(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros)
Wed 7 January 2026 20:15, UK
In the 1970s, Paul Newman was firmly entrenched as one of Hollywood’s most bankable and popular figures, not to mention one of its finest actors. With that in mind, you’d think that every director in the industry would be falling over themselves for the chance to work with him.
After all, by the turn of the decade, he’d amassed five Academy Award nominations and anchored popular hits like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Hustler, and Hombre. Newman was also highly selective, which made every project he signed on for gain instant levels of prestige and heft.
Despite that, and the fact that he was lined up for a film that would go on to recoup its budget 15 times over at the box office and make Oscars history, its director never wanted him in the first place. He was already attached, though, which would have led to some interesting conversations behind closed doors.
When Joe David Brown’s Addie Pray was optioned by Paramount and renamed as Paper Moon, John Huston was the first name attached behind the camera. Having very recently worked together on The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, he sought to reunite with Newman immediately afterwards.
The plan was for Newman to play Moses Pray, and for his real-life daughter, Elinor, who’d played a couple of minor roles under the stage name of Nel Potts alongside her parents in Rachel, Rachel and The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, to play Addie Loggins, with the A-lister hoping to indulge his nepotistic side once again.
Marigolds screenwriter Alvin Sargent had already been tasked to pen the Paper Moon script, but when Huston dropped the film, and Peter Bogdanovich was brought in as his replacement, the new megaphone-wielder decided that he wasn’t sold on the prospect of collaborating with two generations of the Newman clan.
“I think it’s the best work Ryan O’Neal’s done,” he explained to Alex Simon. “That wonderful laugh he came up with, that cackle, was just wonderful. Paramount owned the property originally and had John Huston lined up to direct with Paul Newman and his daughter to star. Then they wanted me to direct, but I didn’t particularly want to do it with Paul. I wanted to do it with Ryan, so that’s what happened.”
That’s a diplomatic way of putting it, with all signs pointing to Bogdanovich making it patently clear to the studio that he would only do the film if O’Neal was cast in the lead, casting Newman into the cold. The latter never gave his side of the story, though, since he wasn’t one for airing his dirty laundry in public, but it could have been a game-changer for his kid’s career.
After the Newmans had been swapped out for the O’Neals, Tatum would go on to win the Oscar for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ and become the youngest-ever winner of a competitive acting prize. Had things turned out differently, that might have been Nell Newman taking to the stage instead.
Related Topics