"I have vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals."

There are a lot of movie stars and a lot of very good actors. Only sometimes, and nowadays more rarely, do we find the two in the same human being. Friday we lost one of the best of both when Paul Newman passed away at the age of 83.

He was closely linked with Robert Redford, another person who fit both categories and in the same way that you're either a Fred Astaire guy or a Gene Kelly guy, I think you may be either a Robert Redford guy or a Paul Newman guy. I was always a Newman guy. Make no mistake, I love Redford. But he was almost too perfect, too good-looking. Newman had an ease about him, a nonchalance that was self-effacing. Redford seemed like a God, Newman seemed more damaged. He was a heartthrob as well, but he often played a character that would get in his own way. The joy of watching him onscreen was watching how he would get out of his way, how he would somehow manage his plight.

I wonder if people my age know Newman as something more than the guy on the salad dressing or the guy in the race cars. I wonder if they know that while Britney Spears gets married and divorced within 55 hours, Newman defied all Hollywood logic by celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary earlier this year. (It does help that he was married to Joanne Woodward, an actress as talented and beautiful as he was.) I wonder if they've seen that moment in Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid where he rides the bike with Katharine Ross on the handlebars while "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" plays on the soundtrack. I wonder if they've seen the part in The Sting where he out-cheats Robert Shaw in that poker game on the train.

I want to stop wondering and suggest you go out and rent those two movies... and Hud, and The Hustler, and The Verdict, and Cool Hand Luke, and Sweet Bird of Youth and, well I could go on and on.