Paul Newman Didn't Much Like Hombre (but liked one thing about it)

Its August of 2022 as I post this, and HBO Max is running a 6-hour episodic documentary about the movies, life and times of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, two movie stars who managed to stay married for decades, until Newman died in 2008. (Sadly, Woodward is still alive but with Altzheimer's.)

The series rather jumps around but reaches Hombre as "one of the movies that Paul Newman made with Martin Ritt."

We hear from Martin Ritt: "I don't think Paul felt that any of the movies he made with me were successful...except Hud."

For the record, the Newman/Ritt movies are: The Long Hot Summer, Hud, The Outrage, and Hombre(their final collaboration.)

They reach Hombre and show some brief clips of Newman in his long-hair Native-American wig and at one point we hear Newman say: " I see the image on the screen of that goddamn self-conscious movie star with blue eyes playing an Indian...it doesn't come together for me."

So I would daresay that Newman didn't like Hombre EXACTLY because of the long-haired wig and the character of an "Indian" (though Newman actually plays a white man RAISED by Indians -- er Native Americans.)

But Newman makes another comment that is quite observant about the story of Hombre and where it goes:

"So often in life, the competent person has to pay the tab for all the incompetent people."

See Hombre and you'll see Newman's point.

Me, I still love Hombre and Newman's self-conscious performance(He's kind of right, he's a usually cocky actor PUSHING to play stoic, but it works) and above all the great cast around him: Boone(above all) March, Balsam, and the beautiful well-delineated women: Diane Cilento, Barbara Rush, Maggie Blye...