‘The Towering Inferno’: The Paul Newman classic he called a “junk movie”
There aren’t many stars in Hollywood who don’t succumb to the lure of the paycheque gig at least once during their careers, but it was entirely fitting that when Paul Newman signed on for an effects-heavy blockbuster, it ended up becoming known as a classic.
Throughout his decades at the top of the industry ladder, Newman very rarely spoke disparagingly of his own work. When he did, he did it in style, famously taking out full-page advertisements to dissuade audiences from watching his debut feature, The Silver Chalice, when it was airing on television.
With two honorary Academy Awards and a competitive ‘Best Actor’ prize from ten nominations, four Golden Globes, and a Primetime Emmy to his name, never mind a filmography that boasts The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, Slapshot, and many more, Newman certainly knew how to pick the roles that made the best use of his talents.
Very rarely would he lend his name to mindless escapism designed with the intention of earning the most amount of money at the box office, but when he did, the film in question still managed to win three Oscars and earn a ‘Best Picture’ nomination, such was his innate ability to know what was going to work.
The downside is that he had to collaborate with Steve McQueen, and the two A-list heavyweights found themselves engaged in a figurative dick-measuring contest like no other when they battled for top-billed supremacy in The Towering Inferno. The results were suitably spectacular, not that Newman ever envisioned himself undergoing a reinvention as an action hero.
He knew exactly what he was getting into, though, and he even revealed it was the changing taste of audiences that helped twist his arm. “If you’ve been in the business as long as I have, the audience will simply not accept you in certain parts,” he told The Atlantic. “People will not accept me with a black wig and a putty nose. That’s not what they want to see.”
“There’s an escapist kind of film which is very fashionable now. The Towering Inferno is a perfect example,” he continued. “I knew that the quicker I got off the screen and the stuntman got on, the quicker the picture would start rolling. I knew it was going to achieve what it wanted to achieve, and that is to frighten people. It dealt with height, which is very fearful, and fire. That combination in creating a danger movie is irresistible.”
On accusations that an explosive disaster epic was beneath him, Newman addressed whether or not The Towering Inferno was “a junk movie” in typically dignified form. “It probably is that,” he acknowledged. “But it is a very distinguished junk movie.”
It’s comfortably one of the best to emerge from the 1970s boom period, with the co-leading man happy to admit it was made primarily for the eyes and not the brain.
