Paul Newman and me: In the men's room with Butch, "Fast" Eddie and Cool Hand Luke

[eplovejoy]

It's a miracle that reporters aren't sued every day for libel. Most can't even get the in-house gossip straight. ace reporter and comic-strip character Brenda Starr

When Paul Newman misunderstood what I asked him for in a men's room, it was embarrassing. More for him, I thought. Now an e-mail from a former co-worker has me reconsidering that, and wondering about how fame distorts perceptions. Is it possible that perhaps Mr. Newman has an advantage over me in that department?

The e-mail arrived this morning, 2/2/02, the most delightfully symmetrical date we'll see until March 3 next year. The message is filled with the usual updates and inquiries one might expect from a colleague one hasn't been in touch with for a few years. At least it is until my correspondent gets to the end. After many paragraphs, her message ends with, "By the way, do you still get teased about asking Paul Newman for his autograph in the bathroom?"

That "by the way" should not fool anyone. Her other questions were the pro forma ones that would allow her to go on and on about her fabulous life while feigning interest in mine. It might sound like a parenthetical (but without the parentheses), but the question about about what I'd done in a men's room with a movie star more than a decade earlier was the least cursory one she asked.

If that sounds like I'm bitter, perhaps I am. I didn't realize anyone had ever teased me about the incident. When it happened, I mentioned it to some people in the newsroom. Everyone got a chuckle but that, it had seemed, was all. That people might have been talking about this behind my back came as a surprise about as pleasant as learning that Enron has Lay-d a financial egg. What other secrets are they keeping from me?

The question that started me wondering grew from a moment about 15 years ago, when I was working as a reporter for The Hartford Courant, Connecticut's largest daily newspaper, http://www.hartfordcourant.com . It bills itself as "The Oldest Continuously Published Newspaper in the United States," the awkwardness of which is demanded by The New York Post's being older but having gone out of business for a while in the early 1800s. Many people instead called The Courant "The Oldest Continuously Published Newspaper in the United States That Has Never Won a Pulitzer."

I was going to change that. This was my first job after graduating from journalism school and I knew that I was the person to end the paper's embarrassing honors drought. It didn't work out that way. The Courant has since won a pair of Pulitzers*, but all I can boast is that at least I didn't impede the paper's efforts.

The first of what I expected would be a series of reportorial triumphs was my big "scoop" about Paul Newman's plans to build a camp in northeastern Connecticut for children with serious illnesses. He and his food company business partner, the writer A.E. Hotchner, had reportedly been planning to open the camp in northwestern Connecticut. It was my story that alerted the world to this seismic shift in plans.

If they asked, I probably would have tried to leave the Pulitzer jurors with the impression that this revelation resulted from my extensive research and exceptional drive. Except I learned about it from one of the paper's copy editors. He had heard a rumor and thought I should look into it. The story fell into my lap, or at least it would have if I'd been sitting down.

That first article led to my being The Courant's reporter at the Sept. 17, 1986 news conference at which Newman and company confirmed their plans to open The Hole-In-The-Wall-Gang Camp, named for the gang run by Butch Cassidy, whom Newman played in a movie that some people have seen. The camp is in Ashford and Eastford, two small towns near the outer limits of the region I covered.

I described that initial media event in prose that was both powerful and subtle, evocative and unforgettable. I did for that press conference in a room at the Yale-New Haven Medical Center what Stephen Crane did for campaigns on Civil War battlefields, except my stuff was not fiction. But after my words made their way through the sausage grinder that is the editorial process, the first paragraph came out as: NEW HAVEN -- In a small room crowded with reporters, medical officials and curious spectators, actor Paul Newman said Wednesday that he would help sponsor a summer camp in northeastern Connecticut for children with life-threatening illnesses. (Isn't it a shame when editors can't recongize pearls?)

What I thought would be my big break and lead to my hobnobbing at Elaine's with Newman, Liz Taylor and Carl Bernstein led instead to my attending several very long meetings of the Ashford Zoning Committee. Leo Nevas, the attorney who represented Newman and the camp in the approvals process, arrived at these hearings in a limousine that he didn't have to drive. I drove myself in my used Honda Accord. It's not the first time that I've heard myself asking myself, "Would it have killed you to take the LSATs?"

I wrote many articles about those zoning meetings. Along the way I also wrote a lengthy article about the sophisticated medical arrangements made for the camp, a piece I thought would be a springboard for a series of informative and heartwarming essays about the sick kids and the caring medical professionals who would help them. Instead, the abridged piece ran on the 15th page of a back section, next to a nearly full-page ad for a department store advertising its "biggest Sunday sale since last Sunday." (Yes, it is a shame when editors can't recognize pearls.)

One result of those numerous zoning hearings is that construction of the camp was approved. Another is that I spent the day of the groundbreaking following Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward, as they trekked through mud and occasionally pointed somewhere and said something. I was one of a pack of reporters and all that distinguished me from them was that I'd been to the town before while most of them, some of whom had come from as far as Japan and Sweden, were apparently making their first visit. Each of us got the exact same quotes, except that some of us jotted them in our notebooks while others captured them on tape.

My determination to make my story different yielded to my determination to get back to the office before the gunk on my boots (where are the muckrackers when you need them?) weighed more than I did. That changed with what I thought was a stroke of luck at the reception. As I was turning away from the sink in the men's room, which was empty except for me, Paul Newman walked in with a friend. This, I thought, would be my chance to get the nugget that would elevate my reportage above that of the horde. My persistance (and diplomacy) would secure he pithy quote that no one else had, or the touching anecdote that only I could convince Mr. Newman to share with the world.

Of course I realized I would have to proceed with tact. I'm not a dolt, despite what some smark aleck DoT clerk put on my driver's license. So, I stood near the door, as far away from Newman as possible, a site that served both the needs of decorum and competition because it allowed me to block any other reporter from intruding. Admittedly, there might be a touch of irony in my calling someone else an intruder, but here is a the point that seemed vital to me at the time: It's not like I was stalking the guy. I was in the men's room first.

So I waited. That I am blessed with commendable discretion is proved by my having waited for Mr. Newman on the other side of many dividers that were between us. The outermost of them is almost like a wall, except that it stops a few inches short of both the floor and the ceiling. But just a very few inches. So, it's not that I was waiting for him in the men's room exactly. It's more like the anteroom of the men's room. This is a distinction that might seem more impressive to you if you were me.

And it's not like I'm a pervert. I'm a reporter (or was before I became a copy editor, an occupation that carries none of that All the President's Men cachet but which is vital nonetheless, really, honest it is). I was waiting to ask a newsmaker a question. I was just doing my job, a defense I am confident works better in this kind of situation than it does in, say, a war crimes trial.

Except that Mr. Newman didn't realize I was doing my job. I said, "Excuse me, Mr. Newman. I'm with The Hartford Courant, and I wonder if I could ask you a quick question about the camp." Apparently to a man who has lived most of his life in the spotlight that comes across as, "Hey you, gimme your autograph and screw your privacy."

Is it possible that Nature devoted so much to crafting Mr. Newman's other remarkable features that it neglected his ears? As he labored under his misapprehension, he catalogued for me many insults he has suffered at the hands of clods who have bothered him for his signature. What he has endured is enough to make me wonder whether it's worth it to enjoy a life of artistic accomplishment and international acclaim. That I can hear many of you answering, "YES, you moron," suggests where Nature went when it was allocating resources for my looks.

I wish that I had told Mr. Newman that I wasn't stalking him. I could have described how just that very morning, despite the countless strict admonitions the p.r. people had heaped on us reporters not to bother Joanne and him for their autographs, I had stood in front of Ms. Woodward because she asked me to block the view while she signed an autograph for a reporter. (That reporter worked for The Willimantic Chronicle, although I would never sacrifice her to save my reputation.)

My selfless helpfulness for his wife was compounded by my not having pushed that reporter into the mud and stolen the autograph. I could have had motive to do so because that other reporter's name is Laura (see above) and my sister's name also is Laura. My condemning my own sibling to a life without the autograph of the woman who provided Eve's three faces would no doubt have moved the guy who saved all those people from the burning skyscraper. (Unless that was Steve McQueen, in which case I'd probably be better off appealing to the guy who saved the settlers in Hombre.)

The thought of what I could have said in my defense presents itself now, years later when the incident has been recalled from a distance that turns out to be surprisingly less remote and comforting than one might hope. I could probably come up now with some clever response that would have saved the situation for my readers and me, a trick that the French call esprit de escalier, which means "spirit of the staircase." It's the perfect riposte that comes to you just as you've gone too far away from the spot in which you needed it. I don't know the French for "spirit of the parking lot outside the restaurant." Or for "spirit of the keyboard hundreds of miles away and more than a dozen years later."

All I could do was listen in slack-jawed wonder as the guy whose passioned burned in The Verdict unleashed his righteous indignation. On ME. Oh, and I could glance at his friend, who I thought would speak up and correct Mr. Newman's misunderstanding. All he did was shrug his shoulders. I took that to mean, "I get it, but I'm too much of a fawning sycophant to help," although some of the subtlety of his gesture might have escaped me.

Perhaps no real harm came of the misunderstanding. I went on to cover zoning committee meetings that were much closer to my apartment. Mr. Newman went on to win an Academy Award and a Kennedy Center honor, so he's done okay too.

Still, the whole matter is unsettling. That "still being teased" reference nags, and I'm stuck for how to reply to the ex-coworker whose question dredged all this up.

It could have been worse. The guy who misunderstood what I asked for in the men's room could have been George Michael.

__________


* Bob Capers and Eric Lipton's coverage of the Hubble space telescope won the 1992 prize for explanatory journalism. The Courant's staff shared the 1999 prize for breaking news for reporting on a fatal shooting at the headquarters of the state lottery agency.

[satan]

So . . . where were those muckrackers when you needed them?

The French have names for everything. i'll have to ask my French friends for the parking lot phrase you mention . . . it ould be useful . . . i have a lot of those moments.

Thanks for the article.

[jankp]

Editors may not recognize pearls, but I do in you. Loved the whole piece and feel so privileged to have shared your self-deprecating confessional. You're a gem, maybe a blushing ruby, but a gem nonetheless!

Jan