Why, nobody says you can’t appreciate the new actors and their movies as well. You can have both! I promise you that nobody will smack your pee-pee if you watch an Alan Ladd movie.
That’s an easy one. Larry Storch. And he’s still alive.
Yeah… but where does one go to see old movies these days?
When I was a kid, I learned about Johnny Weissmuller and Abbott and Costello because after Saturday morning cartoons ended around noonish, there would be Tarzan movies, or Abbott and Costello. Others, sure, but I particularly remember those. And today, I still enjoy them for their nostalgia value.
Saturday nights were monster movies. Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange, and all the rest. Saturday afternoons were big for westerns… everyone from Randolph Scott to John Wayne.
And if you couldn’t sleep, some station or other would be showing old movies.
What do you do today? AMC doesn’t show as much in the way of old movies as they used to, and the oldest thing I’ve seen on there lately is “Jaws.” TCM is a little better, but not in the prime time slots. And all the local affiliates have gone over to informercials, which provide income, instead of costing money.
You want to see a Paul Newman movie these days, you need to check Netflix, or look for one on TCM or something. It’s a lot harder to simply “discover” old movies than it used to be. Future generations will think of Paul Newman as “the salad dressing guy.”
One of the things that occasionally jolts me about being a classic movie buff is when I’m reminded of how much knowledge that I take for granted is genuinely unknown to most folks around me. That all those people who enjoy Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock have never seen a Basil Rathbone film to compare him with. That most people only know Jimmy Durante as the narrator of the Frosty the Snowman Christmas special (if they even remember that). That they just wonder why I’m suddenly talking so funny if I do a Bogart impersonation.
I don’t know if it would even be possible to figure out statistics about the matter, but I’ve formed the impression that classic film fans are a fairly small percentage of the population. The internet has made it possible to connect with other people with similar interests around the world, in a way that never could have happened before. But even the classic movie forums and message boards that I’m involved with tend to be pretty small and insular, with a tiny core of active participants, as compared to other internet sites. I just don’t think that the majority of people are all that interested in movies that were made prior to a certain date. What that certain date is kind of slides forward or back depending on the age of the person in question. But for most people, it’s a function of when they first became aware of movies and started paying much attention to them. Things from the generation before that, they may have heard of but never seen. Things even earlier than that, are like a foreign country.
And I don’t blame people for that. In many ways it’s human nature. I’m aware that, in maintaining an interest in films made many decades before I was born, I’m the odd one. It’s something that I’m interested in, and I enjoy it. But I’m not necessarily a better person for it, any more than someone else is a better person than me for knowing more about, say, fine wines or Impressionist painting than I do. We’re just people who have different sets of interests.
But what this means, inevitably, is that yes, people like Paul Newman are going to fade from the public consciousness over time. That’s just inevitable. And as much as there will be new film buffs born in each generation who will come to appreciate him and his films, there will be a vastly larger number of people born who have no particular interest in him, and never will. And really, that’s fine.
Francis X. Bushman is actually a pretty good comparison. When he was on top, he was a huge star, earning gigantic salaries and being called “The Handsomest Man in the World.” Today–well, I’ve heard his name. I know vaguely that he was in the silent Ben-Hur. I couldn’t identify a picture of him, and I remember his name largely because it’s so unusual to see anyone with the initial “X.” And I’ll wager that’s more than the majority of people my age know about him. Sure, maybe I’m missing out on a lot by not seeing his films. But there are so many films to see, with new ones being made every day, that it’s hard for me to get too upset about it all. I can feel sympathy for Bushman–I do know that he lived for quite awhile, eking out a living in small movie parts, radio, and TV after his matinee idol days had ended. But I also have to recognize that this is just the way of things when it comes to celebrity. Scholars and historians will continue to know him, but the majority of the public will not.
I consider myself a film buff. And I’ll admit, the only thing I know Bushman from is The Phantom Planet, and that only because it was featured on Mystery Science Theater. Even among buffs, knowledge is not evenly distributed. 
Now that you’ve reminded me, I remember that also! That movie would be part of the “eking out a living” thing I mentioned, I suppose. I can’t remember if Mike and the Bots made any comment about Bushman’s former stature as a major star, or not. Maybe they didn’t recognize him, either!
It’s easier than ever! To repeat what I noted upthread, there are many Roku and Apple TV channels that allow you to see old movies for free. For a few bucks, you can access the entire vaults of several studios.
My degree-of-separation Paul Newman story: A friend of mine worked for Columbia Pictures in NYC in the 80s. Her office was down the hall from his. She said he was the nicest guy in the world, always greeting people by name when when he came in, etc.
One day he brought in a couple of cases of his new spaghetti sauce and went around to everyone’s office and gave them a jar. My brother and I visited my friend that day and asked about the jar–“Oh, Paul Newman gave it to me this morning–do you want it?” Of course we said yes and of course we had spaghetti *ala *Newman for dinner that night.
His film work will be remembered by film buffs for a very, very long time. And with the Internet and movies-on-demand and so on, it’s possible that the number of film buffs is actually increasing. But they are not, never have been, and never will be a majority of the population, and among most non-film-buffs, he’s already “the salad dressing guy”.
The ease with which people can access all sorts of movies allows for them to stick to their interests instead of stumbling on to something new because nothing else was on TV. I discovered a lot of older movies just that way. Had I been born in 1995 instead of 1985, I’m not sure that would be the case.
I’ve always liked movies of the 1970s and up, but my AFI challenge has lead me to watch some much older movies I’d never bothered to see. Just watched “A Streetcar Named Desire” for the first time the other night. That one episode of The Simpsons is even funnier to me now (in the middle of watching it, I started singing, “What’s a humble paper boy to doooo?”). But most people aren’t going to bother. Someone’s only going to “subject” themselves to something they don’t care about is if they think it will further inform their area of interest (for the record, I loved “Streetcar”).
Most people like the movies, but they don’t feel the need to be informed of the movies. Almost all movie stars will one day fade. What I find so funny, and what inspired this thread, was that Paul Newman’s not going to fade. He’s going to be a guy in people’s pantries, and one day someone will turn to someone else and say, “Hey, did you know that Newman of Newman’s Own was a real guy?” They probably won’t even know his first name is Paul. What an odd version of immortality.
Thanks for that link, it’s very telling. I’ve seen a lot of classic b/w movies and plenty of old non-classic ones but when I plugged in my birth year, I only recognized eight names and half of those were only tangentially connected to the movie biz (writers, politicians).
Then I plugged in a random year from when I was already an adult and there were only five names I didn’t recognize in the top 50 (and there were several of whom I hadn’t realized had passed away).
Not that I would know but most classic film is torrentable.
I plugged in my birth year and recognized pretty much all the professional actors with enough credits to be considered as stars. A good many of the directors, too. Bit players, not so much. Marilyn Monroe and Charles Laughton died that year, as did a few 2nd tier players. The list pretty quickly from there, based on the Starmeter, becomes a list of people with only a couple credits or who appeared as themselves in something.
I didn’t know who Paul Newman was in 7th grade either. Then I grew up and learned more. It’s silly to base your standard of “well known” on what junior high school kids recognize.
80 years after his death, Paul Newman will be as “well known” to film buffs as Robert Johnson is to music fans today. Anyone with a curiosity about the history of film, or the influences that shaped modern films and actors will know him. Children and casual moviegoers won’t care, but that’s a silly standard. Casual sports fans and children don’t know who Babe Ruth and Wilt Chamberlain are today, but that doesn’t make them “forgotten”. It makes the people who don’t know them ignorant, and that’s different.
What a good thing it is, then, that nobody ever claimed that film buffs were a majority of the population. I think the point is that there are enough film buffs in the world that even if they are the only ones who remember Paul Newman, he is pretty far from forgotten.
You are, of course, completely and utterly correct, sir! To the point of being unarguably truthful!
And if eight year old me had grown up in THIS world, instead of a time forty years ago, he never would have discovered Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies or Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes flicks or Abbott and Costello, or Boris Karloff.
He’d simply have gone to Cartoon Network and sat there until his butt was sore, watchin’ Teen Titans and Spongebob. And if nothing good was on, there’s any number of other channels with loads of kidvid. Saturday morning or not.
That was kind of my point. I can pull up any movie available on any service… but until I’ve discovered the joy of Weissmuller’s Tarzan yell and silly chimpanzee, why WOULD I? As a kid, I had no use nor time for black and white old movies. I watched my first Tarzan movie because there was literally nothing else on in which I had the slightest interest. At least Weissmuller rode around on elephants and screamed funny.
And after seeing a couple of these movies, I rather liked them. I acquired a taste. And while I’m not a huge Weissmuller buff now, I can still sit through most of them. Also developed a taste for old Errol Flynn movies, monster movies, westerns… hell, my entire interest in movies began, right there, where the cartoons ended.
In a world where you can pull up any kind of programming at whim… why would you ever try something you don’t know if you like, or not?
Because you aren’t a kid and can make more sophisticated and adventuresome choices than watching the “Ripped Pants” episode of Springboob Squirepants for the nth time? You could even, as one of us intellectually arrogant Dopers, do this as a deliberate effort to expand your knowledge of pop culture itself?
My nephew’s in 9th grade, but I get your drift.
I had to look up Robert Johnson. I was pretty sure I knew who he was, and I was right, but I had to look him up to confirm. I don’t have any real interest in Blues music.
Babe Ruth is the most famous baseball player who ever lived. Wilt Chamberlain is a guy I knew first as a man who’d slept with 5000 women before I knew he was a basketball player. They are both among the most famous sports figures of the 20th century. I’d argue that they’re in the top 10. I don’t think Paul Newman is as famous as they are.
I feel like I’ve struck a nerve here that I wasn’t anticipating. I’m basing that on the frequent use of the words like ‘ignorance’ and ‘lazy’ and various other ‘get off my lawn-isms’. I’ve never like the idea of insulting and judging a person because they didn’t know one particular fact or subject that another person knows well. It’s very easy to be familiar with your own routine, as they say. But I get it. I do. Paul Newman was a hero, bad ass, imaginary boyfriend, and all around good guy to many, many people. To say that he will one day be forgotten is, essentially, to acknowledge that we will all one day die. Which is a dark place that I really, really wasn’t planning to take this thread.
I’d say that last post was rather like a Norma Desmond performance, but you wouldn’t get the reference…and the names Gloria Swanson, William Holden, and Billy Wilder probably don’t mean anything to you.
You are, AGAIN, sir, completely correct in your particulars. Can’t disagree with the truth.
Just not sure how many people would take your advice. Admittedly, the viewing tastes of children are wildly different from that of adults. Then again, adults tend not to have the free time that children have…