The Sting is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936 that involves a complicated plot by two professional grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) to con a mob boss (Robert Shaw).^[3] The film was directed by George Roy Hill, who previously directed Newman and Redford in the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Created by screenwriter David S. Ward, the story was inspired by real-life con games perpetrated by the brothers Fred and Charley Gondorff and documented by David Maurer in his book The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man.

The title phrase refers to the moment when a con artist finishes the "play" and takes the mark's money. (Today the expression is mostly used in the context of law enforcement sting operations.) If a con game is successful, the mark does not realize he has been "taken" (cheated), at least not until the con men are long gone. The film is divided into distinct sections with old-fashioned title cards with lettering and illustrations rendered in a style reminiscent of the Saturday Evening Post. The film is noted for its musical score—particularly its main melody, "The Entertainer", a ragtime composition by Scott Joplin, which was lightly adapted for the movie by Marvin Hamlisch (and became a top-ten chart single for Hamlisch, when released as a single from the film's soundtrack). The film's success encouraged a surge of popularity and critical acclaim for Joplin's work.^[4]

The Sting was hugely successful at the 46th Academy Awards, being nominated for 10 Oscars and winning seven, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.^[5]

Plot[link]

Johnny Hooker, a grifter from Depression-era Joliet, Illinois, cons $11,000 in cash from an unsuspecting victim, with the aid of his partners Luther Coleman and Joe Erie. Buoyed by the windfall, Luther announces his retirement and advises Hooker to seek out an old friend, Henry Gondorff, in Chicago, to teach him “the big con.” Unfortunately, their victim was a numbers racket courier for vicious crime boss Doyle Lonnegan. Corrupt Joliet police Lieutenant William Snyder confronts Hooker, revealing Lonnegan's involvement and demanding part of Hooker’s cut. Having already spent his cut, Hooker pays Snyder in counterfeit bills. Lonnegan's men murder Luther, and Hooker flees for his life to Chicago.

Gondorff, a once-great con-man now hiding out from the FBI, is initially reluctant to take on the dangerous Lonnegan. However, Gondorff relents and decides to resurrect an elaborate and supposedly obsolete scam known as "the wire", using a large number of con artists to create a phony off-track betting parlor.

Aboard the opulent 20th Century Limited, Gondorff, posing as boorish Chicago bookie "Shaw", buys his way into Lonnegan's private high-stakes poker game and out-cheats Lonnegan, winning $15,000 from him and making Lonnegan furious. Hooker, posing as Shaw's disgruntled employee "Kelly", is sent to collect the winnings and instead convinces Lonnegan that he wants to take over Shaw's operation. Kelly reveals that he has a partner named Les Harmon (actually fellow con man “Kid Twist”) in the Chicago Western Union office, who will allow them to win bets on horse races by past-posting.

Meanwhile, Snyder has tracked Hooker to Chicago, but his pursuit is thwarted when he is summoned by undercover FBI agents led by Agent Polk, who orders him to assist in their scheme to arrest Gondorff using Hooker. Additionally, Lonnegan has grown frustrated with his men's inability to find and kill Hooker. Unaware that “Kelly” is Hooker, he demands that "Salino," his best assassin, kill Hooker. A mysterious figure with black leather gloves is soon seen following and observing Hooker.

Kelly's connection appears effective, as Harmon provides Lonnegan with the winner of one horse race and the trifecta of another race. Lonnegan agrees to finance a $500,000 bet at Shaw's parlor to break Shaw and gain revenge. Shortly thereafter, Snyder captures Hooker and brings him before FBI Agent Polk. Polk forces Hooker to betray Gondorff by threatening to incarcerate Luther Coleman's widow.

The night prior to the sting, Hooker sleeps with Loretta, a waitress at a local restaurant. As Hooker leaves the building the next morning, he sees Loretta walking toward him. The black-gloved man appears behind Hooker and shoots Loretta dead, later revealing her to be "Loretta Salino", Lonnegan's hired killer. The black-gloved man had been hired by Gondorff to protect Hooker.

Armed with Harmon’s tip to "place it on Lucky Dan", Lonnegan makes a $500,000 bet at Shaw’s parlor on Lucky Dan to win. As the race begins, Harmon arrives and expresses shock at Lonnegan's bet, explaining that when he had said "place it" he had meant, literally, that Lucky Dan would "place" (i.e., finish second). In a panic, Lonnegan rushes the teller window and demands his money back. Just then, Agent Polk, Lt. Snyder, and half a dozen FBI officers storm the parlor. Polk confronts Gondorff, then tells Hooker he is free to go. Gondorff, reacting to the betrayal, shoots Hooker in the back; Polk then shoots Gondorff and orders Snyder to get Lonnegan away from the crime scene. With Lonnegan and Snyder safely away, Hooker and Gondorff rise amid cheers and laughter. Agent Polk is actually Hickey, a con man, running a con atop Gondorff's con to divert Snyder and provide a solid "blow off" to Gondorff's con. Hooker and Gondorff depart as the other con men strip the room of its contents.

Cast[link]

Production[link]

Filming on location in Pasadena, California. Stand-ins are used to set up the shot.

This article is in a list format that may be better presented using prose. You can help by converting this article to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available. (November 2008)

• In 1974 The Big Con author David Maurer filed a ten million dollar lawsuit claiming at least part of the film's story had been taken from his book. The matter was resolved out of court in 1976.
• The movie was filmed on the backlot of Universal Studios, with scenes also shot at the Santa Monica Pier and in Pasadena.^[6]
• Doyle Lonnegan's limp in the film, used to great effect by actor Robert Shaw, was in fact completely authentic as Shaw had slipped on a wet handball court at the Beverly Hills Hotel just a week before filming began and had split all the ligaments in his knee. He had to wear a leg brace during production which was kept hidden under the wide 1930s style trousers he wore. This incident was revealed by Julia Philips in her 1991 autobiography You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again. She said that Shaw saved The Sting since no other actor would accept the part, that Paul Newman hand delivered the script to Shaw in London in order to ensure his participation, and that he had to be paid an extremely high salary. Philips' book also asserts that Shaw was not nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award because he demanded that his name follow those of Newman and Redford before the film's opening title.
• Rob Cohen, later a director, starting in the 1990s, of action films such as The Fast and the Furious, years later told of how he found the script in the slush pile when he was working as a reader for Mike Medavoy, a future studio head then an agent. He wrote in his coverage that it was "the great American screenplay and ... will make an award-winning, major-cast, major-director film." Medavoy said that he would try to sell it on that recommendation and promised to fire Cohen if he couldn't. Universal bought it that afternoon, and Cohen still has the coverage framed on the wall of his office.^[7]

Reception[link]

The film received rave reviews and was a box office smash in 1973-74, taking in more than US$160 million. In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Awards[link]

Wins[link]

The film won seven Academy Awards and received three other nominations.^[8] At the 46th Academy Awards, Julia Phillips became the first female producer to win Best Picture.^[9]

• Academy Award for Best Picture
• Academy Award for Directing - (George Roy Hill)
• Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay - (David S. Ward)
• Academy Award for Best Art Direction - (Henry Bumstead and James W. Payne)
• Academy Award for Best Costume Design - (Edith Head)
• Academy Award for Film Editing - (William H. Reynolds)
• Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation - (Marvin Hamlisch)
• Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures - (George Roy Hill)

Nominations[link]

• Academy Award for Best Actor - (Robert Redford)
• Academy Award for Best Cinematography - (Robert Surtees)
• Academy Award for Sound - (Ronald Pierce & Robert R. Bertrand)
• Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture - (David S. Ward)
• WGA Award for Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen - (David S. Ward)
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
  • Doyle Lonnegan - Villain (Robert Shaw)
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)

Music[link]

The soundtrack album, which was executive produced by Gil Rodin, contained the following selections, most of which are Scott Joplin ragtime pieces. Ragtime had just experienced a revival due to several recordings by Joshua Rifkin on Nonesuch Records starting with Scott Joplin: Piano Rags in 1970. There are some variances from the actual film soundtrack, as noted. Joplin's ragtime music was no longer popular during the 1930s, although its use in The Sting evokes a definitive 1930s gangster movie, The Public Enemy, which also featured Joplin's music. The two Jazz Age style tunes written by Hamlisch are chronologically much closer to the film's time period than are the Joplin rags:

1. "Solace" (Joplin) - orchestral version
2. "The Entertainer" (Joplin) - orchestral version
3. "The Easy Winners" (Joplin)
4. "Hooker's Hooker" (Hamlisch)
5. "Luther" - same basic tune as "Solace", re-arranged by Hamlisch as a dirge
6. "Pine Apple Rag" / "Gladiolus Rag" medley (Joplin)
7. "The Entertainer" (Joplin) - piano version
8. "The Glove" (Hamlisch) - a Jazz Age style number; only a short segment was used in the film
9. "Little Girl" (Madeline Hyde, Francis Henry) - not in the final cut of the film
10. "Pine Apple Rag" (Joplin)
11. "Merry-Go-Round Music" medley (traditional) - "Listen to the Mocking Bird" was the only portion of this track that was actually used in the film, along with the second segment of "King Cotton", a Sousa march, which was not on the album
12. "Solace" (Joplin) - piano version
13. "The Entertainer" / "The Ragtime Dance" medley (Joplin)

The album sequence differs from the film sequence, a standard practice with vinyl LPs, often for aesthetic reasons. Some additional content differences:

• Selected snippets of Joplin's works, some appearing on the album and some not, provided linking music over the title cards that were used to introduce major scenes. (The final card, "The Sting", introducing the film's dramatic conclusion, had no music at all.)
• Some of the tunes in the film are different takes than those on the album.
• A Joplin tune used in the film but not appearing in the soundtrack album was "Cascades". The middle (fast) portion of it was played when Hooker was running away from Snyder along the 'L' train platform.
• The credits end with "The Rag-time Dance" (Joplin) medley which features a 'stop-time' motif similar to a later work "Stop-Time Rag" (Joplin).

Chart positions[link]

Sequel[link]

A less-successful sequel with different players, The Sting II, appeared in 1983. In the same year a prequel was also planned, exploring the earlier career of Henry Gondorff. Famous confidence man Soapy Smith was scripted to be Gondorff's mentor. When the sequel failed, the prequel was scrapped.

Home media[link]

A deluxe DVD, The Sting: Special Edition (part of the Universal Legacy Series) was released in September 2005, including a "making of" featurette and interviews with the cast and crew.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Sting

• The Sting at the Internet Movie Database
• The Sting at AllRovi
• The Sting at Rotten Tomatoes