PAUL NEWMAN STARRED IN IT BECAUSE OF CLEOPATRA. He embraced the nickname and declared himself the real Minnesota Fats for the rest of his career. Wanderone seized the opportunity, perhaps flattering himself into thinking Tevis really had had him in mind. But in a promotional interview for the movie, Mosconi said Wanderone had been Tevis’s inspiration (which Tevis denied for the rest of his life, adamantly and with great annoyance). There was no Minnesota Fats The Hustler novelist Walter Tevis had made the character up. A hefty gentleman, Wanderone had several nicknames, including Double-Smart, New York Fats, and Chicago Fats. When the movie came out, Rudolf Wanderone was up there with Willie Mosconi as one of America’s best pool players.
BUT ONLY BECAUSE A GUY STARTED CALLING HIMSELF THAT AFTER THE MOVIE. The ones he couldn’t do were executed by Willie Mosconi, an advisor on the film who was the most famous pool player in America at the time. He got good enough to perform most of his own trick shots. Ever the Method actor, though, he installed a pool table in his apartment and practiced for hours a day in the weeks leading up to filming. Unlike his co-star and director, he hadn’t hustled pool as a youth, and in fact had never played the game at all before being cast as “Fast Eddie” Felson. PAUL NEWMAN DID MOST OF HIS OWN SHOTS, TOO, DESPITE NEVER HAVING PLAYED POOL BEFORE. He required no assistance for his trick shots in the film, and Rossen always positioned the camera so we’d be able to see that for ourselves. Like Rossen, Gleason mixed it up with neighborhood toughs and got to be a pretty good pool hustler. The comedian, best known for playing working-class loudmouth Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners (which he created), had grown up in Brooklyn. JACKIE GLEASON DID HIS OWN TRICK SHOTS, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. As a youth, he had occasion to hustle pool, and even tried to write a play about it before stumbling across Walter Tevis’s novel The Hustler and deciding Tevis had done a better job. Robert Rossen, born in 1908 to Russian-Jewish immigrants (his father was a rabbi), grew up in the tough ghettos of New York’s Lower East Side. THE DIRECTOR HAD BEEN A POOL SHARK HIMSELF. (It was West Side Story’s year.) Let’s rack ‘em up and see if we can break down some of the film’s interesting backstory. The movie-which was released 55 years ago today-was respectable too, earning nine Oscar nominations (including Best Picture and nods to all four main actors), though it only won for its cinematography and set decoration. With handsome Paul Newman and elegant Jackie Gleason knocking the balls around, suddenly the game was respectable. It was viewed as little more than something men did to amuse themselves while drinking.
Pool wasn’t much of a mainstream sport back in 1961.
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