The Hustler

By 1959 Pool Halls had begun to fall out of vogue and it seemed like this gentleman’s game would one day vanish into the history books, played by just a handful of devotees dedicated to keeping it alive. Well, maybe it wasn’t that dire for the game but it was definitely losing popularity. Then along came a young author, 31 year old Walter Tevis, who published a book, The Hustler, about a young pool hustler named “Fast Eddie” Felson who goes on a journey of obsession gaining and losing everything along the way. Two years later that novel was adapted into an Academy Award winning picture starring Paul Newman that helped revitalize interest in the game and give rise to a new generation of Pool hustlers that continues to this day. Twenty-five years later, the same year the author himself succumbed to lung cancer, he published a sequel novel that also was adapted for the screen, the Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money. It is a good film but misses a lot of what made the original film so powerful in the first place. 

“Fast Eddie” (Paul Newman) is a pool hall hustler traveling the country with his partner Charlie (Myron McCormick). The film opens up with Eddie inducing onlookers to bet on him to make a trick shot while also convincing them that he is staggering drunk. The hustle is successful and the two escape with a decent amount of money. But Eddie has a bigger score in mind, one that is sure to net the two many thousands of dollars. As they arrive in New York City, Eddie challenges legendary pool player Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) to straight pool for $200 a game. At first Fats is winning but Eddie soon surges ahead and raises the per game wager to $1,000. But Fats is able to overcome Eddie, outlasting him over the course of twenty-five hours and a bottle of bourbon, leaving Eddie with just $200 remaining. Later, in the hotel, Eddie walks out on Charlie in the middle of the night without saying goodbye.

Eddie meets a young woman, Sarah (Piper Laurie), at a bus terminal and, after an evening of conversation moves in with her. She is attending college even though she is much older than the average student and she struggles with depression and alcoholism. Eddie has plans to rematch Fats but lacks the funds and when he tries some small time hustles he ends up getting both of his thumbs broken. In to the picture comes Bert (George C. Scott), a gambler who is willing to stake Eddie $3,000 in exchange for 75% of the winnings. 

There are several differences between the novel and the film, most of which are trivial things like dollar amounts won or lost but a major one that changes the entire character of Eddie in the final act and gives him more of an ending than the book ever did is what happens with Sarah. In the novel Sarah disappears from the story after Eddie wins big against a hustler in Kentucky just prior to his rematch with Minnesota Fats. When Eddie returns from Kentucky he simply doesn’t move back in with her and that is that. In the film she accompanies him and Bert to Kentucky. There Bert treats her sadistically, verbally manipulating her into thinking Eddie will desert her. She locks herself in the bathroom and commits suicide. This allows for a more satisfying resolution to the picture than the one in the book. It gives Eddie a much stronger reason to risk getting assaulted by Bert and his goons when he wins big against Minnesota Fats using his own money. Eddie refuses to give up any of his winnings to Bert, risking getting more bones broken in the process. The novel doesn’t have Sarah’s death overshadowing things like this and relies purely on Eddie’s unwillingness to pay Bert after winning using just his own money. 

This is a film about winning and losing and what that all means in the context of being human. The pursuit of money is simply not enough for Eddie. He must beat his opponent. In his mind the game isn’t over until his opponent, Minnesota Fats, says it is. This leads to his first major downfall when he has Fats beat to rights but cannot, himself, call it quits. In the novel they play for forty hours straight but that has been truncated to a more reasonable twenty-five hours for the film. Eddie is beaten, not so much because Fats is the better player but because for Eddie winning was everything and he will have to learn that character is more important than skill. Robert Rossen, the director and co-writer of the script, was also quite likely drawing from his own experiences dealing with the house Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) when he initially refused to name names during the Communism witch hunts. He ultimately changed his mind and named names to the committee, selling his principles to protect himself. Similiarly, Eddie sells his soul, and betrays the only person who really knows and loves him, for gain. This Faustian pact will leave him empty and cost a young woman her life. 

Jackie Gleason sometimes gets overlooked when examining The Hustler for no other reason than that he appears in just the two scenes. But he does so much with so little that it is no surprise his acting was praised and nominated for an Academy Award. he also did his own shots, something that Robert Rossen emphasized by shooting with wide angles allowing the camera to catch it all on screen. Paul Newman was often doubled for many of the more elaborate trick shots and the camerawork is utilized to hide this fact. By shooting Gleason one way and Newman a different way it actually calls attention to this bit of cinematic trickery rather than masking it. It also makes what Gleason is doing all the more impressive, especially since we do see him pull off some very difficult shots. 

The character to really pay attention to is Sarah, though. Piper Laurie was in her late twenties at this time and had been acting for twelve years. She had quit the studio system because she was not finding good solid roles and had moved to the east coast to work in the theater. The Hustler was offered to her as a come-back role and it was good enough to lure her back to Hollywood for a few years but ultimately she retired from the screen again in 1965, only returning for good when a little known author named Stephen King wrote a book that became a movie and turned her into one of the scariest mothers in cinematic history. She had an unconventional beauty that the studios just didn’t know what to do with and good roles were difficult for her to find in her youth.

She is spot on in this unglamorous role as an alcoholic fighting her own self worth. When she first meets Eddie his charisma lures her out of her shell enough to bring the two together into a quasi-romantic relationship, one that seems bread more out of desperation and loneliness than real love. When she tells him that she loves him he cannot respond in kind. She represents to him a future he cannot have and he turns her down when she tries to convince him to give the game up. There’s a very real sense that had Bert not pushed her to it she would have taken her life anyway at some other point in the future. 

George C. Scott is an interesting choice for this film. He did get his own Oscar nomination for this but turned down the honor. He insisted that the nomination be revoked. It wasn’t, but that hardly mattered as he lost anyway. He had similar responses for each of his other nominations including the one that he won for Patton. He felt that competitions like this were unnecessary and disliked the whole voting process in general. As far as The Hustler goes, he is fine in it but it’s nothing spectacular nor does it feel award worthy. 

The original screenplays for this emphasized the pool playing entirely too much. For this reason, amongst others, it took a long time to find a cast willing to sign up to be in it. It took a lot of tooling of the script to get it to the point where it became the classic that it now is. The focus was shifted away from the game and to the emotional aspects of the characters, giving them motivations and flaws. Fast Eddie is hardly a person one should emulate but he learns something about humanity and about himself throughout the course of the film. He is a fundamentally flawed man but he is a changed man in the end. Paul Newman exudes this in every scene and, while we may not like him as a person, we sympathize with him and can still root for him. It’s a complex character that is often fascinating to watch as he works his way through a maze of inconsistencies and emotional landmines to emerge, damaged but wiser, on the other side. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Motion Picture: Robert Rossen

Best Director: Robert Rossen

Best Actor: Paul Newman

Best Actress: Piper Laurie

Best Supporting Actor: Jackie Gleason

Best Supporting Actor: George C. Scott

Best Screenplay - Based on Material from Another Medium: Robert Rossen and Sidney Carroll

Best Art Direction - Black-and-White: Harry Horner and Gene Callahan (won)

Best Cinematography - Black-and-White: Eugen Schüfftan (won)

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Release Date: September 25, 1961

Running Time: 135 Minutes

Not Rated

Starring: Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason and Myron McCormick

Directed By: Robert Rossen