Melissa Newman, daughter of Paul Newman, returns to Cleveland

This April, Melissa Newman will return to Cleveland for the first time since she was 13 to promote her book about her parents: “Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman: Head Over Heels, A Love Affair in Words and Pictures.” 

Paul Newman was a Northeast Ohio native.

Newman curated the 2023 oversized, coffee table photo book with her long-time friend and editor Andrew Kelly. The book features 280 intimate photos of the two movie icons and quotations from each about each other. The list of famous photographers includes Richard Avedon, Philippe Halsman, Gordon Parks and Lawrence Schiller. 

The book also contains personal photos taken by family friend and screenwriter Stewart Stern, best known for penning the James Dean-driven 1955 classic “Rebel Without A Cause.”

On Saturday, April 11, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Newman is

scheduled to appear at the Cleveland History Center to give a personal presentation drawn from her book, which is published by Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. 

Through a slideshow of photographs and reflections, Newman will share what it was like to grow up with Newman and Woodward — not as movie stars, but as artists, partners and parents. She will explore their creative lives, enduring partnership and the making of this deeply personal tribute. 

This program includes a Q&A session and book signing. Books will be available for purchase onsite.

At 2 p.m. on  April 11 she will give a similar presentation at the Cuyahoga County Public Library Parma – Powers Branch.

A film-focused event at Cedar Lee Theatre

On Sunday, April 12, at 4 p.m., Newman will appear at the historic Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights, which will host the 1967 film “Cool Hand Luke” starring Paul Newman. The young actor established himself as one of the coolest, up-and-coming Hollywood stars in an iconic performance that garnered him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. 

Melissa will introduce the movie and give a talkback presentation and Q&A afterward.

She said she’s greatly looking forward to the event in the city where her father was born, before his family moved to Shaker Heights. Newman said throughout her life people have shared stories of her father and his various antics and adventures as a child. She treasures these anecdotes. 

She only visited Cleveland once before, when she was 13.Woodward brought her to visit her grandmother in Shaker. However, her uncles and cousins who grew up with her father were always an important part of her life. 

“I know I’m going to go back with a lot of stories,” she said.

The event is one of more than 250 free, Ohio-centric films being shown throughout the state this year as part of the Ohio Goes to the Movies project. The initiative is Ohio’s signature project to celebrate American’s 250^th anniversary while also highlighting films or people with an Ohio connection who contributed to the filmmaking industry during its more than 130-year history. 

“Having a chance to hear Melissa talk about her parents as people and the realness of their relationship is extraordinary,” said Molly Kreuzman, program director for Ohio Goes to the Movies. “She’s just delightful and people will walk away feeling a little closer to Paul Newman, and how many of us don’t want to say that?”

Kreuzman got to know Newman well after nominating her father for the Great Ohioans Award. Melissa visited the Statehouse in Columbus in February 2025 to present the award for Paul Newman, who was a recipient of the honor, along with Clark Gable and Dorothy Dandridge.

While local legend has it that Newman worked at the Cedar Lee in his youth, there are no employment records from that era, according to Sean Denny, director of operations for Cleveland Cinemas, which owns Cedar Lee Theatre. No sign of Newman’s initials carved in a wall that were long rumored to exist, either. 

“The place has been remodeled so many times I can’t imagine any would still be visible, and we wish we could confirm the rumors that have circulated long before I started here in 2001, but we can’t,” he said, adding that Newman more likely attended movies there. “He was born here and lived in Shaker Heights, so I can’t imagine he didn’t.”

How “Head Over Heels” came about

Now in her 60s, Newman had been surrounded by superb photos of her highly photogenic parents her entire life. Then everything came together to assemble her favorites all into one published collection.

“Lucky me, my friend Andrew Kelly, who’s my editor, makes beautiful coffee table books through his business Andrew Kelly LLC,” she said. “For years we talked about how great it would be to have all of these amazing photos and all these amazing photographers, so during COVID, we decided to just delve into it.”

A friend reached out to the publisher Little, Brown and Company with the concept for the photo book. They responded immediately that they would like to buy it.

“I was shocked,” Newman said, adding with a laugh. “Then we got terrified because we realized, ‘Okay, now we have to make it!’”

Newman began searching through every corner of her home in Westport, Connecticut, which she and her husband Raphael Elkind had purchased from her parents 30 years ago. Newman and Woodward bought it in 1961, the year she was born.

She began finding more beautiful, revealing pictures of her parents taken by some of the preeminent lensmen of the 20^th century. When Little Brown informed her that they were expecting her to hand over all the photos and they would turn it into a book, Newman told them she had an editor and a designer.

“We were hoping they would just stay out of our way, and when they saw what we were doing they trusted us, which was amazing,” Newman said. “We put the book together ourselves, and when we went 22 pages over, we were worried, but we just handed it in, and they were happy with what we gave them.This was an absolute labor of love.”

Selecting photos for the book

The two rented a space in a library and started sorting through hundreds of photographs on a huge table.

Kelly, who declared it the most enjoyable work experience he’s ever had, explained that they looked at other classic photo books such as “Marilyn: A Biography” by Norman Mailer and books about other celebrities such as Audrey Hepburn and Lee Radziwill. 

“We wanted to go with a high concept of a purely visual, non-chronological book that reflected the energy and presence of their relationship,” he explained. “We also didn’t want to make a book about two people getting older. We were telling a story about a time and a place and two people in it.”

Among the photos stored by her mother in the attic, Newman also discovered the first ten love letters her father had sent to Woodward. They were stuffed in a brown paper bag surrounded by dust and dead mice.

“They were dated 1955, which was earlier than I thought, and they got married in 1958,” she said. “Then I found a stack of telegrams sent to my mother after she won her Oscar in 1957 [Best Actress for “The Three Faces of Eve”], and all of those could have easily gone into the garbage, and I don’t want to think about the things that did go into the garbage.”

The arresting cover photo of her parents was taken by Stewart Stern, a long-time close confidant of her father and friend of the family.

“When you see the cover, you can see how there was no going back; they met and that was it,” Newman said. “Stewart knew them both when they were having their torrid affair, which caused a lot of collateral damage [Paul Newman was still married to his first wife, Jackie], so I feel like they were an inexorable couple, and that’s such a perfect illustration.”

A loving but complex relationship

Though the simmering passion enjoyed by Newman and Woodward is obvious in many of the photos, their relationship was far from one-sided.

“Their marriage wasn’t easy or simple or pretty all the time, and sometimes it was really ugly,” Newman revealed. “That’s exactly what we wanted to capture in the book, the inexorability of their relationship, and I think we did a good job that I’m very proud of.”

Kelly added: “They were many other things besides glamorous, beautiful movie stars. We captured their spirit, and we want people to go away with a good feeling about these people when they finish looking at the book.”

After she and her husband bought her family’s home and her parents moved into Melissa’s maternal grandmother’s house across a river with a footbridge, the family enjoyed 12 years of “babies and barbecues that was as good as it gets” before her father died in 2008, according to Newman. 

“The happiest I’ve ever seen my dad was sitting in a sandbox with two little boys playing with Matchbox cars,” she recalls.

Cars, of course, were another diversion that gave her father great joy. He had taken up auto racing after playing a racecar driver in the 1969 film “Winning.” He worked hard at it and spent many hours racing when he could. At 70 he even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest person to win a race, the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona.

Having managed a successful IndyCar team and winning four Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) national championships, Paul Newman was inducted posthumously to the SCCA Hall of Fame (2009) and Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (2024). 

For one of his birthdays, Newman said, they loaded a bunch of Matchbox cars into the dishwasher then piled them up on his cake with some sparklers as if they had all crashed.

“His racing drove my mother crazy because she had to sit there on the side of the hill at Lime Rock Park speedway, where he used to race, furiously knitting long scarves,” Newman recalled. “That was not fun for her.”

Although he drove a Porsche 911 and silver Corvette Stingray at home when he was young, he changed his driving strategy as he aged.

“I loved that about him that he didn’t want cars that looked fast, he wanted cars that were fast,” she said. “He wanted to put pedal to the metal and be a crazy person, but he was smart. He knew the cops were going to come after you the minute they saw you on the highway in a red Ferrari.”

Instead, Newman preferred his Volkswagen Bug with a Porsche engine or a Volvo station wagon with a stock car engine. 

While raising their three children, Woodward stepped back from acting to knit sweaters, wash the dog, cook breakfast, get the kids to school and even serve as artistic director of Westport County Playhouse from 2001 to 2005. 

“She was the hero, and I think my dad also had incredible respect for that,” she said.

Her favorite story about her mother? 

“She made her own dress for the Oscars because she didn’t have enough money to buy one,” Newman said. “She bought yards of green silk and sewed a ball gown and matching jacket for $100 on her Singer sewing machine, and it was stunning. You can look it up.”

Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2007, Woodward lives in a nursing home near her daughter in Westport.

Newman’s doing everything she can to promote and support the book like her trip to Cleveland because she is proud of it and wants people to own it.

She knows it has become a great house warming, wedding or anniversary gift. Additionally, the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Ashford, Connecticut, that her father founded in 1988 to give children with serious illnesses a chance to “raise a little hell” uses the book as a fundraising gift. 

Ultimately, the author of “Head Over Heels” hopes the book will bring a sense of closure for her about her parents.

“I always said if I had to have movie star parents, I’m glad I got the ones I got,” Newman concluded.