ONE of the best films Paul Newman made during a long and distinguished career in HollywoodwascalledAbsence of Malice (1981). In it, Newman - who died the other day at the age of 83 - played Michael Gallagher, the son of amobsterwho,becauseofthat fact alone, comes under investigation for a murder he did not commit.
Newman’s co-star was Sally Field, who played an eager, young, ambitious reporter whosenaivetyleadsherastray, with damaging consequences forNewman’scharacter.Sheis duped by a scheming govern-mentinvestigatorintoprinting stories that discredit innocent Michael Gallagher. When she realises her mistake, she tries to hide behind the privilege of the press, only to find that this privilege has very real limits.
Apart from the outstanding performances by Field and Newman (he received an Academy Award nomination for his role), the film should be a “must see” for all journalists and wannabe journalists.
If All the President’s Men (1976), co-starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodard of The Washington Post during the Watergate scandal, showcased the ideal-istic side of journalism, Absence of Malice concentratesonthevenalsideandthe way in which journalistic ethics can be subverted.
The manner is which the overeager Field is manipulatedintowritingmisleadingand damagingstoriesaboutamobster’s son should carry a salutary lesson. Actually, Newman’s character is guilty of nothing more than having unsavouryrelatives.Itisaplain case of guilt by association.
In this age of celebrity culture, where rumour, gossip and innuendo can all too read-ily take on the status of “fact”, it behoves newspapers to be doubly careful.
The strange thing is that it emerged in 2002 that the storylineofAbsenceofMalicehad a parallel in real life, and a parallel involving a real film star, the lovely and tragic American actress Jean Seberg.
More than 35 years earlier, asmallitemappearedinagossip column in the Los Angeles Times which suggested that a prominent American actress, who was married to a well-known European, was expecting the child of a leading Black Panther. The story was taken up by Newsweek, which identified the actress as Jean Seberg and her husband as Romain Gary, the French writer and diplomat. The Black Panther was Ray “Masai” Hewitt, the party’s minister of information.
Seberg, who shot to fame when she was chosen by Otto Preminger to play the title role in the 1957 film Saint Joan, was deeply upset by the story, gavebirthprematurelyandthe childdiedaftertwo days. At the funeral, Seberg opened the coffin to show that the baby was white and therefore her husband’s. The actress later committed suicide having never, according to her friends, fully recovered. She was 40.
In 2002, however, copies of memos obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed the whole sordid account of how the malicious and untrue story was success-fully “planted” by the FBI and its director, J Edgar Hoover.
Seberg’s only “sin” was that in the 1960s she became increasingly involved in radical American politics, most notably as a supporter of the Black Panther party, which Hoover was then describing as the greatest internal threat to the security of the USA.
The FBI, then and later, was involved in covert operations to blacken leading figures it classified as “danger-ous”. Paul Newman was very proud of the fact that, because of his support for civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War, he was among the top 20 of President Nixon’s “most hated” list.
