Honorary Degree Citation, 1961

PAUL LEONARD NEWMAN

Doctor of Humane Letters

Wherever motion pictures are shown, wherever the English-speaking theatre is admired or emulated, yours is a familiar name. You are known for the variety of roles you have undertaken: fighter, embattled exurbanite, young Philadelphian, sick young man from Tennessee — Tennessee Williams, that is. To each of these parts you have brought intelligence and passion and the peculiar kind of theatrical skill which can make a weak line, or a bad scene, seem bold and almost original. We are proud of the eminence you have achieved, but for our own pleasure we like to think also of the lively and irreverent young man who was a student on this green hill not very many years ago. Such recollections have the effect of assuring us that something of you remains in this place, and that something of Kenyon goes wherever you go. We remember you not only for the many plays at the Hill Theatre which were better for your part in them; we remember other roles to which you brought the same theatrical gusto: that of perennial master of ceremonies at the famous (or, as I rather fear, in-famous) T-Barracks, of itinerant laundryman; of marathon talker at the local pub, Dorothy's. We remember too that you were organizer, proprietor, and (in some eyes) perpetrator of the most rousing student musical in recent Kenyon history: The Kenyon Revue. That production caused a high mortality among faculty and administration egos, and almost decided the Dean of the College to take up another line of business. Your career since leaving Kenyon has by any standards been an extraordinary one — from summer stock to national television roles within a few years; from these to the legitimate stage, to films, and to such honors as the Best Actor citation at the Cannes Film Festival. It is always a pleasure to honor one of our own graduates; on this occasion it is a particular pleasure to confer a degree not as the culmination of a well-spent life but as an expression of our confidence in the good things you will do in the many years that lie ahead.

President

June fourth

Nineteen hundred sixty-one