Paul Newman

Paul Leonard Newman was born on January 26, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio. Newman grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, with his older brother Arthur and his parents, Arthur and Teresa. Graduating high school in 1943, Newman briefly attended college before enlisting in the U.S. Navy Air Corps. After leaving the military in 1946, Paul Newman attended Kenyon College in his home state of Ohio. After finishing college in 1949, Paul Newman did summer stock theater in Wisconsin where he met his first wife, actress Jacqueline Witte. Their first child, a son named Scott, was born there. After asking his brother to take over the business, Newman and his family relocated to Connecticut, where he studied at the Yale School of Drama. Newman started his own food company in the early 1980s. He started out the business by making bottles of salad dressing to give out as gifts for Christmas one year with his friend, writer A. E. Hotchner. Newman’s other charitable foundations include the Scott Newman Center, which he founded in 1978, after his only son died of an accidental overdose of alcohol and prescription drugs. He also established the Hole in the Wall Camps to give children with life-threatening illnesses a memorable, free holiday. Several years before the establishment of Newman’s Own, on Nov. 28, 1978, Scott Newman, the oldest of Mr. Newman’s six children and his only son, died at 28 of an overdose of alcohol and pills. Scott's mother was his first wife, Jacqueline Witte, an actress he had met in summer stock. By 1957 Mr. Newman and Joanne Woodward were discreetly living together in Hollywood; his wife had initially refused to give him a divorce. He later admitted that his drinking was out of control during this period. With his divorce granted, Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward were married on Jan. 29, 1958, and went on to rear their three daughters far from Hollywood, in a farmhouse on 15 acres in Westport, Conn Besides Ms. Woodward and his daughters Susan and Nell, he is survived by three other daughters, Stephanie, Melissa and Clea; two grandchildren; and his brother Arthur.