One of the first 'anti-heroes' in 60's popular culture

I was 10 when this film came out, and I remember it caused something of a stir at the time. I was vaguely aware of the movie's existence through TV and magazine ads, but primarily because a female cousin of mine in Dallas, who was either just graduating high school or starting college, was just crazy about the film, and Paul Newman's Hud character.

I remember hearing adults (my parents and their acquaintances) negatively discuss the movie as kind of "sick" because the main character was a selfish jerk who was really a villan, but because of Newman's charismatic portrayal, was perversely attractive, and came off as sort of a hero, which they definately felt was morally wrong.

Shawn Levy, in his 2009 biography of Newman ("Paul Newman - A Life"), writes that the principles involved in making the film, primarily Newman and director Martin Ritt, were also surprised at the public reaction to the character of Hud Bannon. They "...had intended an indictment of a certain strain in the American character, and they were genuinely taken aback when the film's strength at the box office was explained, in good measure, by the fact that a young audience saw Hud not as a heel but as a role model." Levy quotes Ritt as saying "I got a lot of letters after that picture from kids saying Hud was right...the kids were very cynical; they were committed to their own appetities and that was it...that's why the film did the kind of business it did -- kids loved Hud... that son of a bitch that I hated, they loved."

Looking back at it, Newman's "Hud" was really one of the first of the so-called "anti-heroes" of 1960's American popular culture.