Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward got married, which everyone knows. The actor, director, producer, philanthropist, and race car driver was married to Joanne for 50 years. They were known as Hollywood’s “golden couple.”
In fact, one interview in particular made him very well-known. When asked if he would ever think about cheating on his wife, he said he didn’t need to go find a hamburger because he already had steak at home.
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He talked about his wife, Joanne Woodward, in the interview, but she wasn’t the only steak he had. Jackie Witte was a woman who lived a very long time before her. The “secret marriage life” of Newman was revealed by the British news media.
Who Is Paul Newman’s First Wife?
Jackie (Jackie) Witte was Paul Newman’s first wife (McDonald). She was born in September 1929. They were married for nine years, from 1949 to 1958. Their three kids were Scott Newman, Susan Kendall Newman, and Stephanie Newman. They were married long before Newman became well-known.
Jackie was a tall, blonde woman with dark eyes. In the years after World War II, she wanted to be an actor, just like her future husband. Newman was 24 and had been in the Navy when he met Jackie, who was only 19.
At that point, she hadn’t even finished college. In 1949, they both lived in a small town, and they met while working on a summer stage.
After a few months, they moved to Woodstock, Illinois, where they worked at a theatre. On December 27, 1949, Paul Newman and Jackie Witte got married, and she became the first Mrs. Newman.
In 1950, they had a son who they named Scott Newman. In November 1978, he died from taking too much of a drug. It was a sad end to his life.
Susan Newman was born in 1953. She was their second child. In 1954, their third and last child, Stephanie Kendall Newman, was born.
A lot of people have their own ideas about why they got married so quickly. People often think they are pregnant, but their first child was born a long time after they got married. Most people think they were just two young lovers who wanted the same things.
When Jackie Witte became pregnant with their first child, Scott, it seemed like her husband had to stop acting. Her husband’s father-in-law died around the same time, so she and her husband had to move to Cleveland to help run the family business.
At that time, it wasn’t too far to get to New York. Jackie Witte’s acting career was put on hold, so she took the train into the city to look for work as a model. In which she did end up becoming a model full-time.
But she got pregnant with her second child at the same time that her husband quit Yale University, where he was getting a master’s degree in theatre.
Newman decided that he would try acting for one more year before giving up. But it was hard for Jackie Witte that Newman was always gone, especially since she was expecting their second child and was pregnant with their first.
Introducing Joanne Woodward
When her husband finally got a leading role in the movie Picnic with actress and model Joanne Woodward, their marriage went downhill. Scott, her two-year-old son, was always having temper tantrums, and she had to take care of two small children by herself.
On the other hand, her husband spent every day and night in Manhattan, where he met new people, went to parties, looked for work, and acted. It was natural for her to start feeling bad about him. Along with this, Newman had feelings for his co-star, a 22-year-old Southern beauty.
Jackie Witte didn’t stay interested in acting for long because she was always stressed out and busy taking care of her three kids. Which made them argue a lot because Newman’s life was acting.
A friend noticed that they were changing the way they were with each other. “Paul is friendly and outgoing, while she is shy and quiet. Like Joanne, he likes to hang out with writers and actors late at night. Paul and Joanne were both very attractive people with a lot in common and a strong sense of friendship. But you seldom saw Jackie.”
Jackie Witte started to see less and less of Paul, which made her suspicious, and she had good reason to. Her husband was with another woman named Joanne Woodward most of the time. Still, they stayed married and seemed happy on the outside.
Marriage Is Over, Somebody Up There Like Me, Jackie Witte and Paul Newman’s movie in Hollywood, was a hit with critics. From there, his career would take off. On the other hand, their marriage went in a different direction.
Jackie didn’t give up easily when Paul finally told her that he loved someone else. She thought it was her right for her husband’s job to do well and for their family to be happy.
The sad truth was that they got married too young and had changed into two very different people since then. Even though she tried to stop him, Paul was set on leaving her.
As the news about his relationship with Joanne Woodward spread, he finally worked up the courage to ask Jackie Witte for a divorce.
Jackie wouldn’t sign the divorce papers, even though everyone kept making fun of her in public. She didn’t have to do it until new things came up. When word got out that Newman’s child was going to be born to Joanne, Jackie gave up and let them go their separate ways.
After the divorce was finalised, as they say, the rest is history. Jackie Witte was one of the strangest things about Newman’s life. People in Hollywood may think that Newman is one of the most faithful husbands to his wife Joanne Woodward, but that reputation was built on another woman’s betrayal.
Newman was always careful when people asked him about his first marriage to Jackie Witte. When pushed, he would often say, “I was probably too young to make my first marriage work,” or “No one cares what happened to us back then.”
He finally said that he was “guilty as hell” and that he would “carry it with me for the rest of my life.”
Did Jackie Witte Ever Remarry?
Jackie Witte was never seen in public again after she and Paul Newman broke up. She said she lived a quiet life and didn’t tell anyone about her personal life, like if she remarried or not.
Is Jackie Witte Still Alive?
No, Jackie Witte died in 1993 at the age of 64. Just like the rest of her life after she married Paul Newman, the cause and place of her death have been kept secret, and there has been no public notice of her death.
