Cary Grant names his favourite Paul Newman movies: “Those films were great”
As one of ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood’s biggest and most popular stars, Cary Grant shared the screen with a staggering collection of industry icons on either side of the camera.
While it’s hardly shocking for an A-lister to rub shoulders with the biggest names in their chosen profession, the laundry list of legends Grant collaborated with during his career reads like a who’s who of the most indelible names to step foot on a film set.
He was directed by Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Joseph L Mankiewicz, and Leo McCarey, and shared scenes with Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, David Niven, Claude Rains, Tony Curtis, Ingrid Bergman, Joan Fontaine, Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, and Marlene Dietrich.
That’s barely even scratching the surface, although ‘New Hollywood’ luminaries were in short supply. Of course, that’s to be expected when Grant retired from cinema following the release of 1966’s Walk, Don’t Run, even though he was active at the same time as many figures who’d illuminate the next era.
When Paul Newman made his screen debut in 1954’s The Silver Chalice, Grant was on the cusp of ending his self-imposed exile from the business with To Catch a Thief, which was released the following year. That film reunited him with Alfred Hitchcock, who’d go on to direct Newman in Torn Curtain, which was coincidentally released the same year as Grant’s final feature.
They passed like ships in the night, but he was able to admire Newman’s work from afar. More specifically, he adored his two seminal collaborations with Robert Redford in George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, using those two classics to pass judgment on the best way for the latter to avoid being typecast and pigeonholed as a pretty face.
“He’s so good-looking,” Grant marvelled to Redbook of Redford. “He doesn’t have to worry about it now, but the day will come when he’ll have to decide where he’s going. He’s made some of the right decisions so far. Those films he did with Paul Newman were great. If you’re getting along well with certain people, it shows on the screen.”
Hill, Newman, and Redford made for one hell of a trinity, with their two movies together combining to earn over $350 million at the box office and win 11 Academy Awards from 18 nominations. The trio never made anything else together as a unit, but those two pictures were more than enough to cement the A-listers as one of Hollywood’s most famous onscreen partnerships.
Thanks to those films, their names will forever be intertwined in cinema history. Even when Grant was reflecting on how Redford could break out of his pretty-boy shackles, he couldn’t do it without invoking Newman; such was the critical, commercial, and creative potency of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting.
