![]() The late Harold (Red) Baker played a bit part too - and Astaire, who at one point practiced pool six hours daily at his home, reportedly insisted on shooting his own shots, with no cutaways, as a condition of his accepting the role.Īstaire was well-established as a serious actor by then, and not only played convincingly and well, but captured an aging hustler’s body language and moves so perfectly, you’d swear he had been a dancer. More importantly, from our point of view, the pool was genuine. Somehow, Astaire hustled the Lord into granting him death in exchange for his daughter’s remission and life. Kildaire,” in a two-parter starring the late Fred Astaire as an old hustler whose daughter, a nun, was suffering from leukemia. On the other hand, one of the better pool stories I saw turned up in an unlikely place: “Dr. Both men moved and played with the grace of angry hippos. One of the worst “Twilight Zone” episodes I ever saw put Jonathan Winters and Jack Klugman together in some ridiculous mess about the world’s greatest former player returning to earth from heaven to choose his successor. ![]() Your typical actor handles the cue about as comfortably as he would the Australian Tiger Snake, and the camera immediately cuts to somebody else’s hands executing the shot the story, dialogue and casting all make the behind squirm. What makes the little universe of pool-fiction-outside-Tevis so intriguing is that the pool is generally so awful. But “Goodbye, Johnny” was the first integration of pool fiction and TV that I can remember, and a brief examination of the category is well worthwhile. ![]() ![]() Robertson, an Academy Award-winning actor, played his on-camera pool slightly better than King Tut, and the entire show wasn’t too much of an improvement on that. The answer is Cliff Robertson, but it’s a stinky question because the vehicle wasn’t titled, “The Hustler,” and his character wasn’t named “Fast Eddie.” The thing was called “Goodbye, Johnny,” on the old Philco TV Theater, and it bore a reasonably close resemblance to “The Hustler” as it appeared in is original form, a Playboy short story. If your knee-jerk response is Paul Newman, go to your room. Pool trivia players, attention! Who originally played “Fast Eddie” Felson? ![]()
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