Paul Newman, who died at the weekend at the age of 83, was so fond of his homemade salad dressing that he once walked into the lavatory at New York’s four-star La Grenouille to wash the restaurant’s sauce off his lettuce so that he could mix and use his own.

“He was very proud of this dressing of his — more proud of it than of his movies,” A.E. “Hotch” Hotchner, the actor’s longtime friend and business partner, told The Times yesterday.

“Every time we would go to a restaurant, he would say without any embarrassment, ‘I am sure your salad dressing is very good, but please bring me your best olive oil, red wine vinegar and this kind of mustard,’” Mr Hotchner recalled. “People at the other tables would be perplexed. Here was Paul Newman, the famous movie star, mixing his own salad dressing.”

Mr Hotchner met the movie star in 1955 when the producers sought out Newman to act in his television play The Battler, based on an Ernest Hemingway story, after their first choice, James Dean, was killed in a car crash.

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The two became firm friends and fishing buddies, living as neighbours in Westport, Connecticut, before embarking on an unlikely adventure together as salad-dressing entrepreneurs and big-time philanthropists.

“The food business we started as a lark,” Mr Hotchner said. “It was not really intended to be anything that would last more than a few months.”

Newman’s Own, which has now expanded into other products such as pasta sauce and popcorn, has since given more than $250 million (£136 million) to charity. This year alone the company will donate around $26 million to pay for 15,000 children with cancer to go to holiday camps around the world.

The idea for the “Newman’s Own” brand was born when the actor asked his friend to help in his Christmas ritual of mixing some home-made salad dressing to be put in wine bottles and handed out to neighbours. “When we mixed up the first batch at Christmas 1980, the idea was we would take it around to the neighbours and sing some carols,” Mr Hotchner recalled.

“There were some bottles left over and he said, ‘Why don’t we put them in stores?’ I said, ‘You can’t do that. You need insurance and things.’ He said, ‘OK.’” The pair found a bottler and asked a local supermarket to start selling the dressing. But the supermarket owner insisted that it have not just Newman’s name but his face on the label. “He said, ‘That could be Seymour Newman from New Jersey.’”

Newman agreed to cash in on his celebrity, but only for a good cause. “He said, ‘If I am going to do a tacky thing like that for money, then I think we should go to the people who support it, not to my pocket or your pocket. Why don’t we just give it all away?’,” Mr Hotchner said.

“He said something like what Hemingway said: ‘You don’t own anything until you give it away’.” Hence the company’s slogan, which is also the name of a book the two published together: Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good.

It is a work that contains a notable description of Newman — his own. Newman wrote of himself: “He is probably best known for his spectacularly successful food conglomerate. In addition to giving the profits to charity, he also ran Frank Sinatra out of the spaghetti-sauce business. On the downside, the spaghetti sauce is outgrossing his films.” Profits from Newman’s Own have gone to more than 1,000 groups. The actor, who always said that his success was largely thanks to luck, wanted to help those who were short of luck themselves. In 1988 his charity opened the first of many camps for sick children. He named it after the Hole in the Wall Gang in Newman’s classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Mr Hotchner said that the actor, who marched in the civil rights movement and campaigned for the failed Democratic candidate Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 election, remained a committed liberal. “He was always for the underdog. I think one of the things he was proudest of, I would say most proud of, was that he was on Nixon’s enemies list. He was really incensed by the fact that Bush allowed tax breaks for the very wealthy, even though he was the very wealthy.”

The playwright saw his old friend days before his death on Friday. “He was the same man in 2008 as he was in 1956. He never changed, despite all the movies and the accolades.”

That modesty was reflected in Newman’s self-assessment in the book the two wrote. The actor said of himself: “He did graduate from Kenyon College magna cum lager and in the process begat a laundry business, which was the only student-run enterprise on Main Street. Yale University later awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for unknown reasons. He has won four Sports Car Club of America National Championships and is listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest driver (70) to win a professionally sanctioned race (24 Hours of Daytona, 1995). He is married to the best actress on the planet [Joanne Woodward], was number 19 on Nixon’s enemies list, and purely by accident has fifty-one films and four Broadway plays to his credit. He is generally considered by professionals to be the worst fisherman on the East Coast.”

The tributes

“There is a point where feelings go beyond words. I have lost a real friend. My life, and this country, is better for his being in it" - Robert Redford

“To say he was an extraordinary man would be an understatement. It seems to me to be one of the great 20th-century lives. He was a shining example of how to use global fame for the greater good; and most of all he was one of the great movie actors of this or any other age” - Sam Mendes

“When such important personalities die, one despairs and thinks that, little by little, all the greats are disappearing” - Sophia Loren

“Paul was an American icon, philanthropist and champion for children. Our prayers and thoughts are with Joanne [his widow, Joanne Woodward] and the Newman family and the many people who Paul impacted through his endless kindness and generosity” - Bill and Hillary Clinton

“The ultimate cool guy, who men wanted to be like and women adored. He was an American icon, a brilliant actor, a Renaissance man and a generous but modest philanthropist” - Arnold Schwarzenegger

“He set the bar too high for the rest of us — not just actors, but all of us”- George Clooney

“Sometimes God makes perfect people and Paul Newman was one of them. I was blessed to have known him. The world is better because of him”- Sally Field

Newman on Newman

Paul Newman described himself in Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good, the book that he co-wrote with A.E. Hotchner:

“Paul Newman (known as Ol' PL to both friends and enemies): The 'L' stands for 'Leonard' or 'Lunkhead'. He answers to both.

He is probably best known for his spectacularly successful food conglomerate. In addition to giving the profits to charity, he also ran Frank Sinatra out of the spaghetti-sauce business. On the downside, the spaghetti sauce is outgrossing his films.

He did graduate from Kenyon College magna cum lager and in the process begat a laundry business, which was the only student-run enterprise on Main Street. Yale University later awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for unknown reasons. He has won four Sports Car Club of America National Championships and is listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest driver (70) to win a professionally sanctioned race (24 Hours of Daytona, 1995). He is married to the best actress on the planet, was number 19 on Nixon's enemies list, and purely by accident has fifty-one films and four Broadway plays to his credit. He is generally considered by professionals to be the worst fisherman on the East Coast.”

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