{"id":1300137,"date":"2022-10-06T14:13:03","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T13:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/?post_type=specialissue_content&p=1300137"},"modified":"2022-10-06T14:13:05","modified_gmt":"2022-10-06T13:13:05","slug":"winning","status":"publish","type":"specialissue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/special-article\/racing-at-the-movies-2\/92\/winning\/","title":{"rendered":"Winning"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

WINNING<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Released<\/strong> 1969
\nDirector<\/strong> James Goldstone
\nStudio<\/strong> Universal Pictures
\nStars<\/strong> Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Robert Wagner
\nGross<\/strong> $14.6m (Budget $12m)<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI\u2019d rather saw my fingers off than sit through that again,\u201d claimed Quentin Tarantino (although, in the same interview he also said he didn\u2019t enjoy Grand Prix<\/em> or Le Mans<\/em> and would rather watch one of Elvis Presley\u2019s racing flicks).<\/p>\n

QT isn\u2019t totally off-base. Winning<\/em> is not a great movie (though we\u2019d argue that it\u2019s better than The King\u2019s Spinout<\/em> or Speedway<\/em>\u2026 but perhaps not Viva Las Vegas<\/em>). Like Grand Prix<\/em>, Winning<\/em> tries to mix soap and sport but it lacks, among other things, the epic scale and international glamour of John Frankenheimer\u2019s opus. It also suffers in parts from adopting a slightly unconvincing \u2018European\u2019 artiness that was in vogue at the time (close-ups of flowers near the track, blurry shots of spectators, an Antonioni-esque focus on shapes and spaces).<\/p>\n

\n \"Paul\n
\n

Having started out as a budget made-for-TV movie, Winning snowballed once Newman came onboard<\/p>\n

\n Getty Images\n <\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

The pretentions may be partly an attempt to disguise the film\u2019s humble roots. It was originally planned as a low-budget TV movie of the week for the NBC network. But when Newman, then one of the biggest stars in the world, expressed an interest the project rapidly moved from the small screen to the big, with a commensurate shift in budget as Universal Pictures got involved to the tune of $12m (the equivalent of about $80m today). But even though the cast would now boast Newman, his Oscar-winning wife Joanne Woodward and, err… Robert Wagner, the script remained fairly unchanged from its small-screen origins.<\/p>\n

Newman plays Frank Capua, an introverted driver, better with cars than people, who\u2019s hoping to win the Indianapolis 500. Wagner plays his dashing rival, Luther, and Woodward is Elora, a divorcee who captures (and breaks) Frank\u2019s heart. To add a little extra pathos, Elora has a son Charley (Richard Thomas, a few years before he would become John Boy in The Waltons) who quickly bonds with Frank, who discovers he enjoys being a father. It\u2019s not exactly a bad plot, more a dull one. Interspersed with a couple of explosively well-acted scenes that seem completely out of place, like if Daniel Day-Lewis suddenly turned up in EastEnders<\/em>. As reviewer Roger Ebert observed: \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that Winning<\/em> shouldn\u2019t have been made, only that talent like Newman\u2019s and Miss Woodward\u2019s shouldn\u2019t have been wasted on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The truth is, the film would have long since faded into oblivion if it wasn\u2019t for two things: the quality of the racing scenes and the legend that this was the film that began Newman\u2019s passion for motor sport. However, the actor \u2013 who had been attending the Indy 500 for years \u2013 questioned the second point.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s only partially true that Winning<\/em> got me interested in racing,\u201d said Newman. \u201cI was interested before that, but I just hadn\u2019t done anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \"Paul-Newman-as-Frank-Capua-in-the-film-Winning\"\n
\n

Newman on set<\/p>\n

\n Corbis via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

In fact, he was already a regular attendee at the Indy 500 and had started tinkering with cars, transforming the family Volkswagen into a more potent beast for his regular commutes from the theatre where he was working in New York to home in Connecticut.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was complaining to my mechanic about driving the VW back and forth,\u201d he told Motor Trend<\/em> magazine in a 1970 interview. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you dump a Porsche engine in it, and you\u2019ll still retain your back seat but have all the power you need.\u2019 So we dropped in a stock Porsche engine, installed sway bars, Konis [shock absorbers] and Dunlop Super Sports [tyres]. The car handled so well that we put in a Porsche Super 90 engine and then put Porsche brakes up front. Later we bored out the Super 90 to 1800cc and put a hot cam in it. It was a neat little bomb. I guess that was my first so-called \u2018hopped-up\u2019 street machine\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \"Wagner\n
\n

Wagner on set<\/p>\n

\n Getty Images\n <\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

The die had been cast. Newman would \u2018tinker\u2019 with cars for the rest of his life. And in hindsight it\u2019s clear that his decision to make Winning<\/em> had more to do with the racing elements than the dramatic ones. However, following the success of Grand Prix<\/em>, the bar on racing movies had been raised. NBC\u2019s plan to string together existing race footage around the story would not suffice. For Winning<\/em> to have credibility with audiences it needed to do for the IndyCar series what Grand Prix<\/em> had done with Formula 1: make the viewer feel they were really at the race. Fortunately, the film now had the budget to do that.<\/p>\n

It was decided that Newman would attend Bob Bondurant\u2019s racing school (Bondurant had worked with James Garner for Grand Prix<\/em>). The instruction was thorough. It began in the classroom, where the fundamentals of racing were taught: beating the clock and beating the competition. There was advice on heel-and-toe techniques to save seconds moving foot from throttle to brake. Then the actor learned the track, walking around it and discussing what was expected for each turn, from the approach apex to the exit line. Finally, he learned the car \u2013 how to sit, how to steer, the unique controls, staying at the right rpm.<\/p>\n

Bondurant took him around in a special training car until it was Newman\u2019s turn to drive. He began in a Lola 270 and after a week was in a Ford Grand National stock car. \u201cHe was so smooth,\u201d recalled Bondurant, \u201cit was like he\u2019d been driving for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \"Newman\n
\n

Newman as Capua<\/p>\n

\n Getty Images\n <\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

After training, Newman refused to use a stunt driver when filming began for the race scenes so the studios had him insured for $3m. The film crew worked from a track in Elkhart Lake, a village in Wisconsin known for its racing ties \u2013 Road & Track<\/em> magazine still holds an annual race car Concours d\u2019Elegance there each summer and The Road America course is nearby.<\/p>\n

Newman\u2019s first day in Wisconsin naturally drew crowds and the Milwaukee Journal<\/em> sent a reporter who filed that the first day\u2019s filming \u201cwas uneventful, with grey and sometimes rainy conditions\u201d and that the cast and crew included 150 people plus extras for the crowd scenes \u2013 recruited by the local employment office, who offered the princely sum of $15 a day. As the locals got used to his presence, Newman relaxed and was often seen around town, in the local bars and coffee shops. Most of his time though was spent hanging around the track and talking to the other drivers. He was regularly described as \u2018grinning gleefully\u2019 and it was probably here that his passion for racing took hold.<\/p>\n

Location shooting took place on Memorial Day at the Indy 500 where they captured the actors among the race day colour and also had access to all the track footage \u2013 including a spectacular 17-car smash that made it into the final film.<\/p>\n

\n \"Newman\n
\n

Newman (Frank Capua) with his actress wife Joanne Woodward (Elora Capua) and fellow actor Robert Wagner (Luther Lou Erding) on the set of Winning in 1969<\/p>\n

\n Getty Images\n <\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

The combination of the Indy 500 footage, Newman\u2019s own exploits in Wisconsin and a team of editors ensured that Winning<\/em> succeeded in its goal of giving audiences a real sense of IndyCar racing. The New York Times<\/em> praised the film as \u201ca big, vibrant, rhythmic kaleidoscope of sights and sounds that almost pops the screen\u201d and even described the dramatic scenes between the races as \u201crefreshingly intelligent\u201d. It was the 16th biggest film of the year at the box office, eventually turning a profit for the studio. But ultimately, the legacy of Winning<\/em> is the effect it had on its star. After playing a race driver he decided, at the age of 44, to become one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t dance, I couldn\u2019t play tennis, I did everything bad,\u201d he once said. \u201cThe first thing I ever did gracefully in my life was in my car.\u201d He would race for the rest of his life. Driving a Lotus Elan, he won his first-ever Sports Car Club of America race in 1972 before graduating to a series of ever-more powerful Datsuns while winning four SCCA national championships between 1979 and 1986. He would become a team owner, partnering with Bill Freeman to form Newman-Freeman Racing and later with Carl Haas to form Newman\/Haas Racing, one of the most successful teams in IndyCar racing.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Newman\u2019s greatest accomplishment as a driver was his second-place finish in the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1979, driving a Porsche 935 as part of Dick Barbour\u2019s three-man team. \u201cI had a lot of fun filming Winning<\/em> but I never had a chance to stretch my legs and find out what I could do in a car,\u201d Newman later reflected. \u201cIt took me three years of rearranging my schedule before I could find time to get my licence. But after that, I never did a film between April and September. Racing was all I did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"author":26834,"featured_media":1300442,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"single-full-width.php","categories":[126831],"tags":[36336,130163],"issue_decade":[122153],"issue_year":[129434],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/specialissue_content\/1300137"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/specialissue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/specialissue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26834"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1300137"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/specialissue_content\/1300137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1306101,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/specialissue_content\/1300137\/revisions\/1306101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1300442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1300137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1300137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1300137"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=1300137"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=1300137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}