Paul Newman names his most disappointing movie: “Somewhere along the line, we made a mistake”
According to Paul Newman, the worst movie he ever made also happened to be the first, which meant – in his own mind, at least – that he could spend the rest of his career safe in the knowledge that he’d already reached his nadir.
It’s true that The Silver Chalice isn’t remembered as one of ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood’s greatest historical epics, but was it really so bad that Newman felt the urge to take out a full-page newspaper advert insisting that audiences avoid it at all costs when it was shown on television?
Maybe, maybe not, but his gambit backfired when it drew healthy viewership figures, with Newman’s staunch opposition to his feature debut having the opposite effect when his clear hatred for the picture encouraged people who wouldn’t have ordinarily given it the time of day to check it out for themselves and see what all the fuss was about.
Obviously, it was onwards and upwards from there, with Newman comfortably settled as one of the biggest and most bankable stars in the business by the end of the 1960s, notching four Academy Award nominations for ‘Best Actor’ by the end of the decade. He even seamlessly transitioned to filmmaking, with his debut from behind the camera, Rachel, Rachel, landing on the ‘Best Picture’ shortlist.
His third effort as a director, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, was shortlisted for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where the film’s leading lady and Newman’s wife, Joanne Woodward, won the ‘Best Actress’ prize to go along with a Golden Globe nomination. Those are the hallmarks of success by any reasonable metric, although the filmmaker would disagree.
“I’m not sure what we did wrong with Marigolds,” he mused to Rolling Stone. “But somewhere along the line, we made a mistake with it.” He was reasonably happy with its creative merits but didn’t believe it was given a fair shake of the stick at the box office. It was a modest hit internationally, even if it didn’t make much of a splash on home soil.
Despite the nonsensical nomenclature, it was a relatively straightforward drama. Woodward’s middle-aged widow and her two daughters are stuck in a social and societal rut they can’t escape from, with the titular science project serving as the backdrop to the family learning some harsh truths about each other and their way of life.
“The people who see it, though, say, ‘Hey, gee, it has what most American films have stopped having. It has a very honest emotional base,'” Newman pondered. “And they’re right, I think. It’s no intellectual exercise, that picture. Most American pictures are too cooled-out and intellectual, too cerebral.”
The French loved it, which was at least a minor moral victory. Unfortunately, Stateside audiences were wholly unimpressed by the movie, leaving him frustrated and crushingly disappointed that it didn’t catch on.
