{"id":107,"date":"2008-10-03T10:54:16","date_gmt":"2008-10-03T10:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/10\/paul-newman-from-the-silver-ch.html"},"modified":"2008-10-03T10:54:16","modified_gmt":"2008-10-03T10:54:16","slug":"paul-newman-from-the-silver-ch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/10\/paul-newman-from-the-silver-ch.html","title":{"rendered":"Paul Newman: From “The Silver Chalice” to “Dashboard Jesus”"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the week since Paul Newman died I’ve been looking for the Catholic “hook” to write something here about the great movie star. Providentially, and not surprisingly, thanks to its punchier new style, the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano<\/em>, gave me an opening. The Sept. 29 edition carried an appreciation of the actor, writing:”In his films he was the tough guy and the braggart, the rebel and the conquistador. In reality Newman was a generous heart, an actor of a dignity and style rare in Hollywood quarters.”<\/p>\n

\"Newman--Silver<\/form>\n

Religion News Service’s man in Rome, Francis X. Rocca, gave his entry on the Vatican appreciation one of the better headlines ever: “Peter praises Paul.”<\/a> The Catholic News Service write-up<\/a> is more straightforward but has a nice roundup of appreciations from Catholic reviewers. Both RNS and CNS note that L’Osservatore Romano<\/em> praises Newman’s first big screen role, in “The Silver Chalice,”<\/a> in which he plays an artisan who crafts a silver chalice to hold the Holy Grail. New man himself hated the role, and when it ran on television in 1966, he took out an ad in a Hollywood trade paper apologizing for it and asking people not to watch. I’ve never seen that movie–and doubt I will at this point–but I couldn’t begin to enumerate the many other fantastic Newman films, from the all-time best buddy movie, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” to “Nobody’s Fool” and so on. (See a filmography here<\/a>.) <\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object>But I’ll cite the one that the Vatican paper did not, namely, “Cool Hand Luke.”<\/a> Forget the bailout (the financial package, not Sarah Palin’s performance). Watch that again this weekend. Not only does it have as many great lines and great performances as, say “Casablanca,” but it is also a Christian allegory of sorts–as the CNS story says, “a Christ figure coming to the nasty world of the prison and sacrificing himself for others–not in a very conscious, churchy way but in a subtle, very intelligent way.””It was a very, very good film. It was shown a lot in the 1960s and ’70s in a lot of church halls as well as at film festivals,” the retired reviewer of St. Anthony Messenger, Jim Arnold, said. I’d have to agree. Besides, there is that very moving moment–which is usually played for laughs today–when Newman plucks out the tune to “Plastic Jesus” and sings to himself after he learns his mother has died. There are many versions, many lyrics, but here’s the best I could find. Better yet, watch it on YouTube: <\/p>\n

I don’t care if it rains or freezeslong as I’ve got my Plastic JesusGlued to the dashboard of my car,You can buy Him phosphorescentGlows in the dark, He’s Pink and Pleasant,Take Him with you when you’re travelling far.I don’t care if it’s dark or scary,Long as I have magnetic Mary,Ridin’ on the dashboard of my car,I feel I’m protected amply,I’ve got the whole damn Holy Family,Riding on the dashboard of my car.You can buy a Sweet MadonnaDressed in rhinestones sitting on aPedestal of abalone shell,Goin’ ninety, I’m not wary’Cause I’ve got my Virgin Mary,Guaranteeing I won’t go to Hell<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Newman was also of course a remarkable humanitarian, a loving husband and father, and about as human a celebrity as one could find. I’d advise starting with this NYT appreciation, “An Actor Whose Baby Blues Came in Shades of Gray.”<\/a>Requiescat in pace.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the week since Paul Newman died I’ve been looking for the Catholic “hook” to write something here about the great movie star. Providentially, and not surprisingly, thanks to its punchier new style, the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, gave me an opening. The Sept. 29 edition carried an appreciation of the actor, writing:”In his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nPaul Newman: From "The Silver Chalice" to "Dashboard Jesus" - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/10\/paul-newman-from-the-silver-ch.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Paul Newman: From "The Silver Chalice" to "Dashboard Jesus" - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the week since Paul Newman died I’ve been looking for the Catholic “hook” to write something here about the great movie star. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}