name of the dean of the school. As Downey recalled, they put the thing together during the spring break: “Paul wrote most of the lyrics, I wrote most of the dialogue, and we shamelessly stole all of the music.” Burlesque or pastiche or whathave you, with some of its all-male cast dressed as chorus girls, it took the form of a freshman’s introductory tour of an unnamed college that had many not-so-coincidental resemblances to Kenyon. Coming near the end of such a traumatic semester, it was a tonic and a hit. The real Dean Bailey declared of Newman’s performance, “He played me better than I could have played myself,” and the president of the college, Dr. Gordon Keith Chalmers, was seen in the audience on all three nights of the production.
T O COMMEMORATE this triumph, and the many other vivid impressions he made on Kenyon in his three years there, Newman was granted by the editors of the
Collegian
the rare privilege of writing what was dubbed “A Brief Autobiographical Encomium,” a comic sketch about himself published on the front page of the paper as a farewell to the school. Written in a mock-heroic style and filled with references to boozing and fisticuffs and womanizing and his famed escapades as a laundryman and an actor, it was at once a throwaway and an unintentional confession. Making reference to the brawl at the Sunset Club, he half-joked, “The people at home began to wonder what kind of company I was keeping. And people who were keeping company with me began to wonder what kind of company
they
were keeping.” He spoke of his turn to the theater—“I modestly nick named myself ‘Barrymore’”—and ended by bragging about the most unlikely achievement in his entire Kenyon career: being named to the Merit List as a first-semester senior for maintaining an average grade above B. “‘Merit list!’ My dream come true.”
Later, when the ninety-fourth edition of
Reveille
, the school’s yearbook, was published, the editors ran two pictures of him beside a drawing of a hand mixing a cocktail and bade him adieu thus:
“Paul L. Newman, Perennial T-Barracks master of ceremonies, itinerant laundryman, antagonist of roommates and proctors alike, author of musical review, leading actor in dramatic productions, host to innumerable parties and never one to miss the opportunity for a fast buck are just a few of Paul’s endearing charms. Prone to getting out of hand on long and trying evenings.”
Over the years he would say of Kenyon, “My days there were the happiest of my life,” and he would maintain strong ties to the school. He had entered as a confused young navy vet trudging thoughtlessly toward a career selling sporting goods and had transformed, accidentally but purposefully, into someone with an increasing set of skills and a genuine aim in life.
He wasn’t going back to Cleveland to sell golf clubs and microscopes at Newman-Stern.
He was going off to summer stock theater in Wisconsin.
He was going to try to become an actor.
* The idea that he was so close to the atomic bomb blasts didn’t bother him at the time—“I was twenty years old and I had no idea of the consequences of it. No one even discussed the morality of it or the alternatives.” Years later he would become an outspoken opponent of nuclear proliferation.
* Among Newman’s dorm mates in T-Barracks was a Swedish student, Olaf Palme, who would go on to become president of his country and die at the hands of an assassin in an Oslo metro station. Comedian Jonathan Winters was also a Kenyon student in 1946, but it’s not clear where he lived.
* Decades later, recalling the first cars in his life, Newman remembered that, “exuberant at winning a football game,” he had once set a Model A Ford on fire.
* It wasn’t only the stage that Newman dominated. As a senior, he cofounded a campus movie society that was inaugurated with a screening of
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
H E WAS TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD, AND HE SHOULD
T O COMMEMORATE this triumph, and the many other vivid impressions he made on Kenyon in his three years there, Newman was granted by the editors of the
Collegian
the rare privilege of writing what was dubbed “A Brief Autobiographical Encomium,” a comic sketch about himself published on the front page of the paper as a farewell to the school. Written in a mock-heroic style and filled with references to boozing and fisticuffs and womanizing and his famed escapades as a laundryman and an actor, it was at once a throwaway and an unintentional confession. Making reference to the brawl at the Sunset Club, he half-joked, “The people at home began to wonder what kind of company I was keeping. And people who were keeping company with me began to wonder what kind of company
they
were keeping.” He spoke of his turn to the theater—“I modestly nick named myself ‘Barrymore’”—and ended by bragging about the most unlikely achievement in his entire Kenyon career: being named to the Merit List as a first-semester senior for maintaining an average grade above B. “‘Merit list!’ My dream come true.”
Later, when the ninety-fourth edition of
Reveille
, the school’s yearbook, was published, the editors ran two pictures of him beside a drawing of a hand mixing a cocktail and bade him adieu thus:
“Paul L. Newman, Perennial T-Barracks master of ceremonies, itinerant laundryman, antagonist of roommates and proctors alike, author of musical review, leading actor in dramatic productions, host to innumerable parties and never one to miss the opportunity for a fast buck are just a few of Paul’s endearing charms. Prone to getting out of hand on long and trying evenings.”
Over the years he would say of Kenyon, “My days there were the happiest of my life,” and he would maintain strong ties to the school. He had entered as a confused young navy vet trudging thoughtlessly toward a career selling sporting goods and had transformed, accidentally but purposefully, into someone with an increasing set of skills and a genuine aim in life.
He wasn’t going back to Cleveland to sell golf clubs and microscopes at Newman-Stern.
He was going off to summer stock theater in Wisconsin.
He was going to try to become an actor.
* The idea that he was so close to the atomic bomb blasts didn’t bother him at the time—“I was twenty years old and I had no idea of the consequences of it. No one even discussed the morality of it or the alternatives.” Years later he would become an outspoken opponent of nuclear proliferation.
* Among Newman’s dorm mates in T-Barracks was a Swedish student, Olaf Palme, who would go on to become president of his country and die at the hands of an assassin in an Oslo metro station. Comedian Jonathan Winters was also a Kenyon student in 1946, but it’s not clear where he lived.
* Decades later, recalling the first cars in his life, Newman remembered that, “exuberant at winning a football game,” he had once set a Model A Ford on fire.
* It wasn’t only the stage that Newman dominated. As a senior, he cofounded a campus movie society that was inaugurated with a screening of
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
H E WAS TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD, AND HE SHOULD
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