The Long, Hot Summer

Watching Paul Newman's early films it's easy to see that he was the natural inheritor of the first round of naturalist, "method" actors such as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean. Newman replaced Dean, whose death prevented him from taking the role in Somebody Up There Likes Me, and Brando was considered for the role of Ben Quick in The Long, Hot Summer, an adaptation of William Faulkner stories, directed by Martin Ritt.

Newman would outlast all of those other actors, both in longevity and legacy--after all, Brando only died four years ago, but Newman's career remained at a high level for close to fifty years, while Brando made some bizarre turns. And while Brando's politics bordered on the idiosyncratic (sending a woman dressed as an Indian to refuse his Oscar for The Godfather) Newman channeled his leftism (he was named to Nixon's enemies list) into a charitable concern that helped millions of children.

In The Long, Hot Summer one can sort of see Brando in the role, but it's a good thing he didn't take it, because seeing him play against Orson Welles may have just been too much. Newman is a drifter who has a reputation of burning barns. He finds himself in a Mississippi town where most everything is run by Welles. He gets a job with Welles, who finds similar traits in the young man. Welles has an ineffectual son (Anthony Franciosa), who is married to a flighty young woman (Lee Remick). He also has a daughter, Joanne Woodward, who at 23 is single and already considered an old maid. She is courted by a fragile momma's boy (Richard Anderson) and takes an immediate dislike to the vulgar Newman, but of course we know better. All of this mixes into a Southern Gothic that has its moments and skirts close to violating the production code (Welles has a relationship with the town madam, Angela Lansbury, and Anderson's sexuality is suspect, especially when Welles calls him a sissy).

Newman and Woodward were an item off-screen, and would marry shortly after filming. Welles, who pre-dated the method, found himself at odds with the other actors and the director. He kind of combined his role as the corrupt sheriff in the previous year's Touch of Evil with Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. For some reason his makeup gave him a nutty-brown complexion, and I couldn't help but think he bears a striking resemblance to the current governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson.