The 50-Year Love Affair Between Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman in Seven Intimate Pictures

No one captured the intimacy of my parents’ relationship better than the screenwriter Stewart Stern, a close friend of my father’s. He was not only a lovely photographer, but a wonderful archivist who saved all of his negatives in tidily labeled envelopes which I stumbled upon, tucked away, in the family office. Several of the images peeked into the absolute dawn of their relationship. Here, Stewart disappears behind his camera while my parents cling to each other, they whisper, they laugh. The images foreshadow the inevitable. There was absolutely nothing to be done. They were hooked.

There was a great deal of sneaking around. And there was, undeniably, collateral damage. No denying the story began in a minor key.

My editor Andrew Kelly and I decided to put the whole sheet of negatives into the book, and include one on the cover. And another one on the back. And a few more for good measure. We got a unanimous thumbs up from the publishing team.

Los Angeles, 1962

The only kind of horse my mother really liked to ride, although she made a brave attempt to learn to ride real ones just to keep up with us. (She really wanted baby ballerinas, but she got cowgirls instead.)

Beverly Hills, 1967