Paul Newman's torched tapes reveal his real love with Joanne Woodward in 'The Last Movie Stars'

Near the end of an iconic movie career and deep into his storybook marriage to actress Joanne Woodward, Paul Newman carried a trove of personal audio recordings to his local dump and set them aflame.

The torched tapes contained hundreds of interviews, conducted by close friend and screenwriter Stewart Stern, whom Newman had commissioned for a memoir that seemingly went up in smoke.

However, the blue-eyed "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "Cool Hand Luke" star, who died in 2008 at 83, never burned the transcripts.

In 2019, Newman's family discovered transcripts stashed in the basement laundry room of the family's Westport, Connecticut, home and found more a year later in a storage locker.  The revealing interviews serve as the foundation for director Ethan Hawke's six-part documentary series, "The Last Movie Stars" (now streaming Thursday on HBO Max).

The tapes, brought back to life, reveal the true Woodward-Newman love story.

"The family said they would give me complete access to what they had. So when I opened this box (with the tapes) I thought I was going to find something awful," Hawke says.  "Why else would he burn the tapes? There must be some terrible secrets in there. But it ended up being a lot simpler than that. There were many secrets but none of them were terrible. They were interesting, beautiful and human."

'The Last Movie Stars' trailer: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward subjects of Ethan Hawke documentary

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, Hawke enlisted actor friends to read the transcripts over Zoom calls. The stand-ins include George Clooney, reading Newman's words; Laura Linney as Woodward; and Sam Rockwell and Billy Crudup as directors Stuart Rosenberg ("Cool Hand Luke") and James Goldstone ("Winning").

The humanity emerges even as "Last Movie Stars" delves into challenging material, including the relationship's emotionally contentious origins. Newman was a father of three and married to his first wife, actress Jackie Witte when he met Woodward in 1953 as both were understudies for the Broadway comedy "Picnic."

The couple fell madly in love. But the 1958 divorce fallout, followed by Newman and Woodward's marriage, was devastating for Witte (whose poignant interview sections are read by Zoe Kazan) and the couple's three children as well as a source of guilt that haunted Newman.

Movie star pressures further complicated the relationship. Woodward, an Oscar winner for 1957's "The Three Faces of Eve," was the bigger star and considered the better actor when the star duo married in 1958. But Woodward's career took a back seat taking care of their growing family, which included three more children, allowing Newman's career to enter another stratosphere with 1961's "The Hustler."

"When they first got married, (Paul) was kind of the good-looking boy toy of the great Oscar-winning actor Joanne Woodward," says Hawke. "She released her ego to become a stepmother and then a mother, only to have his career explode. And she didn't expect what the industry would do to her once she started being a mother. Her life as an actor was deeply affected."

Newman's drinking also took a toll on the relationship. During one segment of "Last Movie Stars," the couple's grown daughter Clea  reveals how Woodward finally got fed up with his alcohol consumption and kicked him out of their house. He camped out on the family driveway for a week until he was let back in, after agreeing to cut out alcohol.

"This beautiful life didn't fall in their lap. They created it," Hawke says. "They worked hard at it."

"Last Movie Stars" unveils other steps Woodward and Newman took to navigate pitfalls,  keeping their marriage and family together while collaborating professionally. The two appeared on stage frequently, made 16 movies together (including five directed by Newman), were outspoken social activists and philanthropists (creating the Newman's Own grocery franchise with all profits going to charity). 

In 2007, Newman learned he had terminal cancer, just days after Woodward was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Woodward, 92, did not participate in the series. "That's why the family wanted me to do it now," says Hawke. "They wanted it to come out while she's still alive and can see this, to support her."

A telling "Movie Stars" segment features Woodward and Newman in one of their most epic movie flops, 1970's widely panned critical satire "WUSA." Without narration or description, the scene features the couple kissing with unbridled and undeniable passion.

"What I love about that shot is that they're really in love. And yet they're both grown-ups in the middle of their lives," Hawke says. "There's something about that kiss that is beyond sex. It's deep, authentic love. You hear that wolves mate for life. Well, they look like a couple of wolves sniping each other."

It's just one representation of the Woodward-Newman relationship, even beyond the fable.

"When I started this project, my one fear was that I would discover that they weren't who I thought they were," says Hawke. "In the process, I realized that they were much more than I thought they were because it was harder than I thought it was. It's not a fairy-tale journey. They are actually human beings with the same problems as the rest of us. But they managed to fight through them."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Paul Newman's lost tapes show Joanne Woodward love: 'Last Movie Stars'