Untold Stories: The Legacy of The Hustler

Some promotional materials made little mention of swindles and straight pool.

Before shooting could begin that March, Newman would have to double-quick learn about pool. He practiced kick shots and open-handed bridges and had to learn which end of the cue to grab and how to stand up and a new way to walk. This is where Mosconi's assistance proved essential. "Keep that elbow up, Paul," Mosconi would snap. "Look down your cue! Keep that leg straight!" For two frantic weeks Mosconi showed Newman how to pocket balls, how to push them around the table. Other than the pool table Newman had recently installed in his dining room (much to the chagrin of his wife, actress Joanne Woodward), the actor's only exposure to the game had been years earlier as a billiard-room manager at his alma mater, Kenyon College. He claimed to have "racked balls and cleaned tables" but not much else.

The first order of business was finding a spot away from Newman's gawking fans. After a false start at the Lambs Club in New York, Willie settled on the basement recreation room of Dr. Roland DeMarco, an old friend who also happened to be president of Finch Junior College, a girls' finishing school on East 57th Street. Newman would appear there each day in dark sunglasses and wearing a leather jacket. He rode up on a motorcycle, dashing as all hell, and then slipped into DeMarco's campus residence through a back entrance. "He'd come in every day on a motorcycle, and he and my father would go to this little room, and the girls there never knew that Paul Newman had been there for hours," recalled Bill Mosconi. "If the students would have known he was there, it would have been a mass panic."

Gleason, by contrast, never needed Willie's help. The fat actor could already run 40 balls when he fell into stroke, and his prowess with a cue was clear to anyone who watched him in "The Hustler." Mosconi, in fact, had recommended Gleason for the role of Minnesota Fats.

Pool is a glorious and poetic sport, but that alone did not make "The Hustler" great. The film succeeds not because it's about pool, but rather because of how it uses the game to explore larger themes. For at its heart "The Hustler" is about excellence and respect - Mosconi and the billiard establishment elite would always deny they existed in some of the dingy poolhalls portrayed by "The Hustler," and yet, here they are. In the Ames of "The Hustler" (as in the real-life Ames and the real-life Bensinger's), these rich virtues are commonly celebrated but always before a select few. This is always the way of the poolhall.

Great hustlers are like other greatly skilled men: they have ambition, they strive for excellence, they voraciously crave the esteem and acclamation of their peers. But unlike others, hustlers live in shadows. Their subculture is partitioned away from decent Americans, so their virtues are only their own. Fast Eddie may earn the respect of his peers, but that respect does not extend beyond the front door of Ames. Minnesota Fats is great, but not in the way that most people would know or respect or understand. The irony of "The Hustler," as the irony of pool in general, is that the true hustlers may live utterly depraved lives and yet also can become greater than life.

The jointing-up of Ames won "The Hustler" a "Best Set Decoration" Oscar. The film also won for cinematography. Its principals - Newman, Gleason, George C. Scott, Piper Laurie and Director Rossen - received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. Rossen and Newman also won British Academy awards. But beyond the awards and the critical acclaim, the film was also a commercial success: it helped catapult Newman to A-list status, made millions for the studio, and prompted a new pool renaissance in America.

And so it's here that we return to the lesson of "The Hustler." For while many in the industry feared the film's depiction of pool gambling would further doom our sport, in reality the opposite occurred. Mosconi noted that Brunswick, at least at first, wanted to fire him after the film's release. His friend, Roy Gandy, a table manufacturer, also was very perturbed. "But then a month later he calls me back and he's overjoyed," recalled Mosconi. "He calls me all kinds of names and says 'I can't believe it, Willie. People can't get into the theaters down here fast enough to see the picture. My sales are skyrocketing.' So after that I was a hero."

What the industry leaders and Mosconi himself had failed to consider was that gambling has always been associated with pool. Always. Since the very beginning of its history in this country, and in Europe. There may be more gambling on poker games and horse racing, but there's no other human-powered sport more associated with gambling as pool. Many industry leaders have encouraged the public to forget this plain fact. But this is pointless. Instead, what reinvigorated pool was not the industry's clean-up efforts, but rather artful depiction of gambling in "The Hustle." That's where the romance is.

Pool is not so different today as it was in the late 1950. Back then, just prior to the release of "The Hustler," the sport was reeling. Equipment sales similarly are in decline today. Joe Procita said in the late 1950s that TV was contributing to pool's malaise. Today I would say that computer games and consumer electronics have had a similar effect.

But we also have stood witness in recent years to the wild success of televised poker. Who would have predicted it could be so popular? I would argue that something similar could happen with pool. Justin Collett and the guys from TheActionReport.com have begun experimenting with this concept, leveraging the drama of one-on-one action into what appears to have become a successful business model. There's also the Derby City Classic, arguably America's most popular pool tournament. Anyone who has ever sweated after-hours matches there will attest to high drama of high action.

But none of this should come as news. Not after "The Hustler." As the movie proved almost precisely 50 years ago, gambling sells.

Happy anniversary.

R.A. Dyer is the author of "Hustler Days" and "The Hustler & The Champ." You can find a link to his blog and Facebook page at poolhistory.com.

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