Newman tied to Richmond by author

When Paul Newman passed away this past Saturday, America lost one of its favorite actors. But students at Eastern might not realize that he was a part of our local history. It happens that the film legend's greatest role had its genesis right here in town, just a few doors down from T. Bombs.

Known for characters such as "Cool Hand" Luke and Butch Cassidy, Newman is indebted to Richmond novelist Walter Tevis for creating his most famous role, pool shark "Fast Eddie" Felson in The Hustler.

The Hustler, Tevis' first novel, was based on his own experiences working and playing in Richmond's smoky pool halls like Taylor's on First Street. Protagonist "Fast Eddie" was loosely based on himself.

The film version of The Hustler pitted Newman opposite George C. Scott and Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats. It earned nine Oscar nominations, including best actor for Newman.

The original manuscript of The Hustler is in a fireproof lockbox in Eastern's university archives.

Beth Cunningham, a library employee who works in the archives, said Tevis donated it to Eastern in 1967. The gift's value and importance were no secret.

"After he died his wife tried several times to get it back from us," Cunningham said.

Tevis utilized Madison County and the Blue Grass in much of his fiction.

"I was born in San Francisco, but my father was an old Kentuckian from an old Madison County family," Tevis told the Herald Leader in 1983.

The family returned to Kentucky when Tevis was 11, where he attended Eastern's Model Laboratory High School. He got his college degree from the University of Kentucky and taught high school English in several area schools, including one in Irvine.

Tevis wrote a sequel to The Hustler called The Color of Money in 1984. Given the chance to reprise the role of Fast Eddie, Newman jumped at it.

''I had wanted to do the project as soon as I read Walter Tevis' new book,'' Newman said in a New York Times interview in 1986.

''It reminded me that Eddie wasn't completed at the end of the first film like some other people I had played. Now Butch Cassidy was seriously completed. But Eddie's life wasn't. And I began wondering what he would be doing now."

His instincts paid off, and after years of nominations, Newman finally received the Oscar for best actor in 1986 for The Color of Money.

While the plot of the film, also starring Tom Cruise, diverged substantially from Tevis' novel of the same name, the central themes of aging and redemption remained.

Tevis completed a script for the movie version of The Color of Money, but never got to see Newman bring his alter ego back to life on the screen. Tevis died of lung cancer in 1984.

Paul Newman will be laid to rest this week near his home in Connecticut. Tevis, creator of some of Newman's most notable characters and perhaps the unwitting father of the pool hall subculture, is buried just a few feet from campus in the Richmond cemetery.