The Hustler / What age? Influence?

I didn't see "The Hustler" until I was 18, in 1976. I was hanging around a poolroom once a week by 1966, but didn't start playing until 1969.

I saw "The Hustler" as a movie in which pool was just the backdrop for some of the ebbs and flows of life, Fast Eddie encountered and/or exhibited pride, bravado, love, sacrifice, deception, physical abuse, loyalty, disloyalty, heartbreak and more. His soul searching journey in which he had to reexamine his entire value system was the reason the movie still endures today, for people still relate to it on this level and always will.

I enjoyed "The Hustler" even more because it featured pool, Willie Mosconi and Jackie Gleason, but I think to view it as a pool movie only is to fail to give it its due respect.

I wouldn't say it made me more or less passionate about pool.

just a cool movie

First time I saw The Hustler was on TV so it was just entertainment. At that tender age I thought Newman was fantastic, Jackie Gleason I never liked from the days of his TV show. I watched it for the other people there and we only got one and a half channels on TV at best so often we watched the show with less snow, didn't matter what was on that channel.

Watching years later I realized Jackie really was the great one. Another five or ten minutes air time and he would have stolen the show. I was already obsessed with pool so I can't say that the movie made much of an impact on me.

The Hustler wasn't about pool, it was a great story about people built around pool. It also had very strong actors. It would give pool a nice little boost if a similar movie was made today. Not trying to make pool the major part of the movie but a movie about characters played by respected actors of today with pool being the force propelling the movie along.

Hu

Very young, in about 1966, when it was put on TV. The good thing is, I then saw Luther Lassiter and Eddie Taylor play straight pool at the high school in 1967. Those two things did it.

All the best,
WW

i saw it when it first came out
i was about 17

i had previously already been playing pool
for a few years winning food,drink,gas money

just as i was doing with golf but the idea of anything
big had not entered my mind until i saw the movie

it wasn't just me,dozens of kids from my area all took
to serious pool hall gambling

some of the guys became great players,like little Jackie Potter,
several started putting in hours practicing

i was already good at golf and i had a feeling that skill
meant very little,it was how much money you won that counted

so i mastered the sales end of the game,i searched for suckers
and assumed everyone i met was fair game. i just naturally gravitated
to matching up.

i grew up on Maverick movies and already was a poker player,so with golf,pool and cards
as 3 different options i was off to the races.

i hate to admit how impressionable i was, i met Titanic Thompson,who
i had read about i went on the road with him,he introduced me
to other,golfers card players and pool players and before long i lost
my childhood,sacrificed my education for instant gratification and quick bucks

Ty liked me because i could play so many different games well,i shot gold in the low 89s with one hand
and i knew all about matching up plus i was so yound looking i got easy games

i would never recommend a life like this to anyone else,but i must
have found it worthwhile for years,i wouldn't do it again

deanoc said:

i would never recommend a life like this to anyone else,but i must have found it worthwhile for years,i wouldn't do it again

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Perhaps not, but you've had quite a journey!

Never seen it. What's it about???

I was only 8 when the movie came out, but I had two older brothers 12 and 14 at the time, so once a pool room opened in our neighborhood from the resurgence initiated by the movie, my brothers started playing there and my DAD bought table for our finished basement - a 7 footer. so I started by age 10 in my home and within two years could play better than all my peers in the area and by 14 better than most locals, except for the die hard pool room guys, by 15 I was in the pool room, but the room was already declining due to so many 18 to 23 year olds going off to Vietnam- including my brother. By 1971 the room was closed as were many others, so called "suburban" rooms that opened between 1963 and 1967 due to the Hustler resurgence were closing at a fast clip- so you had to go back into inner city rooms that existed prior to the movie and lasted beyond the 1960s. I enjoy the game as much today as I did 55 years ago and my oldest brother (72) and my cousin (83) and a few others still get together and play when I come up back to NY from FL>- they all play up there every week to this day- last of that breed! First saw the movie when it came on TV, but getting that home table when I was 8 was more of an influence than the movie, however it was the movie that resulted in buying a home table.

It came out the year I was born and I probably saw it on TV at least a decade later...maybe more. There was an old pool hall in the little town I grew up in that was already dying, kept open by the owner's grumpy old widow. Creaky wood floors, a soda vending machine, candy counter, high tin covered ceilings with fans all driven by a single motor and a system of belts, pale green walls, bad lighting except directly over the tables...old definately pre-Gold Crown Brunswicks I think, probably from the 1920s. The town was a big deal 100 years ago because the railroad passed thru both East-West and North-South. Once passenger train travel faded, the town changed. If they sold beer there I never noticed. It had that feel of an old school room much like in the movie but even as a teenager I could tell it was fading.

There were regulars but if they were gambling I was oblivious to it, we were just there to play.

The Huster was an influence I suppose but I never got caught up in that side of pool. My buddy's parents owned the local bowling alley so by junior high it was more about the Valley bar box, pinball, Asteroids, PacMan, air hockey and the jukebox we had access to when the place was mostly closed during the summers of my youth.

I still appreciate the movie and watch it every 5 years or so, but I think it felt lite like a story from long ago even the first time I saw it.

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The first Hustler I saw was at my buddy Greg’s house. It was the one with the half naked girl and a meat grinder on the cover. Damn what a day.

What was the question?

Saw it at the local movie house when it first was released. Until then, we only played rotation & 8 ball (sometimes line-up or Kelly). After that (aside from the local daily/continuous 5 & 9 ring game), head-to-head action was always straight pool!

sjm said:

I saw "The Hustler" as a movie in which pool was just the backdrop for some of the ebbs and flows of life

...I think to view it as a pool movie only is to fail to give it its due respect.

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Yep.

Color of Money: just the opposite.

pj
chgo

I was about 10-11 when it came out in the movie theater. I went to see it because I loved Jackie Gleason in the Honeymooners. I was deeply disappointed in the movie because it wasn't a comedy. LOL I started shooting pool about 5 or so years later and remembered the movie. I had to wait about a year for it to play on TV and the second time I watched it, it became my all time favorite movie. I must have seen it a dozen times over the years and have the special DVDs of both the Hustler and the Color of Money with the out takes and commentaries.

(I was living in the Bronx at the time, Little Italy on Belmont Ave. I moved down South years later.)

Already “influenced”.

Read

I read the paperback first then saw the movie at the show at around age 13 very shortly after that a 6 table room opened that let kids okay. In the early 60's in Ohio you had to be 18 just to get in a room so this place Flynn's turned into a club house for us. We all used phrases from the movie " fast and loose "" " You owe me money " . All of us who were regulars had their own cue .
I loved the movie and Pool then and at age 70 I still love the movie and Pool.
" Hello Eddie's Girl "

I think I read the paperback that came out after the movie's first release. A friend on the school bus handed it to me and said "Read this, it's a good book!" I saw the movie in it's re-release in 1962, I believe. I nagged my grandparents to buy me a pool table for Christmas that year and they did, a 3 1/2 x 7 chip board top table from Montgomery Ward. I was 13 by then. I about wore the table out and all my friends who came to the house wanted to play. Three years later, I was starting to play in bars ( I looked 18, which was the drinking age in New York State at the time.) In 1970 I got married and in 1973 moved to Binghamton, New York. I walked into The Pocket Billiard Lounge on State Street and knew I was home! There were a few road players in residence and a world class Straight Pool player and a whole bunch of other players. Starting in the early '80s the New York State 9 Ball Championship was held there every year into the late '90s. It was where I became a die hard pool nut.

First time I saw "The Hustler", maybe 10 or 11 years ago.
Confused me, there was so much going on, one thing I didn't understand and still don't to this very day...
why didn't "Fast Eddie" take a day or 2 to rest and acclimate ?

I was 13 and had a junk table in my garage I played on whether it was 110 or 20 below, no heat or air. I wanted to be the greatest.

I was 20 or 21 when I saw it for the first time and was already playing. As far as influence, I spent a lot of time shooting the bank shot on the 8-ball.