MovieChat Forums > Petrocelli (1974) Discussion > Barry Newman on Carson.

Barry Newman on Carson.

posted 19 years ago by Alvistime
2 replies | jump to latest

I remember very few interviews, but this one stuck out in my mind after all these years. Newman was a guest ( one of the best ) on "The Tonight Show" when "Petrocelli" was doing it's network run. Carson and Newman were discussing his show. Newman said people didn't want to see reality. He mentioned that the network was getting several complaints that the show wasn't real enough. One reason often given was because he never lost a case. So they wrote and aired an episode where he lost the case and was almost disbarred. Then the network got several complaints the other way. The most memorable was one where the person wrote" if I wanted to see a lawyer lose a case, I'd hire my own man."

[–] krdement 16 years ago

I think it was in that same guest appearance on Carson that Newman described his relative anonymity in Hollywood. He described some big party hosted by a big star to which he had been invited. The host had made some remarks to the guests about "Newman" coming to the party. Of course, the arrival of BARRY Newman was a real let down to the throng of guests who had been expecting PAUL Newman. (Barry told this little anecdote with a lot of self-effacing humor and wit. Sorry that I can't duplicate it after these many years.)

John 3:16

[–] lor_ 14 years ago

That's a great story. I was a big Barry Newman fan after Vanishing Point and dutifully went to his other movies like The Salzburg Connection, but he never really made it. The idiotic Mini Bio (written by a notorious blowhard no-nothing) for Newman in IMDb makes it sound like he was one of the stars getting a big push (Hoffman, Pacino, etc.) but I recall he never got the studio publicity backing one needs. More recently I saw his unreleased early starring role in a Greenwich Village indie THE MOVING FINGER and it saddened me that for a career literally starting 50 years ago he never got the big break. Sure, THE LAWYER & PETROCELLI are memorable for a very small coterie of fans, as is Vanishing Point, but ironically the star of that film was the Dodge Challenger, and it is the car that has been recently revived, not Newman's career & legacy. What a fickle business!

"Three quarters of what is said here can be completely discounted as the raving of imbeciles" - Donald Wolfit in Blood of the Vampire (1958)