When Paul Newman staked $500,000 on proving how tall he was: “Real men don’t bet $1,000”
How tall was Paul Newman, really? Apparently, those were fighting words to the legendary actor, who once staked half a million dollars on proving that he wasn’t as short as some people claimed.
Not every leading man needs to be statuesque, as Tom Cruise has been reiterating for the last four decades, and nor do actors need to even be average height, as Danny DeVito can attest. And yet, Newman was so butthurt at being accused of being several inches shorter than he claimed to be that he opted to put his money where his mouth was, regardless of how close it was or wasn’t to the ceiling.
At various points, Newman was billed as being five feet and 11 inches, five feet and ten inches, or even five feet and nine and a half inches. Any one of those hardly makes him Joe Pesci or Kevin Hart, but heaven forbid that anybody try and make make him any smaller than that. The New York Post did, though, and the Academy Award winner wouldn’t stand for it.
The publication and the star had been at loggerheads for years after constant mud-slinging in both directions, so when the five feet and 11 inches thing was in danger of becoming accepted as fact, columnist Richard Johnson said that Newman had never been as tall at any point in his life, “Except in heels.”
The Post was so sure that Newman was at least a couple of inches closer to the ground than he was willing to admit that it offered to pay $1,000 to a charity of its choosing for every inch taller that he actually was. The Butch Cassidy and The Sting headliner was so incensed that he arranged a television appearance with the express purpose of debunking the speculation.
“For a newspaper that loses $10 million a year, it strikes me that losing a thousand bucks on a bet is irrelevant,” he said. “These guys threw down the gauntlet, but it has the moral force of a powder puff. Real men don’t eat quiche, and real men don’t bet only $1,000.” What did quiche have to do with it? Fuck knows, but Newman opted to lay down a gauntlet of his own.
If he was measured, and he came in as taller than five feet and eight inches, he’d pay $500,000 to charity instead of the Post‘s measly offering of $3,000 at most. In keeping with his competitive spirit, the actor consulted an orthopaedist, who recommended that he be measured first thing in the morning, and that he might want to think about wearing gravity boots and hanging upside down the night before.
Did it happen? No, it did not, and he called out his opponents for it. “Finding the truth in The New York Post has been as difficult as finding a good hamburger in Albania,” he raged. “Sorry you guys turned chicken when you got to the big time. I’m sorry I got sucked into operating on the same level that you guys do, but give you points on winning that one. Never again.”
Height can be a prickly issue for a lot of men, but since he was willing to stake $500,000 on not being five feet and eight inches, Newman must have been fairly confident that he wasn’t.
