Lamentably, many Amercians cannot name a professional billiards player alive today. But, among those who can, one name is likely to arise often: Jeanette Lee, aka The Black Widow.
Though Ms. Lee has lately garnered headlines for her recent announcement of stage 4 ovarian cancer (on top of the scoliosis she has fought against since age 12), her billiards accomplishments are legendary. A former No. 1 female pool player in the world; a three times runner-up at the women’s World Nine-ball Championship; the Women’s Professional Billiard Association (WPBA) Sportsperson of the Year Award in 1998; a gold medal winner for the United States at the 2001 World Games in Akita, Japan; and an inductee into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame in 2013.
Those achievements, coupled with her statuesque looks and distinct visual style, have led to her off-the-baize success and fame. Ms. Lee has appeared in film (e.g., 9-Ball), television (e.g., Arli$$; Cake Boss – “Painters, Pool and Pink,”), and commercials (e.g., Ford Explorer); she has been profiled in Sports Illustrated; she has been photographed for the ESPN Body Issue; she has even authored a book: The Black Widow’s Guide to Killer Pool: Become the Player to Beat.
So, perhaps it’s not a surprise that Ms. Lee’s cultural stardom also took her to Newburgh, New York, where she joined Paul Teutal Sr. (aka Senior) and his team at Orange County Choppers (OCC) to create a customized Black Widow motorcycle on the reality television series American Chopper.1
Produced by Pilgrim Films & Television, American Chopper ran for six seasons, initially on the Discovery Channel and then TLC. Ms. Lee appears in the series’ sixth season on the December 2009 episode, “Jeanette Lee Black Widow Bike.”
The episode begins with Ms. Lee entering OCC’s retail shop to demonstrate some trick shots, including hitting the 8-ball out of Senior’s mouth into the corner pocket, and then exchanging banter with Senior while playing him in several games of eightball.
At the end of the games, Ms. Lee shares that ever since the OCC introduced their original Black Widow bike (from the first season of American Chopper), she’s been fielding calls from fans, who mistakenly think it was named after her. So, she wants one, customized for her, that she can take on the road.2
The bulk of the episode is then focused on the assembly of her chopper. The goal is to leverage the standard Black Widow frame, but add some “wow” to make it truly unique. The decision-making process covers the tank selection, the fabrication of the fenders (with their three-dimensional webbing welding), and the simplification of the seat design.
After two days of assembly, Senior unveils the custom Black Widow bike at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where Ms. Lee is participating in a WPBA tournament. Ms. Lee looks genuinely thrilled by the chopper. Her husband, George Breedlove, looks a bit more distressed. Asked for her reaction, Ms. Lee says, “It’s beautiful, sexy, strong, but it’s feminine…it’s hot, it’s a hot bike. I’m feeling some fire.”
The “Jeanette Lee Black Widow Bike” episode of American Chopper is available to stream on Discovery+.
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1. Interestingly, this was not the first vehicle renovation reality series to include billiards. A few years earlier, the rapper Xzibit “pimped” a 1988 Chevrolet S10 with a built-in pool table on the show Pimp My Ride.
2. In fact, OCC was commissioned by LiquidWick Pool Cues, which signed Ms. Lee to a multi-year contract at the end of 2007, to build the custom bike for her. As is made apparent at the end of the episode, Ms. Lee is not a motorcyclist, even nervously asking what is the “throttle.”
Almost 7000 miles away, the billiards market is booming in Korea, as recently reported by the Seoul Daily News. About 16 percent of the population enjoys playing the sport, especially various versions of carom billiards, such as three-cushion, pocketball and sagu.1
Sang Lee, who moved from Korea to New York at the age of 33, was dubbed the “Michael Jordan of three-cushion billiards” in the ‘90s, winning 12 consecutive United States Billiard Association National Three-Cushion Championships as well as the Three-Cushion World Cup-Champion in 1993.
Other Korean players, while not yet household names, have ascended in the ranks, including “Little Devil Girl” Kim Ga-young, Kim Haeng-jik, Jae-Ho Cho, Cha Yu-ram, and Cambodian-born Sruong Pheavy.2 Kim Kyung-roul was another up-and-coming master, until he tragically died falling out of his apartment window at the age of 34.
Given the sport’s increasing popularity and rising young stars, it’s not surprising to see a wide array of Korean movies and television shows, ranging from cartoons to reality shows to dramas, featuring billiards. Most I’ve watched; one continues to elude my grasp; all present a panoply of billiards viewing, both good and bad.
Cue
The earliest example I’ve discovered of billiards on celluloid in Korea is the 1996 drama Cue. Incredibly little is known about the film, except that it focused on “personal and professional jealousies in the high-stakes world of competitive pool, in which a female player seeks to become champion after the long-reigning champ is defeated.” Cue is not even listed on the IMDB filmography for the movie’s lead actor Lee Deok-Hwa. If you have any information on this movie, please share with me.
Bernard – “Billiards”
Known as Backkom in its native South Korea, the South Korean-Spanish-France computer animated television Bernard series centers on a curious polar bear named Bernard, whose bumbling slapstick antics typically result in the bear being knocked unconscious or being severely injured by the end of an episode.
In the “Billiards” episode, which aired sometime between 2006 and 2012, Bernard competes in a game of nine-ball against his lizard pal Zack. Bernard has a strong break and some modicum of talent, but he’s no match for his lacertilian opponent. His attempts to sabotage Zack’s game appear to work until Bernard slips on a discarded ball, banging his head on the side table, and falling unconscious. The episode is available to watch here.
High Kick 3: Revenge of the Short Legged – “Episode 40”
The South Korean sitcom, High Kick 3, aired from September 2011 to March 2012. In those seven months, there were 123 episodes, including “Episode 40,” in which Kang Seung Yun declares himself an unbeatable “pool genius,” a “pool god…born with a pool stick in his hand.” Unconvinced, Dr. Yoon Gye Sang, a “master of studying,” challenges Seung Yun, proffering that anyone can play pool based on understanding the science and reading the books. He avers, “A smart person who understands the equation can possibly do better with less practice.”
Their classmates choose sides and place bets, with the loser owing the winner a chicken dinner. As it turns out, Seung Yun shoots a mean game of three-cushion billiards. Dr. Yoon, not so much. After blabbering calculations about the average number of shots required and commenting on the “tripod grip” for maximum effect, he scratches on the first shot, and it’s all downhill from there. Episode 40 is available to watch here.
Long Inside Angle Shot
In 2014, the New York Asian Film Festival, widely revered for its showings of many first-and-only screenings of Eastern Asian and Southeast Asian cinema, premiered Long Inside Angle Shot from Korea’s Mise-en-scène Short Film Festival.
Released in 2012, the film focuses on a middle-aged woman who seemingly does nothing but watch sagu, a variant of four-ball billiards, on the television. Initially believing she does not even understand the sport, her son Tae-bong realizes this is more than a passive hobby of hers when she reveals to him she has drained his bank account to purchase a new billiards hall. The impetus for the idea was a dream she had in which a Buddhist monk played billiards with a wooden cane.
Unfortunately, the dream didn’t include customers, and tensions mount with the pair’s increasing poverty. But, Tae-bong’s disbelief and rage is put in check after his mother challenges him to a game of sagu, and he appreciates that her TV-watching intensity is matched by her incredible billiards acumen. She not only makes a beautiful masse shot, but also the titular long inside angle shot.
The movie is available to watch below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eTJCQr_NaQ
Drama Stage – “Not Played”
Lasting four seasons, Drama Stage was a South Korean weekly television program that featured ten one-act dramas per season. The first season included the 2018 episode “Not Played” about a woman in her 60s (Won Mi Kyung) who, having spent her life caring for children and housekeeping, accidentally stumbles across a part-time job at a billiard hall and discovers her talent for the sport.
Initially apprehensive, she begins to secretly practice three-cushion billiards in the after hours, and watches tournament footage to improve her fundamentals. When the hall’s proprietor learns of her innate skills, he trains her and encourages her to go all-in. Soon, she is competing against local sharks and, to the dismay of her husband, considering entering a tournament.
I give a lot of originality points to the premise of this episode. Not a lot of billiards shows feature women; none star sexagenerians, though ironically the sagu-playing mother of Long Inside Angle Shot was probably pretty close in age. “Not Played” also avoids all the standard tropes of hustling, barrooms, trick shots, down-and-out players, and chooses instead to focus on an individual who discovers a newfound passion late in her life.
Unfortunately, YouTube’s closed caption auto-translate subtitles were pretty muddled, so most of the dialogue was lost in translation. You can watch the full episode below.
Sixball
My favorite billiards film to come out of South Korea is Sixball, which was released in May 2020. This feature-length film from director Chae Ki-jun focuses on Sung-hoon (Lee Dae-han), a one-time aspiring professional billiards player whose dreams were shattered (and hand was broken) after getting cheated in a game of sixball by the gangster Mr. Yong (Hong Dal-pyo). As Sung-hoon is eventually lured back to billiards by his friend, who promises him the opportunity to make easy money betting in doubles billiards, he also finds himself with the perfect revenge opportunity, if he can survive his ultimate billiards match.
While the plot is formulaic, Sixball works because it energetically doubles-down on certain high-octane elements, such as elegant straight rail carom billiards matches, a menacing and villainous adversary, layers of voyeurism and fetishism of women, and a riveting climactic match with one jaw-dropper of a shot. You can read my full review here.
L.O.Λ.E STORY: INSIDE OUT – “Ready, Cue! Pocket Billiard”
Rounding out the septet is L.O.Λ.E STORY: INSIDE OUT, a new variety web series that portrays a more humble side to JR, Aron, Baekho, Minhyun, and Ren, the five members of the South Korean boy band NU’EST.
The fifth webisode is “Ready, Cue! Pocket Billiard,” which aired in June 2021. It already has 85,000 views and more than 8,000 likes, but I found it beyond painful to watch (though I recognize I’m hardly the target demographic). In Ready, Cue!… the five musicians meet in a billiards hall. Initially they attempt to play carom billiards, but quickly give up and switch tables to play eight-ball. However, each of the players is worse than the next, so there is an insufferable litany of misses, scratches, miscues, often replayed with sound effects. There is a twist toward the end as Minhyun starts making his shots, making the others question if he was hustling them. But, I was more concerned with how many more minutes of this series I needed to endure. You can watch the full episode here.
With a teeth-clenching finale, the Los Angeles Rams edged out the Cincinnati Bengals 23-20, bringing a blue-and-yellow confetti-drenched close to Super Bowl LVI. The game was truly historical, and not just because Sean McVay was the youngest coach to win the coveted trophy or quarterback Joe Burrow got sacked seven times. History was made off the field, as advertisers paid an average of $6.5 million for a 30-second spot; some spots allegedly sold for almost $7 million.[1] Maybe it’s worth it. According to Nielsen, 27%-50% of the 100 million viewers prefer the commercials to the game.
Regrettably, billiards had only a fleeting cameo this year when professional golfer Brooks Koepka put down the cue stick to pick up the bowling ball in Michelob Ultra’s “Welcome to Superior Bowl” campaign. (In comparison, billiards was a prominent player in Super Bowl XXXV during Dentyne’s CGI-heavy “Pool Hall”commercial, as well as Super Bowl XLVIII, when Bob Dylan casually played pool toward the end of Chrysler’s two-minute spot.)
Brooks Kopeka (Michelob Ultra, “Welcome to Superior Bowl”)
Billiards may have been absent from this weekend’s big game, but the sport has been a mainstay of commercials across the globe for many years, as I have shared in my previous blog posts, Top 10 Billiards Breaks and Another Top 10 Billiards Commercial List. So, as a salute to the advertising record-breakers, I present One More Top 10 Billiards Commercial List, complete with 10 billiards commercials from around-the-world that are entirely different from those cited on my other two lists. Let the Clio ceremony begin!
10. Trebor Softmints.In 1984, Jimmy White not only won the Masters snooker tournament, and the World Doubles Championships with his partner Alex Higgins, but he also starred in an advertisement for England’s famous “minty bit stronger” confectionery Trebor Softmints. In this particular commercial, “The Whirlwind” hastily clears the table on his opponent Tornado Thompson because the snooker match is the only obstacle in the way of his next Softmint.
9. Roshan.At first glance, this 2012 “Pool Hall”commercial is hardly list-worthy. It features a quintet of friends amiably and not so successfully playing snooker. But the commercial is for Roshan, the largest telecom provider in Afghanistan. That makes “Pool Table” the first Afghan artifact I have encountered showing billiards on the screen. And, it’s an impressive turnaround for the sport, given a decade before the commercial aired, snooker was banned by the Taliban.
8. Cream Silk.Shanelle Loraine is arguably the Anna Kournikova of billiards; if not for her incredible looks, nobody would be talking about her. Consider the facts: in 2010, Unilever turned to this “Billiards Champion” (!?) to market the “beauty and power” of its hair conditioner in this commercial, though her tournament earnings were just $315 that year and her position on the AZB leaderboard was 1,288. Maybe that’s why the commercial ends with a cheap-o trick shot.
7. Goldfish Epic Crunch Nacho.Like Oddjob crushing the golf ball in Goldfinger, so too does Epic Crunch Nacho, our goldfish-headed superhero, prove his strength and “powerful crunch” by interrupting a friendly pool match to crush an eight-ball with his bare hand. Created by Young & Rubicam, this 2019 “Billiards” commercialmay have won over salty snack lovers, but it left billiards fans howling in protest about the poor sportsmanship, never mind the impact it had on our heroine Pretzel.
6. Rolex.Any advertisement that includes the iconic scene from The Color of Money when Paul Newman sees his reflection in the two-ball and forfeits the semifinal match is going to make this list. The fact that Rolex beautifully showcased not only this scene, but also clips from 18 other films, such as Network, Speed, Titanic, Selma, and Apocalypse Now, in its 2017 “Celebrating Cinema” commercial, is truly mesmerizing and impressive. The common denominator? All the featured characters are wearing Rolexes, many as a personal choice, rather than a PR stunt.[2]
5. Bud Light.By my count, Budweiser has created seven commercials that prominently showcase billiards, including the Reserve Copper Lager ad mentioned further down in this list. The 1995“Pool Table”commercial, which followed up the ground-breaking “Ladies Night” commercial from 1993, features a quartet of men, dressed as women, competing in a Ladies Night Finals of Pool to win Bud Light. As Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys are Back in Town” belts from the jukebox, the drag queens dazzle onlookers with their masse, draw, and trick shots, even if some are not fully convinced of their overall qualifications.
4. Venus and Mars.Following the success of Band on the Run, Paul McCartney and the Wings released their 1975 album, Venus and Mars, with its album cover photograph of two billiards balls depicting the nearby planets. The album reached #1 in the United States, a feat perhaps aided by a 60-second television commercialof the Wings members playing snooker, acting goofy and singing songs from the album, including the popular single “Listen to What the Man Said.” The advertisement, directed by Karel Reisz, who would later get an Oscar nomination for The French Lieutenant’s Woman, had been assumed lost, but Sir McCartney pulled it from the vaults as part of the 2014 re-release of Venus and Mars
3. Budweiser Reserve Copper Lager.Originally created for Super Bowl LIII, but then shelved so it could premier during the Oscars a few months later, the 2019“Hold My Beer”commercial stars all-around badass Charlize Theron humiliating a series of men in various bar sports. Set to Run DMC’s “Tricky,” Theron singlehandedly – and by that, I further mean she competes with a single hand since her other hand holds a frothy Bud (as opposed to having only one hand a la her Fury Road character Furiosa) – whups her opponents in billiards, darts, and arm wrestling.
2. Lincoln Nautilus.After filming The Lincoln Lawyer in 2011, it was only natural for Matthew McConaughey to become Lincoln’s pitchman, appearing in numerous commercials for the auto manufacturer since 2014. One ad from 2019featured McConaughey stepping away from his dinner guests to make a trick billiards shot in which the object ball weaves between other balls. The idea was that like the table shot, the Nautilus driver can keep control thanks to advanced driver aids. If you think that comparison is a stretch, you likely have good company. Fortunately, Lincoln released a subsequenttwo-minute adon Facebook, this time with professional trick shot artist Steve Markle, who “demonstrates” specific aspects of Lincoln’s Co-Pilot 360 Technology (e.g., Lane Keeping System, Post Collision Braking) through a series of birds eye-viewed beautiful trick shots. Talk about pool is cool.
1. MANSCAPED Lawn Mower. Commercials don’t get more outré or laugh-out-loud than this 2021“Pool Table” commercial, with the opening line, “We need to talk about your balls.” Over a thick jazzy bass line, the narrating snooker player asks the hard questions, such as, “Are [your balls] smooth or covered in bits of annoying fluff?” He then shows his (snooker) balls, which “glisten in the light,” while offering a modicum of hope to viewers that their balls can be similar, assuming they use the right tools (no weed-whackers, blowtorches, or cheese graters). The commercial’s final note of optimism is a potted shot, while the narrator warns us, “When it comes to balls you don’t want to muck about.” Cue the YouTube fan base.
Bottom line: if an unknown team like the Cincinnati Bengals can make it to the Super Bowl, then anything can happen during the world’s greatest gridiron game. So why not a few more billiard-themed commercials in the future and give billiards, perhaps the greatest underdog sport, a chance at stardom?
Top of the Heap is truly the bottom of the barrel.
Granted, I only watched “Behind the Eight Ball,” the series’ third episode that aired in April, 1991. But, there is a reason this Married… with Children spinoff only lasted seven episodes. It’s comedic dregs, sitcom sludge, the sort of show even a laugh track finds humorless.
Top of the Heap focuses on the attempts of Charlie Verducci (Joseph Bologna) and his son Vinnie (Matt LeBlanc)—to get rich. Charlie’s “master plan” is for Vinnie to marry into a wealthy family; to this end, the father-son duo tries to break into high society, which includes Vinnie getting a job at a country club and Charlie pining for the club’s manager Alixandra Stone (Rita Moreno).
(How Mr. LeBlanc ever rebounded from this dumpster fire to join the cast of Friends three years later and ultimately earn $1 million per episode defies explanation.)
In “Behind the Eight Ball,” Charlie is concerned that Alixandra may have eyes for Warren Prado, a wealthy new club member, so Charlie tries to hustle him in a game of nineball. However, after witnessing someone call the man “Godfather” and kiss his hand, he quickly starts to backpedal, fearing for his life and “spelling help in [his] underwear.”
The acting is robotic, and the jokes are cringeworthy, but there are few highlights worth mentioning. Joey Lauren Adams plays Vinnie’s high school-aged neighbor (two years before her first major role in Dazed and Confused); Christina Applegate, reprising her Kelly Bundy role, appears for continuity’s sake; and two former Playboy models, Heather Parkhurst and a 24-year-old Pamela Anderson, show up to… show off. There are also two enjoyable trick shots, including one (seen here) that entails hitting five balls into four pockets with one shot.
But it’s hard to muster a smile amidst the egregious billiards inaccuracies, such as when the cue ball is ricocheted into a nearby aquarium and then miraculously appears on the table in the next shot. Or, in a game of nine-ball, when Charlie’s opponent sinks the nine with the cue, while leaving the two on the table (?!).
William Finnegan, The “Godfather of Pool”
It’s hardly a spoiler, but Mr. Prado turns out not to be that kind of godfather, but rather just some bub’s male sponsor. Of course, this got me thinking: what is the relation between billiards and criminal godfathers? Or, even better, between billiards and The Godfather?
For starters, several players have adopted the nickname “The Godfather,” including Taiwan’s Zhuang Zhiyuan and the Phillipines’ Aristeo “Putch” Puyat. Readers of my blog may also recall Steinway-Café Billiards regular William Finnegan, the self-proclaimed “Godfather of Pool,” who has appeared in multiple billiards reality shows, including The Hustlers, the “Emily” episode of In A Man’s World, and Kiss of Death.
Though none of these individuals appear connected to the mafia, the game of billiards has on occasion been associated with illegal activity, specifically gambling. So much so that in the 1920s, the Illinois Billiards Association was committed to keeping crime and booze out of billiards halls, as part of their “clean billiards crusade.” And before Johnny Torrio built the Chicago Outfit and turned loose his protégé Al Capone, he got his start in crime by opening a local pool hall in New York, where he ran an illegal gambling operation. More recently, Gerald Huber recounts many “war stories” of billiards, gambling, and mobsters in his autobiography The Green Felt Jungle.
Unfortunately, Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola chose to ignore the underworld billiards connection in writing and directing The Godfather movies.
Andy Garcia looking bored in “The Godfather III”
While plenty of gangster films have noteworthy billiards scenes (e.g, Mean Streets; The Krays; The Departed), the only billiards scene in Mr. Coppola’s trilogy is an unmemorable dialogue in The Godfather III between Connie Corleone (Talia Shire) and her nephew Vincent (Andy Garcia), while he is playing pool.
That’s a shame, given the iconic Hearst Estate mansion that was used in The Godfather as the home of movie producer Jack Woltz included a 32-foot-high billiards room.
It’s not like the Corleones – or at least, the actors who played them – didn’t know how to shoot billiards.
Marlon Brando in “Viva Zapata”
Twenty years before Marlon Brando became the Don, he was playing pool off set with his Viva Zapata co-star Anthony Quinn. So too did Robert DeNiro, the younger Vito of The Godfather II. He was quite happy at the table, as seen in The Deer Hunter.
Sonny Corleone’s gangster career may have been short-lived, but actor James Caan moved forward, picking up a cue stick one year later in Cinderella Liberty and then again – on horseback! – in Another Man, Another Chance. And, the incoming godfather, Al Pacino, makes one of the best “magic time” shots in eightball a decade later as Carlito Brigante in Carlito’s Way.
As for Fredo…poor Fredo. He wanted to be at the top of heap, but he took sides against the family and truly wound up behind the eight ball.
The “Behind the Eight Ball” episode of Top of the Heap is available to watch on Crackle.
Earlier this year, English game show host Tom O’Connor sadly passed. One of the shows he hosted, though it never aired, was Pick Pockets, which paired traditional trivia with snooker and featured top players.
Today, it’s beyond fanciful to imagine a game show dedicated to billiards. Especially in the US, no players are household names. Ask most people about billiards and they’ll stare confusedly at you. To my knowledge, Jeopardy! was the last game show to feature billiards. That was in 2014 with the elementary Pool Shots category.
But, while modern game shows have not been kind to billiards, TV game show history tells a more complicated story that echoes the rising and receding popularity of our favorite cue sport.
The first billiards-themed game show was ABC’s Ten-Twenty, which aired in 1959 and lasted approximately 13 weeks. Conceived by billiards evangelist and promoter Frank Oliva, Ten-Twenty was intended to bring pool out of the murky pool halls. Quite the challenge as this was still two years before both the movie The Hustler popularized the sport and the brothers Jansco organized the first Johnston City Hustler Jamborees.
Ten-Twenty pitted top players of the era, such as “Cowboy” Jimmy Moore and Irving “The Deacon” Crane, against one another in games compressed for 30-minute television watching intervals. Though Ten-Twenty was hardly a national success, the fact itever aired is downright impressive.
The first billiards tie-in that I could find occurred one year earlier, when World Straight Pool Champion Willie Mosconi appeared on To Tell the Truth in 1958. Mosconi subsequently appeared on I’ve Got a Secret (1962) and What’s My Line? (1962), in which celebrity panelists questioned contestants to determine their occupations. Perhaps, it was a harbinger of the future that none of the panelists successfully guessed Mosconi’s job.
Other billiards players similarly appeared on these celebrity panel shows, including a six-year-old Jean Balukason I’ve Got a Secret in 1966, but the next big step in the billiards-themed medium was Minnesota Fats Hustles the Pros in 1967, followed by the more successful Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats in 1968. Fats, the quintessential showman and impresario, was the perfect host for a game show in which he entertained audiences by playing celebrities for charity. The game show ran for four seasons, and starred a who’s-who of the era’s A-listers.
But, by the early ‘70s, America’s appetite had waned. Indeed, it took 16 years before another billiards game show appeared. This time it was in the UK, where snooker was truly catching fire, as evidenced by 18 million TV viewers watching the 1985 World Snooker Championship. In 1984, the Stuart Hall hosted quiz show Pot the Question launched. Contestants were paired up with a snooker player, and the points per question were determined by what the snooker player potted.
Surprisingly, Pot the Question only lasted one season. The aforementioned Pick Pockets was the next attempt to cash in on snooker’s popularity, but that too failed. It took a few more years before the BBC’s Big Break nailed the formula, launching by far the most popular billiards-themed game show, with 222 episodes across 11 seasons.
Hosted by off-color comedian Jim Davidson and former snooker player John Virgo, Big Break paired three contestants with three professional snooker players in a series of rounds that combined trivia and snooker play. Many of the snooker giants of the era – e.g., Dennis Taylor, Jimmy White, Alex Higgins, Willie Thorne, and Allison Fisher — appeared on Big Break.
Back in the US, billiards was back in the shadows. The sport had disappeared from game shows, with 2002 being the one outlier. That year, in the “Billiards for Gross Eats”episode of Fear Factor, contestants were given a cue ball to sink four balls in five shots. The missed balls had pictures of the gastronomic horrors they would have to eat. In the “Beat the Shark”episode of Dog Eat Dog, a contestant competed against a billiards professional to sink four balls before he cleared two tables. It didn’t help that the opponent was Dave “The Ginger Wizard” Pearson, who set the Guinness World Record by potting two consecutive racks of 15 pool balls in 82 seconds.
In 2005, what many hoped would provide an industry resurgence proved to be the final nail in the coffin. That game show was Ballbreakers. Executive produced by Mars Callahan, director of Poolhall Junkies, and featuring commentary by Ewa Mataya Laurance, the show consisted of contestants competing in 9-ball for a chance to win $20,000. Intended to be the “coolest pool show ever,” according to its creator, Ballbreakers was an unmitigated disaster, lasting only one season and proving there is no joy watching amateur players compete in 9-ball.
Assuming Jeopardy! emerges from its current PR apocalypse and begin its 38th season, I have a suggestion – or more precisely, an answer — for whomever replaces Mike Richard as executive producer.
This sport, often maligned and portrayed unfairly in popular culture, is overdue for some recognition.
Answer: What is Billiards?
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This article first appeared in BCA Insider, BCA Holiday Issue, November 1, 2021.
Sports biopics are a staple of Hollywood. They run the gamut from ultra-popular sports, such as football (e.g., Remember the Titans; Invincible), basketball (e.g., Glory Road; Hoosiers), and baseball (e.g., 42; Price of the Yankees) to those far more niche, such as horse racing (e.g., Seabiscuit), surfing (e.g., Soul Surfer), and ski jumping (e.g., Eddie the Eagle).
You guessed it. There are no billiards biopics.
Fortunately, over the years, a variety of companies have stepped in to honor some of the greats of the sport with short documentaries. Though these films vary considerably in production quality and entertainment value, they all deserve some praise for attempting to preserve on-screen the legends of the baize.
Years ago, I wrote about the 2013 Sky Sports Productions documentary, The Strickland Story, focused on Earl Strickland, as well as the Probe Profile on Efren Reyes. Today, I’ll turn my attention to Willie Mosconi, Willie Hoppe, and Shane Van Boeing, each the subject of a billiard short film. Also, in a future blog post, I’ll jump across the channel and review the documentaries on snooker stars Alex Higgins (Alex Higgins: The People’s Champion) and Ali Carter (Ali Carter: The Unbreakable).
A Pete Smith Specialty: The Mosconi Story
At 1621 Vine Street, on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, there is a star honoring Pete Smith, an Oscar-winning American producer and narrator of short subject films. Between 1931 and 1955, Mr. Smith made more than 150 movies that covered everything from household hints to insect life to military training. The majority, however, were short comedic documentaries that he narrated. This includes one of his final films, The Mosconi Story, about the life of perhaps the greatest pool player in history, “Mr. Pocket Billiards” William Joseph Mosconi. It is available to watch here.
Created in 1952, this 10-minute film is a reenactment of Mr. Mosconi’s life, starting when “Little Wille” would skip his violin lessons to practice billiards at Joe Mosconi’s Billiards Parlor using a sawed-off broom handle and potatoes. By age 7, Mr. Mosconi was traveling, doing exhibitions. His career climbed quickly, eventually taking him to the Worlds Pocket Billiards Championship on six occasions. But, he did not win any of those matches.
Most of The Mosconi Story takes places In 1941, when Mr. Mosconi opted to give it one more try. With a child on the way, his billiards career was headed either for the “championship or the want ads.” As billiards historians know well, he made it to the finals to compete against three time world champion Andrew Ponzi, one of the “real greats of the day, the craftiest player in the game.”
Neck and neck with Mr. Ponzi, Mr. Mosconi’s game is interrupted by a telegram telling him that his baby boy, Willie Jr., had arrived early. That announcement gives Mr. Mosconi the confidence to attempt a five-cushion rail shot. He makes the shot, winning 125-124, and becomes the world champion. It was a feat he would repeat many times.
Columbia Pictures presents the Willie Hoppe Story
Released in 1954, The Willie Hoppe Story is a nine-minute mash-up of documentary and exhibition. The first 60 seconds is biographic, a whirlwind time travel from 1896, when Mr. Hoppe began playing billiards at the age of eight, to the present (1954), when a 66-year-old Mr. Hoppe starts showing off his three-cushion carom billiards skills at the world-renowned New York Athletic Club. It is available to watch here.
First, he dispatches with his opponent, New York professional billiards champion Edward Lee. Then, he demonstrates the essentials of billiards, such as the proper grip and techniques for creating spin. Finally, he brings the real magic, showing off more than 20 eye-popping, three-cushion (or more) carom billiards shots, including a nine-cushion shot.
Narrator Bill Stern, who thirty years later would join the inaugural class of the American Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame, can barely contain his euphoria watching the shots made by the “wizard of the cue, the king of the cushion, Willie Hoppe.” He proclaims that Mr. Hoppe is “no professor of billiards, he’s a professor of English [spin],” and he describes one shot that navigates 25 bowling pins on the table as a “Sunday driver going to the picnic grounds.”
Shane Van Boeing – The South Dakota Kid
Given the number of billiards titles, championships and accolades accumulated by Rapid City’s Shane Van Boeing, it’s no wonder South Dakota Public Broadcasting produced this eight-minute segment in 2014 for its Dakota Life series focused on “interesting South Dakota people, places, and things.” You can watch it here.
Mr. Van Boeing was only 31 years old in 2014, but he was already a six-time US Open champion, the 2008 doubles world champion, a two-time all around champion, a seven-time Mosconi Cup member, and the “current #1 pool player in the US.” (His accomplishments have only further proliferated in the past seven years.)
Shane Van Boeing initially takes a fairly standard approach to his life. He grew up in a pool-playing family, sitting in the baby chair watching pool and then getting his first table at age two from his grandfather. Soon he was participating in trick shot exhibitions.
But rather than continuing down memory lane and charting Mr. Van Boeing’s path to turning pro in 2006, Shane Van Boeing instead chooses to narrowly focus on his hearing impairment, with his mother, Timi Bloomberg, describing how she realized when Shane was 16 months old that he was almost totally deaf. She describes being very careful that her son not get labeled as “handicapped,” insisting that he surrounds himself with “speaking people” to “function normal.”
Mr. Van Boeing elaborates, saying he was bullied in school for his hearing impairment, but when he played pool, it was a different world where he didn’t have to worry about that. He says he really learned to communicate in the pool room – “this is where I got my better communication.”
Incredulously, Mr. Van Boeing says some opponents have derided his impairment as an “advantage,” indicating it’s “not fair” that he isn’t distracted by external sounds. His retort: “put in earplugs, you’ll be just like me.”
In a wonderful closing note, he shares how he wants to be a role model for the hearing impaired. Kids can look up to him and think “I don’t have to be handicapped. I can utilize my disability to have ability in other areas.”
I was not familiar with the English television presenter and comedian Tom O’Connor, who died from Parkinson’s about two months ago. But, an alert about his passing showed up in my news feed because in addition to hosting such popular British game shows as Crosswits, Name that Tune, and Password, he also hosted a snooker-themed game show called Pick Pockets.
What was this?
Of course, there have been snooker-themed game shows, such as Pot the Question from 1984 or the widely popular Big Break, which ran from 1991-2002, but this one had clearly eluded my research. Wikipedia lists over 500 British game shows, but there’s no mention of Pick Pockets. Nor does it appear on the British Game Show Wiki, the website UK Game Shows, or searching the BBC. Yet, sure enough, there on YouTube, user gareth11077 had posted the pilot episode from 1988. You can watch it here.
Fortunately, I was able to contact gareth11077, who I subsequently learned was Gareth McGinley, author of Heart Breaks: The Tony Knowles Story, and a self-described enthusiast and researcher of ‘80s snooker. Through my email exchange with him, as well as a separate email exchange with Trevor Chance, the creator of Pick Pockets (as well as the founder of Legends, Europe’s longest running live tribute show), I learned that the show I had watched was an untransmitted pilot, as the series actually never aired. The hope was to get it onto ITV, but the network’s commissioner at the time, Greg Dyke, allegedly had a particular dislike for snooker that not only left Pick Pockets homeless, but more important, signaled a “death knell of snooker on ITV, as well.”
According to Mr. Chance, Pick Pockets was inspired by a game of snooker he was playing (and was not influenced by its forbearer Pot the Question). Produced by Tyne Tees, the ITV television franchise for Northeast England, the show combined “the knowledge of our teams with the snooker skills of our guest professionals,” as Mr. O’Connor shared in his opening.
Pick Pockets had two competing teams, each pairing a local contestant with a celebrity. In the pilot episode, the celebrities were TV actor George Layton and English women’s cricket captain Rachel Heyhoe Flint. The teams, in turn, were each paired with a professional snooker player. The episode’s two players were John Parrott, who one year later would lose the World Snooker Championship to Steve Davis, and the “Silver Fox” David Taylor, a familiar face in the ‘80s though after 1980 he never made it past the quarterfinals of the World Championship. Completing the celebrity lineup was Len Ganley, the show’s “resident referee” and scorekeeper (who refereed four World Championships between 1983 and 1993).
(At the end of the episode, the audience is promised that next week’s episode – which was never made – would star Alex Higgins and Willie Throne, two true giants of the sport. Oh well.)
Gameplay begins by each snooker player breaking their opponent’s rack. The 15 red balls have no value; they are obstacles to interfere with potting the colored balls and can be removed in the first round by each team correctly answering trivia questions, such as “how many toes does a rhinoceros have? (three) or “what is a jumbuck to an Australian?” (a sheep).
Once a ball is removed for each correct answer, round two begins. In this round, the players seek to pot the colored balls in order, while avoiding the remaining red balls. The pockets have different point values, and points are earned by a combination of answering a trivia question and potting the ball. The team that has the most points advances to the third round.
In this final round, the non-celebrity contestant must answer six trivia questions. Each right answer earns his snooker-playing teammate 10 seconds to run a table consisting of the six colored balls. The player wants to leave as much time on the clock because once the table is run, the remaining time will be used to pot a single gold ball, which is worth 1000 pounds (or approximately $1700 USD in 1988).
While clearly dated through today’s viewing lens, the show was entertaining and had a certain imbued charm, principally due to Mr. O’Connor’s jovial banter. It’s a shame it never aired. Evidently, the ingredients were right, as Big Break proved only a few years later with a format that is uncannily similar to Pick Pockets.
It’s hard to overstate the financial impact of effective product placement in television and film. After Tom Cruise wore Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses in Risky Business, sales of the model increased from 18,000 to 4 million. Hershey saw a 65% increase in profits after a famous extraterrestrial took a liking to Reese’s Pieces in E.T. And Toy Story provided a 4500% boost to sales of Etch A Sketch immediately after the film’s release.
Regrettably, billiards manufacturers and artisans cannot point to similar successes. (In fact, probably the most famous billiards product placement was in The Color of Money when Vincent crowed about his Balabushka, but that was actually a Joss cue!)
But if pristine product placement has proved elusive, there are a handful of compelling examples of billiards industry makers who have “broken the first wall,” stepping out of the product shadows to become the star of their own episode, specifically television documentary and science reality series. Here’s my list, from worst to best, of the Top 7 Billiards Companies Starring in TV and Movies.
Falcon Cue Ltd. Seven slow minutes elapse before viewers of the low-budget How Its Made episode, “Air Filters, Billiard Cues, Ice Sculptures Suits,” learn that the cues getting assembled belong to Falcon, the Canadian cue company launched in the early 1990s. This lifeless 2005 episode plays like a high-school-made how-to video, with 15 separate steps detailed, from step one (use a circular donut-shaped lathe to turn a block of maple into a cylindrical cue butt) to step 15 (buff the cue stick). Fortunately for Falcon, step 12 addresses using a motorized stamping machine to apply the company logo.
Thurston. The oldest snooker table manufacturer in the world, Thurston features in “The Bow, Ferrofluid, The Billiard Table” episode of Incredible Inventions from 2017. Viewers are walked through the step-by-step process of assembling a table, from selecting the timber and cutting the wood to ironing the table cloth and fitting the cushions.
Albany-Hyatt Billiard Ball Company. Don Wildman, host of Mysteries at the Museum, searches museums for relics that “reveal the secrets of our past.” In the 2018 “Lunar Fender Bender, Opera Angels and Billiard Balls” episode, he travels to the Albany Institute of History and Art, which features a 140-year-old box of the Hyatt Company’s 16 balls. Though the company went out of business in 1986, it carries the name of John Wesley Hyatt, whose invention of the celluloid billiard ball to replace the ivory ball revitalized the industry (and saved a lot of elephants). The story of that invention, and the company that followed, is told in the episode through a mix of historian voice-overs and actor dramatizations. Fun fact: Hyatt’s original celluloid billiard ball almost failed when the sound it made hitting another ball was too similar to a gunshot. Saloon owners freaked and canceled purchases, forcing Hyatt to update his formula by adding camphor to the mix. The rest is billiards history.
Dana Paul Cues. Paul, a maker of pool cues and espresso tampers in upstate New York, is the star of Gary Chin’s short documentary, The Cuemaker. Mr. Chin, a film student at Ithaca College, is on the hunt for the perfect 19.5-oz jump break cue. His quest leads him to Mr. Paul, who is committed to “cue-making perfection” and shares, “I am not attached to [a] particular piece of wood…I’m attached to the idea that it will become, it not treasured, at least respected by you or maybe even your children.”
Valley-Dynamo, Inc. In the world of coin-operated pool tables, Valley-Dynamo is a household name. Unsurprisingly, when the producers of Machines: How They Work wanted to tackle coin-operated tables, they turned to Valley-Dynamo. Airing on The Science Channel in 2016, the “Pool Tables, Gas Fired Boilers and Shopping Carts” episode combined photo-real CGI with factory footage to highlight the assembly of the dead rail, the mechanics of the coin recognition slot, and the interior “spider web of runways” that transport the balls.
Chuck Jacobi, Best Billiards. In 2016, Jill Wagner, the perky host of Handcrafted America, traveled to New Jersey to learn how Mr. Jacobi, a former military contractor, makes his customized billiards tables. (Viewers may recognize Ms. Wagner as the former host of Wipeout or scantily clad on the pages of lad mags such as Stuff and FHM.) Airing on INSP, the “Woven Rugs, Sunglasses and Billiard Tables” episode from season one featured Mr. Jacobi assembling a frame, “ripping” the rails, creating inlays out of the keys of antique abandoned pianos, and converting a dining room table into a billiards table. His customized tables retail for $3000-$18,000, not including Ms. Wagner’s assistance routing the end piece.
Richard Black Custom Cues. Back in 2005, the television series The Genuine Article answered its question, “Who makes the most beautiful pool cues?” by profiling Hall of Fame cuemaker Richard Black. On the “Puzzles and Pool Cues” episode, Mr. Black discusses his Antipodes cue, with 600 inlays and made from 16 different types of wood from 16 different countries. “Gentleman Jack” Colavita is also interviewed, unequivocally calling Mr. Black the best cue-maker.
So, for billiards companies thinking about how to optimize the return on spend from their marketing budget, it might be time to pursue a starring role on TV or in the movies.
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An abridged version of this article originally appeared in BCA Insider (Spring issue, May 2021)
In 1956, billiards was still relatively novel to most Jewish-Americans. Consider some of the Jews who have made an indelible contribution on the sport.[i] Barry Berhrman, the founder of the prestigious U.S. Open 9-Ball Championship, had just turned 10. Billiards Congress of America Hall of Famer Mike Sigel, whose mother used to complain that he wouldn’t go to Hebrew school because he was too tired from playing pool, was just starting to walk up stairs unassisted. Pool Wars author Jay Helfert is one of the game’s great chroniclers, but at best, he was still a little ankle-biter at that time.
Then, it’s hardly surprising that the 1956 episode “Bad Companions” of the TV sitcom The Goldbergs might find humor in Uncle David (Eli Mintz), a nebbish who has purchased a pool table at an auction but not knowing how to play, enlists the help of some pool hall locals to teach him the game.[ii]
In fact, the bigger surprise might be that such a Jewish sitcom existed at all. Sure enough, The Goldbergs, created in 1948 by radio star Gertrude Berg, was not only television’s first family sitcom, but also a show squarely and confidently about a Jewish family. Ms. Berg, the show’s writer, producer, and star actress, played the family matriarch, Molly Goldberg.
According to columnist Matthue Roth, Ms. Berg’s “vision of The Goldbergs, from which the show never deviated, was that of an everyday family with simple interactions, believable plots, and guided by a gentle humor. The episodes followed a predictable pattern–family members encounter problems, land in tight spots, and then turn to their familial matriarch to bail them out.”[1]
In “Bad Companions,” Uncle David’s new pool table, a “fabulous gift for the whole family,” becomes a bit of a headache, since his peers either don’t know how to play or aren’t permitted to play by their spouses. Justifying his unfamiliarity with billiards, the family patriarch, Jake (Robert H. Harris), says, “pool is a game that requires leisure, it’s not something you’re born with.”
Undeterred, David recruits a well-mannered gaggle of locals from the Friendly Nook pool hall, paying them to come to his house and teach him pool and promising to be the “best pupil [they] ever had.” While not exactly Machiavellian hustlers, the “professors” – Stosh, Big Louie, Little Louie, Cockeye Mike, and Snake Hip Nellie– show little interest in letting David practice; instead, they take advantage of his family’s hospitality, playing pool for free and delighting in a never-ending buffet of sandwiches and coffee. More attention is given to the composition of the sandwiches (e.g., “cheese on rye with mustard, not so much lettuce”) than to the mechanics of the billiards game.
Tensions start to run high among Uncle David’s family members who feel their magnanimity is being exploited, especially when some of the teachers start using the Goldberg’s phone to place horse racing bets. When Jake finally ejects Uncle David’s friends from his house, David goes down to the pool hall to make amends, only to unwittingly get ensnared in a raid. The judge releases David, calling him the “dupe of unsavory characters” and the product of a poor upbringing.
To show all is not lost, and to prove that Molly is hardly just a naïve sandwich-maker, the episode ends with Molly and David playing a game of pool. Like a pro, Molly announces her shot will “kiss the four ball off the nine and into the side pocket.” It’s a combination designed to impress, though discerning audiences will wonder why there is no sound of a ball falling in the pocket.
The Goldbergs may have had little impact on the future of billiards, but there is no question that Gertrude Berg was a true trailblazer. Her inspiring comedic style earned her the first Best Actress Emmy in 1951, and laid the groundwork for future comedians, such as Lucille Ball, as well as the domestic family sitcom genre, creating a blueprint for subsequent shows like Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best.
Until very recently, “Bad Companions” was available to watch on Jewish Life Television (JLTV), the network founded in 2007 to promote Jewish-themed programming.
[i] While it’s hard to argue that “Boston Shorty” Morton Goldberg had an “indelible” influence on billiards, I’d be remiss if I did not give him a special shoutout. Boston Shorty was 40 years old when “Bad Companions” aired. By that time, he had already defeated legends such as Willie Mosconi, Ralph Greenley, Irving Crane, and Jimmie Caras. And, no, The Goldbergs was not named after Boston Shorty.
[ii]The Goldbergs should not be confused with the currently-running, identically-named ABC sitcom The Goldbergs.
In the arts, billiards and death are often interlocked.
“A Game of Pool,”the 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone, pits the best living pool player against the best dead pool player in a contest where the winner earns the title of greatest pool player ever, and the loser forfeits his life.
Two years later, in the poem “We Real Cool,” Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Gwendolyn Brooks tells the story of seven pool players at the Golden Shovel: “We Real cool. | We Left school. | We Lurk late. | We Strike straight. | We Sing sin. | We Thin gin. | We Jazz June. | We Die soon.”
The aptly-titled anime short film Death Billiards, created in 2013, focuses on two men who must compete for their lives in a game of pool. The gotcha is they’re both already dead and the match is to determine who is headed for heaven or hell.
Into this global smorgasbord of billiards macabre we should add “The Waiting Game,” a 30-minute television drama that aired in November 2008 on Maori Television in New Zealand. “The Waiting Game” was one-sixth of Table Plays, a grassroots series of low-budget dramas, funded by NZ On Air, that paired emerging writers with established directors, and relied on local crews, actors, and settings.
Written by Rebecca Tansley and directed by Anna Marbrook, “The Waiting Game” envisions purgatory as a one-table snooker room where two players compete. The winner gets to live, the loser moves on. The episode focuses on a match between a distraught single mother (Eilish Moran), who has just arrived and refuses to believe her fate will be resolved by a snooker game, and a celebrated TV actor (Ben Farry), who is impatient to get back to his life. But, a lot of conversation and soul-searching can occur over a game of snooker, and while the winner of the match may be obvious, the outcome is less so.
Due to the cramped locale and the tight ping-pong of dialogue among the two players, and the third character, a Purgatory rule enforcer-cum-maître d’ (Rima Te Wiata), “The Waiting Game” feels more like a one-act theater production than a television episode. And, while I wish the snooker-playing had been far more convincing, I appreciated the original storyline and its ability to create tension independent of the match.
But, I have to admit to a strong degree of bias, for a good degree of my viewing joy was attributable to the circuitous journey I had locating the episode and the most amiable and facilitative cast of individuals who contributed to my quest.
That search first began in early 2019 when I reached out the writer Ms. Tansley. Replying immediately, she shared that she did not have a copy of “The Waiting Game” but encouraged me to connect with Richard Thomas, the executive producer of Table Plays and a 30-year veteran of New Zealand television production.
Unable to reach Mr. Thomas, I put the search on the backburner for about a year until last April, when I attempted to find a different inroad, this time by contacting the New Zealand Film Commission. The people at NZFC could not have been friendlier, and while they too couldn’t connect me to Mr. Thomas, they did put me in touch with the director, Ms. Marbrook.
Ms. Marbrook graciously shared with me more history about “The Waiting Game” and then added that the master file had been sent to the local television station in Dunedin, New Zealand, as they did a subsequent airing of the full Table Plays series.
After some further on-the-ground sleuthing by Ms. Marbrook and Ms. Tansley, they encouraged me to reach out to 39 Southern Television, the local station formerly known as Dunedin Television and Channel 9. That prompt led me to connect with Luke Chapman, the Production Manager, who warmly recalled working on the show and the “clever script from Rebecca.” Mr. Chapman indicated he only had “The Waiting Game” on DVD. After ascertaining my intentions were good, Mr. Chapman agreed to convert the DVD into a format I could watch. Two months later, he published in the July 26 Otago Daily Times (which, in addition to 39 Southern Television, is owned by Allied Press) a link to the episode. You can now watch it here.
Thank you to everyone who helped me locate “The Waiting Game.” As was often written to me during the numerous email exchanges, kia ora tatou.
Though Ms. Lee has lately garnered headlines for her recent announcement of stage 4 ovarian cancer (on top of the scoliosis she has fought against since age 12), her billiards accomplishments are legendary. A former No. 1 female pool player in the world; a three times runner-up at the women’s World Nine-ball Championship; the Women’s Professional Billiard Association (WPBA) Sportsperson of the Year Award in 1998; a gold medal winner for the United States at the 2001 World Games in Akita, Japan; and an inductee into the Billiard Congress of America Hall of Fame in 2013.
The episode begins with Ms. Lee entering OCC’s retail shop to demonstrate some trick shots, including hitting the 8-ball out of Senior’s mouth into the corner pocket, and then exchanging banter with Senior while playing him in several games of eightball. 
The bulk of the episode is then focused on the assembly of her chopper. The goal is to leverage the standard Black Widow frame, but add some “wow” to make it truly unique. The decision-making process covers the tank selection, the fabrication of the fenders (with their three-dimensional webbing welding), and the simplification of the seat design.
