Star who stayed a son of the soil

Actor Paul Newman a shining example of social entrepreneurship


By Zhen Ming


I USED to live only a stone's throw away from Hollywood screen legend Paul Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward 30 years ago. I am glad I did.

And, not unlike millions around the world, I was sad to learn of Newman's passing two Fridays ago, after a long battle with leukaemia. He was 83.

Back in 1978, a spritely 53-year-old Newman had returned to the campus of his alma mater Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio - where I was an undergraduate - to direct the first production in the university's new Bolton Theatre.

Back then, I would hurriedly pass Newman's home while on my way to classes.

Sneaking a daily peek at his front porch to see if he was there, I would wonder why someone like him would bother to come back to this 'hole in the wall' place, where he had once landed in jail after a bar room brawl and where he had later graduated 'magna cum lager' (alluding to his extreme fondness for beer).

As a World War II navy veteran, Newman entered Kenyon on an athletic scholarship. He played American football and acted in a dozen plays before graduating in 1949.

But Newman the blue-eyed movie star was much more than just your regular Hollywood 'pretty face'. He was also a political activist and what you might call an 'entrepreneur-philanthropist'.

Newman's legacy to Kenyon, for instance, includes a long history of generous, usually unpublicised donations, culminating in a recent US$10 million ($14 million) gift for scholarships which made headlines worldwide.

Privately, Newman often considered himself more lucky than talented to have the career he achieved.

Luck had, in fact, made all the difference. Luck to get into a hit show on Broadway; luck to be snapped up by Warner Brothers, and luck to be picked for his breakthrough film called 'Somebody Up There Likes Me'.

Newman's Own (the food company he co-founded in 1982 with writer AE Hotchner), in fact, began as a happy-go-lucky joke - putting homemade salad dressing in an old wine bottle, tying it with a ribbon, and then giving it away to friends.

Today Newman's Own is a top-grossing multi-million-dollar business which donates ALL its profits after tax - more than US$250 million so far - to some 1,000 charities and causes around the world (including Newman's personal favourite, the 11 'Hole in the Wall Gang' camps for children with life-threatening illnesses).

You might think that Newman's Own is an unusual form of enterprise, where the entrepreneur recognises a social problem and uses traditional entrepreneurial principles to organise, create, and manage a venture to make social change.

But it actually isn't.

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus pioneered a not-for-profit business to provide micro-credit to help those trapped in poverty.

In 1974, the unassuming economist started a social revolution when he lent US$27 to 42 Bangladeshi basket-weavers.

After years of dispensing small loans to the desperate, he set up the Grameen (Bengali for rural) Bank in Bangladesh in 1983 to help even more needy folk, whom he made part-owners of Grameen.

Today, Grameen is owned by 7.5 million Bangladeshis. And with a default rate of only 2 per cent, Grameen would be the envy of troubled US banks, with default rates of nearly 10 per cent.

From Muhammad to Newman, social entrepreneurs and social enterprises have come a very long way indeed.

And while other actors of his celebrity lived and partied in Hollywood and vacationed at exotic resorts, Newman and his family made their home in a Connecticut farmhouse and devoted their spare time to charitable enterprises.

Newman's circle-of-life parting shot: 'The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I'm not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.'


Source: The New Paper, Sun 05 Oct 2008