Paul Newman and His Wife Had a Secret Sex Room With a NSFW Nickname
Paul Newman was an award-winning actor and a beloved movie star. His looks played a role in his popularity, but he didn’t like what he saw in the mirror until he met Joanne Woodward, his second wife.
Their relationship was a game-changer for Newman on an emotional and physical level. In his memoir, the actor revealed that he and Woodward spent a lot of time in a room they affectionately called “The F*** Hut.”
He and Woodward had an adventurous sex life
Throughout the ’80s, Newman started interviewing his friends and family to create an oral history about himself. He eventually scrapped the idea, but transcripts of the recordings were found after he died and compiled into The Extraordinary Life of An Ordinary Man: A Memoir, a book about Newman’s life released this year.
Anyone with working eyes could see that he was a handsome man, but Newman had serious self-image issues for substantial parts of his life. In high school, he was so scrawny that he had to get special permission to join the football team, and like many people, those adolescent scars stayed with him into adulthood. “I felt like a goddamn freak,” he recalled, as People reports. “Girls thought I was a joke. A happy buffoon.”
Everything changed once Joanne Woodward entered his life. They met in 1953 as understudies in the Broadway play Picnic. Newman was married to Jackie Witte at the time, and the couple had three kids together, but their attraction to each other was too primal to ignore. Newman felt bad about the affair, describing himself as “brutal in my detachment from my family,” but not bad enough to stop seeing Woodward. They got married in 1958.
Woodward and Newman worked on 16 movies together, but the biggest impact of their union was the sexual awakening it aroused in Newman. “Joanne gave birth to a sexual creature. We left a trail of lust all over the place. Hotels and public parks and Hertz Rent-A-Cars,” said the actor.
Their dedication to getting busy is best epitomized by the monument Woodward made to their love life. Newman came home one night to discover that his wife redecorated a room off of the master bedroom with a double bed she bought from a thrift shop and a fresh coat of paint.
“I call it the F*** Hut,” Woodward said with pride. “It had been done with such affection and delight. Even if my kids came over, we’d go into the F*** Hut several nights a week and just be intimate and noisy and ribald.”
Two of their daughters, Melissa Newman and Clea Newman Soderlund, wrote the memoir’s foreword and afterword and spoke to Vanity Fair about the book’s sensual revelations.
“I have to admit I read that, and I was like, ‘Go mom,'” laughed Clea, who had no idea the room existed until the family went through the transcripts. “I mean, I knew that my parents had this very kind of sexy, racy relationship, but certainly, I mean, that was just so wonderfully specific. It’s awesome.”
Melissa shared the same sentiment, but she had more of a feeling for what their parents were up to when they were alone. “I knew they were affectionate. You could sense that that was there all the time … I always say, ‘They had two doors on their bedroom. With bolts.'”
Like every marriage, Newman and Woodward went through difficult periods. They fought a lot, Newman cheated on her at least once, and developed a severe drinking problem. But they found ways to keep their love alive.
“Joanne and I still drive each other crazy in different ways,” the actor summarized in the book. “But all the misdemeanors, the betrayals, the difficulties have kind of evened themselves out over the years.”
Newman was a Hollywood mainstay for several decades
Newman began to pursue acting out of convenience rather than a calling. According to Biography, he went to Kenyon College in 1946 on an athletic scholarship with dreams of playing pro football but was kicked off the team after getting arrested.
“Since I was determined not to study very much, I majored in theater the last two years,” he told Interview magazine in 1998. Newman made his film debut in 1954’s The Silver Chalice – “the worst movie produced in the fifties,” in his opinion.
He made his mainstream breakthrough a few years later with roles in Somebody Up There Likes Me and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the latter of which earned him the first of his 10 Oscar nominations. In the ’60s, he was as popular a leading man as anyone.
Newman’s star turns in The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid showcased his natural charm and honed screen presence, traits that stuck with him as he aged. His Academy Award nominations came across five decades (he had to wait until 1987 to win one for The Color of Money), and he was also nominated for four Emmys.
Newman was also famous for his business exploits
Newman had a Hollywood career many people dream of, but one of his proudest accomplishments is the food brand he started, Newman’s Own.
The company originated from an act of mundane generosity. In 1980, Newman and writer AE Hotchner were mixing a vat of salad dressing to bottle and give away as Christmas gifts, according to Mashed. The reception was so good that the two were inspired to make it a real business endeavor.
Newman was reticent to use his face as the product’s logo and didn’t want to accept any of the profits. He convinced Hotchner and other shareholders to give all proceeds to charity, using the funds to support over 30 children’s programs operating under the SeriousFun Children’s Network umbrella Newman founded in 1988.
The direction of Newman’s Own was hazy after the actor’s will was changed shortly before his death to remove his daughters from positions of power, and Robert Forrester and Brian Murphy suddenly were in control of the company. Nevertheless, Newman’s Own continues to provide millions of dollars to charity every year.
