When news of Paul Newman’s death began circulating Saturday, I’ll bet bunches of cinema fans rummaged through their DVD collections for one of Paul’s movies.

Watching the man on screen — as Butch, Hud, Luke, Henry Gondorff or Fast Eddie — would have been an appropriate way to mourn and remember the legendary film star.

I had just loaned out my copy of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” the day before. And neither of the classic cable movie television channels, the excellent Turner Classic Movies and once-excellent American Movie Classics, scrambled schedules to run a Newman movie. So Paul never made it to my place in Albany.

But I’ve just about grown up with the guy. “Butch Cassidy” was the first “adult” movie my parents allowed my brother Tim and cousin Joe Schauseil to see when we were just young teens. It was over the Christmas holidays of 1969, and it was either the gunslinger movie or the new James Bond movie, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” Parents on both sides figured the Wild West was a tamer bet than the bed and bedlam British spy.

Paul made an impression on all of us when he used a dirty — and painful — trick to wrap up the fight with Harvey Logan (Ted Cassidy) during the first 10 minutes of the film. We were all snickering as Logan caught a sharp kick where it really counted.

Newman made another impression on me during the early 1970s, when he visited Rochester during a political campaign swing. The papers made a big deal out of Paul showing up at his benefit, learning there was no beer, and then making a quick run to a store for a six-pack. I thought, “This is one sharp guy!”

And that’s why I’ve got to get “Harper” on video disc. My only copy of Newman’s 1966 turn as a wisecracking private eye is on cassette tape, and who in America is using VCRs these days?

This has always been my favorite Newman movie. The main man is a gum-chewing detective who drives a beat-up sports car, sleeps in his office and spends as much time goofing around as he does chasing leads. The cast is full of familiar faces — Arthur Hill plays Harper’s lawyer buddy Albert Graves, Lauren Bacall is Elaine Sampson, cold wife of a kidnapped crumb, and Robert Wagner shows up as Alan Taggart, the kidnapped crumb’s easy-going pilot and a would-be apprentice private eye. Janet Leigh is here, too.

Before people began buying their favorite films, I had to wait until some all-night cable station ran “Harper” at midnight or beyond. I never got tired of Paul’s laid-back portrayal of the title character. “As long as there’s a Siberia, you’ll find Lew Harper on the job,” he said during the film. Not really sure what he was getting at, but it sounded pretty cerebral.

I even memorized Harper’s little speech to Albert near the end of the movie, once the case had been solved. It was a great recitation for late nights or early mornings when things got slow at The Press Box, the old reporters’ bar on State Street.

“I had a total of about eight pretty disgusting months last year,” Harper says, from the passenger seat of a car Graves is driving. “But then I had three or four good weeks. Now, you’ll never understand this, and Susan sure as hell won’t, but those three or four weeks, man I really felt alive. Now all I can do is do the dirty job, all the way down the line.”

It sounds better in person. It also sounds better if you have poured down a few beers.

The movie also featured Schenectady native Harold Gould — he later showed up as “Kid Twist” in “The Sting” — Shelley Winters, Strother Martin and Pamela Tiffin. Poor Pam got stuck with the movie’s dumbest scene, "dancing" on a swimming pool diving board in a bikini, to music more suited to the jazzy 1950s than the rocking mid-1960s.

There were just so many great lines. Sample a few of them - and sample some of Pam's frug moves - by clicking right HERE.

Newman made a Harper sequel in 1975, “The Drowning Pool.” It wasn’t bad, but the 1970s fashions sure dates the thing.

The 1960s “look” of the first movie can still be considered kind of slick. I had always hoped Newman would revive the detective one more time, but it never happened. At least not officially: Paul’s “Harry Ross” character in the 1998 “Twilight” seems like an older version of Harper. But not smarter — Newman once noted in a newspaper interview that Ross gets shot with his own gun in “Twilight.”

That’s something that never would have happened to Lew Harper.