Harvey Martin's Red Baker Cue

Hi,

A collector friend of mine visited our shop last week and had some great stuff all from an historical perspective.

Here is a pic of the Red Baker cue that was used many times over the years as a movie and telvison prop in Hollywood.

Pretty Cool Indeed.

Rick

Here is Stupendous and Jay admiring this cool antique cue.

yubber said:

Thanks for sharing.

At the risk of souding ignorant who is Red Baker and do you have any more info about the cue?
Do you have any more pics of the cue that you could post.

Thanks

Alan

Click to expand...

Hi,

My friend, 88 year old cue maker and pantograph artist Stew Mortson was great friends with Red and Harvey and I have heard a lot about them and this cue. The collector who owns the cue was in town and stoped by my shop to see the "Armageddon Art Cue" and brought some goodies.

Red was a great billiards & pool player who could beat top pros in money games on a regular basis. He competed with the likes Greenleaf, Mosconi, Cochran and Hoppe and many others but was a barber in North Hollywood and was well connected woth a lot of people. A real character.

Harvey Martin made this cue for him and it was played with by John Wayne and Marlena Detrich in a movie, Jack Klugman in the Twilight Zone and was also in the original Mission Impossible TV series featuring a pool game.

Red also did many stand-in appearance in Hollywood productions where they needed someone to make a pool shot on film. This cue is the most filmed cue in the world for movies and televison.

Rick

Here is something I got off the internet from a billiards program from the 1960s:

HAROLD BAKER - BURBANK CALIFORINA
Harold "Red" Baker has been a top pocket billiards and 3 cushion player for over thirty years and many who know him only from his appearances in pocket tournaments may be surprised to learn of his prowess at three-cushions. West Coast billiard players, however, are well aware of his three-cushion ability. He has finished among the leaders in several strong Southern California tournaments and for many years has anchored the Elks team from Burbank which has won the State Championship several times. In this year's Southern California Sectional he averaged a respectable .720. He defeated Hynes in reguliar play and then defeated him again in a play-off for first place in the Southern California Sectional
Baker is on close terms with many in the Hollywood movie colony and is often called in as a billiard consultant and stand-in. Close-ups of his hands have appeared in many television and movie sequences.
He is now co-manager with Tiff Payne of a fine billiard room in North Hollywood.