Source: www.celebritymound.com

Paul Newman has finished chemotherapy treatment for cancer and has told his family he wants to die at home.

The Oscar-winning star was pictured being pushed from a New York cancer hospital in a wheelchair looking thin and frail.

It was reported in America that Newman, 83, had only weeks to live and had returned home to his wife Joanne Woodward.

‘Paul didn’t want to die in the hospital,’ a source said. ‘Joanne and his daughters are beside themselves with grief.’

The source, described as a ‘close family friend’ said that the star – who co-owns a motor racing team and has his own salad dressing brand – had spent the past few weeks getting his affairs in order.

It was claimed that some of Newman’s actions had caused tension among of his children.

‘He gave a prized car – a Ferrari with his racing number 82 on it – to a long-time pal,’ the friend said. ‘The sudden move angered his children. It’s especially hard for them to come to grips with what’s going on.

‘The word they’ve been given is that he has only a few weeks to live.’

Newman married Miss Woodward in 1958 and the couple have three daughters.

It was reported last month that he had been readying their oldest child, Nell, to take over his Newman’s Own salad dressings company, the profits of which are given to a charitable foundation.

He also has two daughters from his first marriage to Jackie Witte.

Newman has so far declined to comment on his condition, apart from saying he is ‘doing nicely’.

Rumours about his health surfaced in January. Three months ago, he withdrew from directing a production of Of Mice and Men in his home town of Westport, Connecticut.

He was pictured leaving the Weill Cornell Medical Centre in New York, which specialises in cancer treatment, in a wheelchair on July 31.

He retired from acting in 2006 after a 50-year career that included Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Sting (1971), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963) and Cool Hand Luke (1967).

Newman was nominated for ten Oscars, winning best actor for his role in The Color of Money in 1986.

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Source: www.celebritymound.com

Paul Newman, the legendary actor and philanthropist, is battling cancer, his longtime neighbor and business partner said Wednesday. Newman, 83, has recently appeared gaunt in photos, and dropped plans to direct a play in his Connecticut hometown.

Writer A.E. Hotchner, who partnered with Newman to start Newman’s Own salad dressing company in the 1980s, said the actor told him about the disease about 18 months ago. He did not specify what kind of cancer, but said Newman is in active treatment.

“I know that it’s a form of cancer,” Hotchner told The Associated Press. “It’s a form of cancer and he’s dealing with it.”

Newman issued a statement late Tuesday that he’s “doing nicely” but didn’t specifically address questions about cancer. A call was placed to his spokesman Wednesday seeking comment.

The Oscar winner appeared to have lost weight when he was photographed during practice for the Indianapolis 500 auto race last month. Martha Stewart, in an entry dated June 6, posted a photo on her blog of herself with the actor, who looked thin, at a luncheon to benefit the Hole in the Wall Gang camps for critically ill children. (The Hole in the Wall Gang was led by Newman’s affable outlaw character, Butch, in the 1969 film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”)

Newman won an Oscar for his leading role in 1986’s “The Color of Money.” His screen credits also include “Hud,” “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Verdict” and “Road to Perdition.”

Hotchner said Newman had an operation a few years ago. “It was certainly somewhere in the area of the lung,” he said.

“He’s battling,” Hotchner said. “He’s doing all the right stuff. Paul is a fighter. He seems to be going through a good period right now.”

Asked about his prognosis, Hotchner said, “Everybody is hopeful. That’s all we know.”

In 1982, Hotchner and Newman started a company to market Newman’s original oil-and-vinegar dressing. Newman’s Own, which began as a joke, grew into a multimillion-dollar business selling popcorn, salad dressing, spaghetti sauce and other foods. All the company’s profits are donated to charities. By 2007, the company had donated more than $200 million, according to its Web site.

Last month, officials at Connecticut’s Westport Country Playhouse cited unspecified health issues when they announced that Newman would not direct “Of Mice and Men” this fall.

Newman lives in Westport with his wife, Joanne Woodward.

Two friends said Tuesday that Newman appeared to be doing well.

“I think he’s feeling quite well,” said actor James Naughton, who spoke to Newman on Monday night. “As far as I can tell he’s doing very well.”

Newman had an infection over the winter, but seems to have that under control, Naughton said. He was lively at this month’s Hole in the Wall Gang camp fundraiser, he said.

Michael Brockman, Newman’s racing team partner, said Newman told him recently that he wants to get back into his race car for a test run and possibly another competition. His last race was last fall, he said.

“I think he’s doing better than he was,” Brockman said, noting that Newman had regained most of the weight he had lost.

“I think he looks great,” said Brockman, who saw Newman last weekend. “I wish I looked that good.”

Brockman called Newman “one of the best guys I ever met.”

“He’s just a regular guy,” Brockman said. “He’s humble.”

Source: www.celebritymound.com

Movie star Paul Newman has quietly turned over the entire value of his ownership in Newman’s Own — the company that makes salad dressing and cookies — to charity.

Completed over a two-year period in 2005 and 2006, the amount of his donations to Newman’s Own Foundation Inc. comes to an astounding $120 million.

This is unprecedented for any movie star or anyone from what we call Hollywood. Of course Newman and actress wife Joanne Woodward have never been Hollywood types. They’ve lived their lives quietly in Westport, Conn., for the last 50 years. (They were married in January 1958. And people said it wouldn’t last!)

This column learned about this extraordinary gift as news started coming out recently about Newman’s battle with lung cancer. This is not news to my readers. I told you several months ago that Newman — who has five grown daughters — was seeing an oncologist, that he’d been in and out of Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital on many visits from Westport. Like everything else, the Newmans tried to keep Paul’s illness a private matter.

But a tip-off that he was maybe not doing so well came in late May. Newman announced that he would not direct a production of “Our Town” later this summer at the Westport Country Playhouse, where Woodward is the artistic director.

News of his illness seems to have been exacerbated by none other than neighbor Martha Stewart. She recently published pictures of Paul on her Web site from a party she hosted. He looks gaunt but nevertheless smiling his trademark smile. Nothing will set him back. This racecar driver and adventurer should not be written off as “dying.”

“He’s a fighter,” one of his close friends told me Tuesday morning. “And he’s going to keep fighting.”

In the meantime, I also told you last August that in Botswana, the Newman name is known not for being a movie star. It’s known for his famous Hole in the Wall Gang camps. The camps go to Africa every summer to run programs for impoverished and ill children. It’s the same program they run in dozens of similar camps all over the United States.

The Hole in the Wall camps are just a few of the places the hundreds of millions of dollars have gone that Newman has raised since he got the idea to bottle salad dressing for charity.

According to Newman’s Own federal tax filing for 2006, the actor personally gave away $8,746,500 to a variety of groups that support children, hurricane relief in the Gulf Coast, education and the arts.

Some of Newman’s recipients are well-known: He gave Rosie O’Donnell’s children’s program $5,000 and even donated $25,000 to his pal Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. But most of them are for the kinds of programs that we never hear about, the kind that simply keep people alive.

But don’t think that Newman — who received his Kennedy Center honor in 1992 and deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom — did this because he suddenly thought he was dying. When he set up the new foundation, he hadn’t yet been diagnosed with lung cancer. It was just in honor of his 80th birthday, and an acknowledgment that he wanted to make sure his charities would continue receiving his largesse.

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Source: www.celebritymound.com

WE reported that Paul Newman was absent from his Hole in the Wall Gang charity party on Monday night because, according to his rep, “he’s been having trouble with his back.” Newman has quipped he’s being “treated for athlete’s foot and hair loss.” But sadly, the legendary star’s health problems might be more serious. For the past seven months he’s been seeing an Upper East Side oncologist whose confidentiality we are protecting. “He’s been there a lot, he’s even worked out in the waiting room, doing squat thrusts. Last time, he was in there he had a long beard,” said our spy. “Joanne Woodward is there waiting for him and being very sweet with the assistants.”

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Source: www.celebritymound.com

Paul Newman, 83, was conspicuously absent Monday night at the 20th anniversary of his Hole in the Wall Gang charity, which runs summer camps for ill children. And some in the audience at City Center were worried, especially in light of tabloid reports that the beloved actor had secret cancer surgery in January. Newman quipped through his spokesman, Warren Cowan, at the time: “I’m being treated for athlete’s foot and hair loss . . . maybe the doctors know something that I don’t.” Cowan told Page Six this week that Newman planned to attend the Hole in the Wall event with Renée Zellweger, Julia Roberts, Harry Belafonte, Bernadette Peters and Carole King. “But he’s been having trouble with his back,” Cowan said. “The doctors told him to stay off his feet.” Newman was at the racetrack in Lime Rock, Conn., last week being filmed by Barbara Walters for an ABC special on longevity.

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Source: www.celebritymound.com

I’m having a blast just reading the shirts!

Paul Newman, Kathy Bates, Marsha Gay Harden, Dana Delaney, Uma Thurman and Glenn Close