that this might actually be the closest to Newman’s own personality that cinema has ever gotten permeates.

Even though the menu of the extras disc is dated and cheesy with its silly gavel and scales of justice graphics and an altar boy’s soprano cooing unremittingly in the background, the content is illuminating and comprehensive. There is a bevy of fact-packed, behind-the-scenes documentaries that feature interviews with Newman, producer Richard D. Zanuck (who called this film his “best”), the novel’s author, Reed, and, amazingly, the long-dead Warden and Mason, who were captured during the original film’s shoot.

In one of the bonus features, Paul Newman on the Craft of Acting (shot in 2006), Newman astutely comments that this film is not a “court thing, an attack on the Catholic Church, or hospitals. It’s really the redemption of a human being.” While it is wonderful to get such first-hand knowledge from the actor, one can’t help but feel that this great is giving up all of his mystery in the interest of the future generation’s greater understanding of film acting and technique. It’s great to get to hear Newman’s voice as more of a teacher, an educator, but the lingering sadness that he will never again act remains in the forefront of these interviews with the octogenarian.

He gets into the importance of rehearsal on set: “it sure as hell builds up your confidence. It saves a lot of time and a lot of money. I don’t know why that hasn’t caught on. It’s the only way to shoot a film.” When talking about building performances, Newman insists “I never know where it comes from.” He goes on to say that you can never really credit any single person working on a film with crafting a successful performance; not even the actor. Pieces can come from the actor’s personal experience, the director’s instruction or something completely unrelated. As far as lectures on method go, there are few actors who can explain the intricacies of giving a performance as eloquently as Newman can, and in a small way, he helps debunk many of the myths about acting. Newman reveals the two basic but vital elements of any performance: rehearsal and improvisation.