Susan Kendall Newman, an actress, Emmy-nominated producer, social activist and firstborn daughter of Paul Newman, has died. She was 72.
Newman died Aug. 2 of complications from chronic health conditions, her family announced.
Newman, whose mother was Paul Newman’s first wife, Jackie Witte, portrayed one of the six teenagers trying to wrangle their way into The Beatles’ first performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 in I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), directed and co-written by Robert Zemeckis.
She also had smaller roles in Slap Shot (1977), where she showed up as a pharmacist in the hockey film that starred her father, and Robert Altman’s A Wedding (1978).
Earlier, Newman appeared on Broadway in 1975 in We Interrupt This Program …, directed by Jerry Adler, but the inventive production — involving “gunmen” who enter the audience and take over the Ambassador Theatre during a play — lasted just seven outings.
In 1980, she produced an ABC Theatre presentation of Michael Cristofer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Shadow Box that was directed by her father and starred her stepmother, Oscar winner Joanne Woodward.
And she produced a family-friendly audiobook series of classical literature for Simon & Schuster, earning a Grammy nomination for best spoken word album for children.
Susan Kendall Newman and Paul Newman circa 1970.
Everett Collection
Her parents were married in Cleveland on Dec. 27, 1949, and they had three children — Scott (born in 1950), Susan (born in 1953) and Stephanie (born in 1954) — before their divorce was finalized on Jan. 28, 1958.
The next day, her dad wed Woodward — they had first met while on Broadway in Picnic in 1953, then starred in The Long, Hot Summer (1958) — in Las Vegas. They had three daughters — Elinor (born in 1959), Melissa (born in 1961) and Claire (born in 1965) — before he died of lung cancer at age 83 on Sept. 26, 2008.
Witte died in 1994 at age 64.
After her brother, Scott, who had appeared in such films as The Towering Inferno (1974) and Breakheart Pass (1975), died in November 1978 from a drug overdose, her father founded the Scott Newman Center for drug abuse prevention.
In 1980, she joined the Scott Newman Foundation and eventually became executive director. As a drug abuse prevention expert, she testified before Congress and was a frequent speaker at the Betty Ford Center and at universities, hospitals and community groups.
Her family said that she was especially proud of a groundbreaking program in several states that invited 10th-grade students to create their own anti-drug TV commercials. Instructional materials guided students through research, storyboarding and production, with winning entries professionally produced and broadcast nationally.
She also served as president of the Entertainment Industry Foundation and founded a consulting company that provided expertise to government agencies, corporations and nonprofits in developing prevention programs, outreach efforts and fundraising strategies.
More recently, she focused her advocacy on education, juvenile justice, conservation and health care.