PAUL Newman spent four decades trying to discourage people from watching his film debut, so it’s ironic “The Silver Chalice” is in the first group of his movies arriving on DVD following his death in September.
“The first time it was on TV, I took an ad out in the Los Angeles Times with a black border, apologizing for my performance in what NBC had on at 8 o’clock,” Newman once said. “Of course, it backfired. People were curious and wanted to see just what I was apologizing for.”
In this cheesy religious epic, Newman plays a Greek sculptor who fashions the chalice that Jesus Christ uses at the Last Supper.
“I was wearing this tiny little Greek cocktail dress – with my legs!” Newman recalled years later.
“Good Lord, it was really bad. In fact, it was the worst film made in the 1950s. My first review said that ‘Mr. Newman delivers his lines with the emotional fervor of a Putnam stop conductor announcing a local stop.’ That I survived was extraordinary good fortune.”
At a distance of a half-century, Newman’s performance seems dignified compared with the scenery-chewing of top-billed Jack Palance as a villainous magician who tries to convince the population he is the new Messiah.
The cast also includes Natalie Wood, who briefly plays leading lady Virginia Mayo as a teenager, and Pier Angeli, who appeared opposite Newman in his star-making role in “Somebody Up There Likes Me” the following year.
Other lesser-known Newman films debuting today include “The Outrage” (1964), a Western remake of the Japanese classic “Rashomon” with William Shatner; “The Helen Morgan Story,” staring Ann Blyth as the alcoholic torch singer; and the all-star disaster movie “When Time Ran Out” (1980).
Newman does not appear as an actor in the most distinguished of the releases, the forgotten “Rachel, Rachel” (1968), the first of six films helmed by Newman, who majored in directing at the Yale School of Drama.
This expertly rendered drama about a morbid 35-year-old spinster played by Newman’s wife Joanne Woodward, received Oscar nominations for both of them, Stewart Stern’s script, as well as for Best Picture.