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It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue | Paul Newman: philanthropist, actor, and all-around awesome guy.

Dana Stevens, Slate | “His best roles were the ones that acknowledged that quality of being not superhuman, but somehow extra human. When he played a sour, bitter, reduced man, like the crippled and closeted Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the fit wasn’t right. He could be a bastard, like the unrepentant prodigal son in Hud, but it had to be a bastard who inhabited his body fully and joyously. (Has anyone onscreen ever reveled in the brute pleasure of being young as completely as Hud Bannon?) And when he combined that potent physicality with out-and-out sweetness — when he goofed around on a bicycle for Katharine Ross in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, for example — well, forget it. You’d do anything for the guy.”

Kimberly Lindbergs, Cinebeats | “I keep wondering how Newman’s wife and partner of 50 years, actress Joanne Woodward, must be coping with the loss. If I had to pick just one favorite Newman/Woodward film, it would probably be Paris Blues. Newman and Sidney Poiter play American jazz musicians living in Paris whose lives are disrupted when two beautiful tourists (Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll) visit the city of lights for a two-week holiday. Romance and Paris seem to go together like peanut butter and chocolate (so much better than peanut butter and jelly!) so I’m sure my affection for the film is clouded by my own romantic inclinations. But I have no problem admitting that I just enjoy seeing a gorgeous couple like young Newman and Woodward walking through the city streets holding hands and making love in a shabby Paris apartment. Newman and Woodward had only been married two years before making Paris Blues together and you can still sense the sexual energy between the two actors. When they fall in love onscreen, their relationship feels fresh and full of life. There’s a closeness and easygoing give and take between them both that is just undeniable.”

Glenn Kenny, Some Came Running | “There was a time — and a fairly long one — when he was the most beautiful man in film. And he didn’t make a big deal of it. Seemed rather to relish passing that mantle on to Redford. After which he was only, of course, the coolest guy in the room — always. We won’t see his like again.”