For sale: Memories from an enduring Hollywood love story
Shackles from the film “Cool Hand Luke”; a script from the 1963 comedy “A New Kind of Love”; the wedding dress that Joanne Woodward wore the day she married Paul Newman in 1958.
These artifacts, along with some 300 others, tell the story of a union between two of Hollywood's most enduring film stars that lasted more than half a century. It began in 1953 and lasted until Newman, a magnetic titan of the screen, died in 2008 at the age of 83. Woodward, 93, a formidable talent, has kept a private life since she learned she has Alzheimer's disease in 2007.
The objects also will take on another kind of value later this year when they are put up for sale in a series of auctions by Sotheby's.
If previous demand for Newman's belongings is any measure, the events are likely to be lucrative:
A Rolex he owned sold in 2017 for a record $17.8 million. Three years later, another of Newman's watches sold for more than $5.4 million.
The auctions, which will take place both online and in person in New York, follow the recent release of “The Last Movie Stars,” a six-part HBO Max documentary series directed by Ethan Hawke and based on audio transcripts of interviews with the couple's friends, colleagues and family members.
The items, most of them from the couple's home in Connecticut, include family photographs and autographed scripts, as well as awards, props and costumes from films including “The Color of Money,” “The Three Faces of Eve” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Sotheby's said.
Woodward's wedding ring; autographed letters and photographs from Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; as well as racing memorabilia kept by Newman also will go on the block.
Sales of celebrity memorabilia have historically turned a handsome profit. Steve McQueen's hero car from the legendary chase scene in the film “Bullitt”? $3.74 million. The “Casablanca” piano? $3.4 million. Marilyn Monroe's Golden Globe? $250,000.