{"id":90,"date":"2008-09-27T08:27:54","date_gmt":"2008-09-27T16:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostlynf.wordpress.com\/?p=90"},"modified":"2008-09-27T08:27:54","modified_gmt":"2008-09-27T16:27:54","slug":"shameless-exploitation-paul-newman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"Shameless Exploitation (Paul Newman)"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I heard the news this morning that Paul Newman had died, I, like everyone else, immediately recalled memorable scenes from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid<\/em>, Cool Hand Luke<\/em>, The Sting<\/em>, and many other films he made during his Hollywood career.\u00a0 He had a steady gaze, a solid resonating voice, and a confident way of delivering a line — dramatic or comedic — that only truly great actors can manage.\u00a0 Some words are overused in this celebrity-obsessed culture.\u00a0 “Great”, however, is appropriate for someone like Newman.<\/p>\n

\"paulnewman\"Off-screen, Newman had genuine class and charisma, too.\u00a0 He was married to Joanne Woodward for 50 years, drove race-cars professionally, and created the wonderful Hole-in-the-Wall-Gang* camps for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases.\u00a0 It’s this latter aspect of Newman’s life (and his book) that I’d like to chat about for a few paragraphs today.<\/p>\n

About twenty-five years ago, “Newman’s Own” salad dressings started to pop up in grocery stores.\u00a0 It wasn’t just another commercial product with a celebrity label.\u00a0 It was a fund-raising machine for dreams.\u00a0 For many years Newman had made his own salad dressing at home for family and friends.\u00a0 He even bottled it once for guests to take home from a holiday party.\u00a0 It was so good that his friends pleaded with him to go into business selling it.\u00a0 He turned them down again and again.\u00a0 Then the idea of charity entered the equation and he became a man on a mission.<\/p>\n

Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good<\/em><\/strong> [LibraryThing <\/a>\/ WorldCat<\/a>] is Newman’s own account of his venture into the world of business and, more specifically, the strange world of business for no profit.\u00a0 He and his co-author, A. E. Hotchner, tell the often humorous stories relating to his insistence on no food preservatives, his search for the right bottle, the story behind the goofy product labels, and his iron-clad rule of wiping the financial ledgers clean every year with no money left over.\u00a0 He paid the bills, pocketed nothing for himself, and left everything to charities.\u00a0 Everything<\/em>.\u00a0 Over $200 million dollars.\u00a0 Each year the company started over with a zero balance.<\/p>\n

Once the business was established, he began creating a series of Hole-in-the-Wall-Gang camps for severely sick kids.\u00a0 These were children whose worlds had been taken over by clinical tests and long hospital stays.\u00a0 They needed fun and sunshine, too.\u00a0 The camps gave them a chance to be outdoors with other kids like themselves.\u00a0 Doctors were nearby, of course, but the hospital walls were gone.\u00a0 In that environment, they were no longer different.\u00a0 They were not “the kid with cancer”.\u00a0 They were kids, pure and simple.\u00a0 They were invited to have the kind of fun most kids take for granted.\u00a0 And they were free to have the time of their lives.<\/p>\n

The “Newman’s Own” line of products now goes far beyond his original home-made salad dressing.\u00a0 The Hole-in-the-Wall-Gang continues to thrive, too.<\/p>\n

Sure, I think of Paul Newman’s classic movies when I hear his name.\u00a0 But even more often — when I’m cooking or having a salad; every time I open a bottle of Italian dressing or a jar of spaghetti sauce — I glance at his silly label, think back a few years when I first read Shameless Exploitation<\/em>, and smile for all those kids Paul Newman gave (and continues to give) happy childhood memories.\u00a0 That’s his legacy, too.<\/p>\n

* The Hole-in-the-Wall-Gang is, of course, the name of Butch Cassidy’s band of outlaws depicted in Newman’s most memorable film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I heard the news this morning that Paul Newman had died, I, like everyone else, immediately recalled memorable scenes from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke, The Sting, and many other films he made during his … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[31,72,81,171],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","tag-actors","tag-cancer","tag-charity","tag-paul-newman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}