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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Eric D. Snider\u00a0<\/b>and Mental_Floss<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0<\/b>present 12 Smooth Facts About The Hustler<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Here are three of my favorites<\/span>…<\/p>\n \n 2. JACKIE GLEASON DID HIS OWN TRICK SHOTS, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.<\/span><\/strong> 4. THERE WAS A REAL MINNESOTA FATS … BUT ONLY BECAUSE A GUY STARTED CALLING HIMSELF THAT AFTER THE MOVIE. 7. THE MOVIE ISN\u2019T VERY LONG, BUT IT WAS WIDER THAN USUAL.<\/span><\/strong> Eric D. Snider\u00a0and Mental_Floss\u00a0present 12 Smooth Facts About The Hustler.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Here are three of my favorites… 2. JACKIE GLEASON DID HIS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,17,54,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-celebs","category-movies","category-trivia","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13908"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13914,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13908\/revisions\/13914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe comedian, best known for playing working-class loudmouth Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners<\/em> (which he created), had grown up in Brooklyn. Like Rossen, Gleason mixed it up with neighborhood toughs and got to be a pretty good pool hustler. He required no assistance for his trick shots in the film, and Rossen always positioned the camera so we\u2019d be able to see that for ourselves.<\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/strong>When the movie came out, Rudolf Wanderone was up there with Willie Mosconi as one of America\u2019s best pool players. A hefty gentleman, Wanderone had several nicknames, including Double-Smart, New York Fats, and Chicago Fats. There was no Minnesota Fats; The Hustler<\/em>novelist Walter Tevis had made the character up. But in a promotional interview for the movie, Mosconi said Wanderone had been Tevis\u2019s inspiration (which Tevis denied for the rest of his life, adamantly and with great annoyance). Wanderone seized the opportunity, perhaps flattering himself into thinking Tevis really had<\/em> had him in mind. He embraced the nickname and declared himself the real Minnesota Fats for the rest of his career.<\/p>\n
\nThe Hustler<\/em> was shot in Cinemascope, the widescreen technique that had been in use since 1953. But it was mainly used for lavish epics and colorful musicals, not black-and-white dramas set in dingy pool halls. Yet as film critic Michael Wood pointed out, Rossen used Cinemascope \u201cto create an oppressive, elongated world in which ceilings always seem terribly low; and people terribly separate from each other; in one shot Newman is even separated from his own image in a mirror by the whole width of a very wide screen. It is a world in which the pool table seems the one natural shape, while human beings seem untidy intruders.\u201d Neat, huh?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"