THE HUSTLER
Cue jumping
The readers' editor on... the hunt for the real Fast Eddie - if there was one
Ian MayesEarly last month we carried an obituary of an American pool player who called himself "Fast Eddie" Parker, describing him, with no beating about the bush, as "the man who inspired the film, The Hustler". Just to remind you, The Hustler, released in 1961, was directed by Robert Rossen, and starred Paul Newman as the hustler of the title, Fast Eddie Felson.
A hustler in pool parlance is a gambling player prepared to lose a few games to increase the odds before he and his backers make their killing. We explained that while Fast Eddie Parker claimed to be the model for Fast Eddie Felson, he was not a hustler but a straight player who played his best in all circumstances.We left no doubt, however, that he regarded himself as the main, or even the only, real contributor to the character of Fast Eddie Felson. A heading on his obituary read: "Professional pool player who was the inspiration for Paul Newman's role in The Hustler."
We said he had met Walter Tevis, the writer of the novel, The Hustler (1959), when the latter "was working his way through college" and that "Tevis borrowed one of Parker's aliases to create Fast Eddie Felson" - he claimed on other occasions that he had inspired Tevis to create first the character and hence the novel that was then adapted for the film.
Finally, we said that Parker had produced instructional books and videos that Paul Newman had used when preparing to revive the character of Fast Eddie Felson in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money, 1986 (the screenplay written by Richard Price after the novel, The Color of Money, 1984, by Walter Tevis).
A few days after this obituary appeared I had a call from Eleanora Tevis, the widow of Walter Tevis (he died of lung cancer in August 1984), the first of a number of exchanges by phone and fax, essentially making the same point: "Since The Hustler's publication in 1959 and the film's release in 1961, many pool players have claimed to be Fast Eddie Felson. Walter consistently stated that The Hustler was a work of fiction and the characters therein were fictitious."
The exasperation Tevis felt is very well expressed in an article by Roy McHugh that appeared in a newspaper in Pittsburgh in 1983. McHugh said that people kept asking Tevis, in relation to another character in The Hustler, "When did you first meet Minnesota Fats?" McHugh said Tevis cringed and wondered whether they would have asked Walt Disney, "When did you meet Donald Duck?" (The person referred to here was Rudolf Walter Wanderone Jr. He had been playing under the name of New York Fats, in tribute to his birthplace, but changed his name to Minnesota Fats after Jackie Gleason created the part in The Hustler - see Britannica.com.)
This article was headed: "All 'Fast Eddies' say they're Hustler." The piece was prompted by the death of a pool player called Edward "Fast Eddie" Pelkey, and the agency wire at the time began: "Edward 'Fast Eddie' Pelkey, the famed pool shark portrayed by Paul Newman in the movie The Hustler, has died . . ." Tevis told Roy McHugh: "I'm weary of explaining this. Nobody believes you when you keep telling them you invent your own characters."
In 1987, after Eddie Parker had returned to live in his home territory of the Missouri Ozarks, he was interviewed by Bill Maurer from the local newspaper, the News-Leader. His report contains this sentence: "Parker said he's been reluctant to acknowledge his role [the role he claimed as the model for Tevis's Fast Eddie] until recent years."
Even more to the point, Maurer contacted four important people: the editor of a leading billiards magazine, the vice-president of the Professional Billiards Association, a professional pool player who had been active in the area where Parker said he met Tevis, and finally Tevis's boyhood friend who taught him to shoot pool. Maurer wrote: "All four said they've never heard of Parker and questioned his role, if any, in influencing Tevis."
To return to the instructional manuals and videos by Parker that Paul Newman is supposed to have used when preparing for The Color of Money. Mrs Tevis corresponded with Newman. She says he told her: "Regardless of anything you've seen in the press, I didn't use any instructional books or tapes. Willie Mosconi taught me everything I knew and was my instructor during the entire film, as well as the technical director." Willie Mosconi (see Britannica.com again), an American pocket billiards player, was world champion 15 times between 1941 and 1957. He died in 1993.
We carried the obituary because of the connection with the character of Fast Eddie Felson, a connection, wouldn't you agree, that the most generous person would describe as extremely tenuous?
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