Bill Wallace Sports

Paul Newman was an athlete too, a courageous older athlete. He drove race cars … drove them hard, relentlessly and occasionally successfully. 

  Our paths touched but did not cross because I was mad at him for no reason at all. And later too respectful, too reticent. He’s gone now, lung cancer ending an 83-year-old distinguished life on September 26 at his home here in Westport, Connecticut.  

We shared this hometown and way back we shared a liquor store on Main Street, a branch of the long-gone Gristede’s market. Forty some years ago I was there and saw, inside the window of the stand-up cooler, a crude crayon sign. “St. Pauli Girls. Paul Newman’s Favorite Beer.”  What pretentiousness, I thought.

St.Pauli Girls, which few in America knew then, happened to be my favorite beer. I did not need any damn actor, Paul Newman, to tell me about it.

Not long after, 1968, I was covering the Indianapolis 500-mile race, an important one at the old Brickyard because a new engine was being introduced, a gas turbojet made by Pratt & Whitney, the aircraft engine manufacturer, and driven by Joe Leonard. 

This car led the race for 31 laps and conked out because of a fuel line failure on the 191^st lap, nine short of finishing.  The Lotus made next to no noise, startling and disquieting for those in charge of the Indy 500.  A hushed Indy 500 would not do, so the rules were changed, the turbojet banned.

I managed to write my story for the New York Times quickly, and hitch a ride to the airport, no mean feat as 250,000 exited the Speedway. Aboard the 6 o’clock DC-9 to LaGuardia, sitting in a coach seat across the aisle from me, was a quiet Paul Newman. Up front, at the head of the cabin and facing toward us was a loud, obnoxious drunk pestering Newman, who never flinched for the ensuing uncomfortable hour.

I thought, “Bill, forget St.Pauli Girls. Give the guy a break. You trade seats with the person next to him and we can talk about the race, about Westport, our daughters who go to the same school and so on.”  But I never budged. Stubborn. Shy?

I learned later than Newman was at the race because he was scheduled to star in the film, Winning, there that summer. Perhaps this film assignment piqued his interest in car racing because he went to the Bob Bondurant driving school and became hooked.

According to an essay plucked from the Indy 500 website, the following took place.

“While virtually all of the ‘staged’ on-track sequences (intercut with actual 1968 500 race footage) were performed by a half a dozen or so then-current 500 drivers, Newman elected to waive the use of a stunt double. In the footage used from the actual race, the fictitious Frank Capua is really Bobby Unser on his way to winning that 500. In the majority of the close-up cockpit shots, however, the helmeted figure is actually Newman, matching the speed of the camera car driven by Roger Ward, his new friend and coach.”

Ward was a famous driver and Indianapolis resident, a multiple winner of the 500.

Newman went on to race himself for a big part of the rest of his life. Highlights: A member of the driving teams that took victory in class at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2005 and a respected second in the 1979 24 Hours of LeMans. He was a pro.

And a car owner. Newman partnered with Carl Haas in sponsorship of a race team that from 1983 to 1995 was a major force at the Indianapolis 500. They had the superb Mario Andretti as their driver and twice they just missed, finishing second.   

A few years ago Andretti had occasion to remark that if Newman had started his race driving earlier he could have had “an incredible career.” What a disappointment that would have been for legions of film fans, men and women.

Newman, in a newspaper interview in 2006, said, “I was certainly never a great driver. I won a few championships and some races. I’m just happy the way it turned out.”

His wife of half a century, Joanne Woodward, was never happy about the dangerous driving that she endured. I ran across her once walking away from an improvised track at the Meadowlands in New Jersey where her husband was flogging a beat-up car round and round on a hot afternoon. The race was an unimportant preliminary to a big Indy-type circuit event the next day. He was in his 60’s then, as was I — and by then an admirer for sure, St.Pauli Girls forgotten.

I abstained from introducing myself to Mrs. Newman as a neighbor. Why? By then the Newmans had come to exist comfortably in Westport without celebrity intrusions. They were “sighted” all over town, in restaurants and shops. And seldom if ever did anyone stop, ask for an autograph or whatever. It seemed to be an unwritten rule.

That attitude certainly had my approval, having come from the world of professional sports where fans too often badger their heroes on and off the field interminably.

If I had ever had a dialogue opportunity with Newman, I had a script rehearsed… about St.Pauli Girls and the plane ride. I imagined we would have become buddies and he’d have me over for a beer. We left it that way.