FROM MCCARTHYISM TO THE WILD WORLD OF SPORTS, THE STORY OF THE HUSTLER

 

This is going to be a bit of an unusual article for me, part movie review, part pop culture and part modern American history. I recently saw the movie The Hustler for the first time, this is a little odd considering I was a pretty big fan of its sequel The Color of Money which came out in 1986, twenty-five years after the original (1961). In my defense it wasn’t as easy to get a hold of an old movie in the 1980s, although I probably could have found it at the local Blockbuster. Despite this, I was aware of the movie and knew it starred Paul Newman and legendary pool player Minnesota Fats. Some of the film buffs reading this are probably going, but wait, yeah I was confused about some of the facts surrounding the movie, I’ll get to that later. Spoiler alert, although this is more of a discussion of events surrounding these movies rather than a review, there will be spoilers.

The Hustler was a novel by Walter Tevis that came out in 1959 about a young hot shot pool player (Fast Eddie) who challenges the king of the pool hall, Minnesota Fats, to a series of high stakes pool matches. Despite having superior talent, after a marathon match, Fats wears Eddie down and takes all his money. After hitting rock bottom Eddie partners with Bert Gordon who finances his comeback, but more importantly teaches him about winning. In the end, Fast Eddie comes back to challenge Minnesota Fats again, this time successfully. Between the pool and the life lessons from Bert, there’s Eddie’s relationship with his former partner and his alcoholic girlfriend Sarah. The basic plot isn’t complicated but is richly told in both the book and movie.

This was Tevis’ first novel, but it appears that it was marked for a film adaptation almost immediately. The film came out within two years of the novel’s release, but it wasn’t a smooth process. It went through multiple screenplays, directors and leading actors before everything came together. Originally Frank Sinatra was associated with the movie, later Bobby Darin was cast in the role, but once Paul Newman became available, Darin was unceremoniously dropped from the film. There was never any doubt the movie would get made, however who’s vision would get to the screen was hotly debated. Eventually, Robert Rossen was chosen to direct the movie, but that wasn’t the end of the creative struggle. Rossen wanted a darker, gritter movie shot in realistic locations, but the studio wanted him to make a safer version that would be more bankable. 20 Century Fox was in the middle of making Cleopatra which was costing the studio a fortune and they couldn’t afford a flop with The Hustler.

Complicating matters was Rossen’s background. He’d been a respected and successful director. His most acclaimed movie was the 1949 All the King’s Men which won the Oscar for Best Movie and garnered him a nomination for best director. However, Rossen had also been a member of the Communist party in the 1930s and 40s and when he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) he refused to cooperate. For this he was blacklisted in Hollywood beginning in 1951 and was unable to find work in the industry. Eventually, his crumbling finances compelled him to go back to the HUAC and give them a couple of names of other Hollywood communists. Afterwards he was able to resume working, but although he’d only been gone for 2 years, he struggled in finding box office success. From 1953 to 1960 he directed several films, some with sizable budgets, but none found much of an audience

Given the circumstances, 20 Century Fox’s concerns were probably reasonable. But for Rossen, The Hustler was both a chance to jump start his career and a passion project. He co-wrote the screenplay and both produced and directed the film. In some ways the story of Fast Eddie parallels his own career. As a young hot shot director he rose in prominence to direct an Oscar winning movie, just to have it all taken away and hit rock bottom. Afterwards he slowly built his career back up until finally getting a second shot at the big time. It’s also worth noting the screenplay he co-wrote added a scene to the end of the movie in which Eddie is forced by powers beyond his control to give up pool, reminiscent of how he was forced to give up film making by the HUAC. In the end he was able to overcome the studio's concerns and make the movie he wanted. The pool scenes were shot in real pool halls, the bus terminal scenes were shot in an actual bus terminal. Even the background actors in the pool halls were guys Rossen gathered up from local pool dives and not actors.

The end result was a masterpiece that has influenced movie makers for decades and even helped elevate billiards from a seedy pastime for drunks to an actual sport. The movie is just so unlike what you expect from a 1961 movie. Some other high-profile films from 1961 include West Side Story, The Parent Trap, Breakfast at Tiwany’s and The Guns of Navarone. Big colorful, polished movies where people’s motivations are less nuanced. Not that those aren’t good movies, but The Hustler just doesn’t feel like it should be a contemporary film. The movie follows the same basic plot as the book, with the main deviation being the suicide of Sarah and how that affects the split between Eddie and Bert.

The thing that really struck me about The Hustler was the desperation in every character. For Fast Eddie and Sarah, desperation is their defining characteristic, although the director reveals this a little at a time. When we’re introduced to Sarah, she’s just a girl in a diner that catches Eddie's eye. But as the relationship between them grows, Sarah’s despair is revealed. Minnesota Fats on the other hand, played by Jackie Gleason, is seemingly the master of his domain. When he comes in someone comes and gets his jacket and there’s absolute confidence from everyone in the room that he’s untouchable around the pool table. Even once Eddie starts winning games against him, he’s never rattled and eventually Fats overwhelms Eddie, more by his force of character than skill. It isn’t until the end of the movie that Fats is revealed to be less his own man than initially indicated. It’s not just that he lost, but it becomes evident he answers to people as well. It’s similar for every significant character in the film. Eddie’s backer Bert Gordon, his original partner Charlie, the wealthy Findley who gets hustled by Eddie, they’re all just holding on trying to project an image that doesn’t match their true circumstances.

Much of why the desperation of these characters comes through so brilliantly is the fantastic acting. As good as Paul Newman is, it’s the performances of Piper Laurie as Sarah and George C. Scott as Bert Gordon that sells the movie. Although he’s not in most of the movie, Jackie Gleason is the perfect Minnesota Fats, every performance in the movie is solid. In the end Fox’s gamble in Rossen’s vision paid off. The movie was well received and was nominated for nine Oscars, winning two for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography.

That might seem like the end of the story, but away from Hollywood, The Hustler began a rivalry between two men that were associated with the movie, but in very different ways. I mentioned in the opening paragraph that I was originally under the impression that the real-life pool player Minnesota Fats was in the film, only to discover that the character Minnesota Fats was played by Jackie Gleason. After watching the movie, it just seemed weird that there was a fictional character named after a very similar real-life person. Usually when a fictional character is based on a real life person they change the name to keep from getting sued. After doing a quick review of Wikipedia I realized I had it backwards. The person who was known as Minnesota Fats started calling himself that after the movie character. Rudolf Wanderone was a small-time pool hustler, who may have gone by New York Fats, and periodically traveled around the eastern half of the country winning money off unsuspecting marks. It was only after the movie came out that he began calling himself Minnesota Fats and claiming the character from the film was based on him.

Walter Tevis swore until his dying day that it wasn’t true, and he’d never heard of New York Fats or Rudolf Wanderone. There were certainly similarities between the character and Wanderone, but there’s also no reason to think that Tevis ever heard of him, the truth of that claim will likely never be definitively answered. Regardless, the movie and his new moniker changed Wanderone’s life forever. Before the movie he was a fairly anonymous part-time pool hustler, but after, with his penchant for self-promotion and skill at pool, he was able to parlay his new notoriety into a new career. The combination of a series of book deals, television and movie appearances, and his own outgoing personality turned him into one of the most well known pool players in the country.

The other half of the rivalry emerging out of The Hustler was Willie Mosconi, who couldn’t have been more different than Wanderone. Mosconi was probably the greatest pool player in history and served as a technical adviser for The Hustler, performing some of the trick shots in the movie. Where Wanderone was a real-life pool hustler, Mosconi promoted billiards as a legitimate sport. Between 1941 and 1957 Mosconi won the World Straight Pool Championship a record 15 times, while Wanderone despised tournament pool and mocked Mosconi for having never made a bet. Throughout the 1960s and 70s the feud between the two grew with Mosconi believing “Minnesota Fats” was an embarrassment to the sport and Wanderone believing Mosconi was too boring.

The rivalry finally culminated in 1978 when the two played each other, one on one, during an episode of Wide World of Sports. Howard Cosell called the action not unlike he had done during many a championship boxing match. The match was set at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and was one of the most watched sporting events of the year with nearly 11 million viewers. At stake was a $15,000 prize and as important, the claim as the greater pool player. The match wasn’t close as Mosconi sweep series and took the title. Despite the loss, his witty banter and the national audience only increased Wanderone’s fame. The two would have a series of rematches with Mosconi always winning. Finally, in 1984 in a nationally televised pool event, Mosconi and Wanderone played a one game match and Fats finally got his only win against Mosconi. Both men were in their 70s and it was the last time they played each other and the last time either played on national television.

The final piece of this story is the 1986 sequel, The Color of Money. This is another great movie and is also based on a novel by Walter Tevis. Like the original, both the directing (Martin Scorsese) and the acting are superb. In this movie Paul Newman reprises the role of Fast Eddie except this time he’s playing the role of the wise older mentor to a young but talented player performed by Tom Cruise. It could have easily fallen into a remake of the original but with Eddie’s role reversed. But instead, it tells the story of how Eddie’s passion for the game gets reignited, even if he’s not quite the same player he was 25 years earlier. There are several twists and turns in the plot that keep it fresh and interesting, but I’m not going to get deep into all that for this movie. It’s a great movie, if you haven’t seen it you should, but the story surrounding the making of this movie is just less interesting than the original. Its impact on film history is also less significant than the original which is more of the focus of his blog rather than film reviews.

When we added The Hustler to our Netflix queue, I didn’t expect it to lead to a blog article, yet here we are. The story of the director being blacklisted, the drama over getting the movie made, the feud that developed between Willie Mosconi and Minnesota Fats and finally a sequel that was 25 years in the making was just something I felt I wanted to talk about. Both movies are fantastic, and the story of Fast Eddie Felson and Minnesota Fats is a part of American pop culture that people should be familiar with. If you haven’t seen them or if it’s been a while, it’ll be worth your time to give them a look.