Category Archives: Billiards TV

The Billiards TV category is about television episodes that prominently feature billiards or have plots centered around billiards.

Who’s the Boss? – “The Two Tonys”

As the historian George Fels referenced in an article for Billiards Digest, some celebrities aren’t just acting…they really can shoot a mean game of pool: James Caan (Cinderella Liberty). Jerry Orbach (Law & Order).   Montgomery Clift (A Place in the Sun). Don Adams (Get Smart – “Dead Spy Scrawls”).   Fred Astaire.   W.C. Fields (Pool Sharks). Jack Klugman (Twilight Zone – “A Game of Pool”).

Who's the Boss - The Two TonysTo that esteemed list, we must add Tony Danza, the star of the Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award-winning sitcom Who’s the Boss? Running from 1984-1992, the series featured Danza as retired and widowed major league baseball player Tony Micelli, who relocates to suburban Connecticut and gets a job as a live-in housekeeper for divorced advertising executive Angela Bower (Judith Light).

As we learn in the 1988 Season 4 Who’s the Boss? episode, “The Two Tonys,” Tony can not only play baseball, but also shoot billiards. The set-up is that Tony takes to Angela to Marty’s Melody Room for a particular dining experience, when he runs into Darlene, an old flame, who has since married another Tony. This second Tony (‘Tony 2’) has lived in the shadow of Tony Micelli ever since. “I’ve been chasing the myth,” says Tony 2.

Attempting to debunk Tony, Tony 2 challenges him to a 100-point game of straight pool. Tony, allegedly an exceptional pool player, acquiesces to Angela’s request that he “throw the game,” an idea verboten in Tony’s competitive world, so that Tony 2’s ego won’t be further damaged.

Who's the Boss - The Two TonysThe match starts off reasonably well, with Tony winning Angela’s appreciation as he intentionally flubs shots. (“What you’re doing is for the greater good,” Angela says to Tony. He replies, “Yeah, they’re going to name a church after me.”) But, as Tony 2 creeps closer to victory, his taunts and braggadocio get more extreme. (“You need to clean this table and the next one. Of course, all that cleaning shouldn’t be too difficult for a housekeeper.”)

Eventually, and staring at a 21-point deficit, Tony can no longer constrain his skill or contain his anger. Chalking up to George Thorogood’s billiards anthem “Bad to the Bone” (which, of course, featured pool god Willie Mosconi in the memorable music video), Tony goes on a streak, pocketing one ball after another, until they are tied at 99 points. Tony is then faced with “an impossible [cut] shot” (in which the object ball is frozen on the middle of the far rail). He misses, giving Tony 2 an easy shot to win the game and walk out with his ego and wife in tow.

But, with Tony 2 gone, it is revealed that Tony actually threw the game (as originally instructed), for the shot was not impossible, as he proves moments later when he makes the exact same shot for Angela’s bemusement. Which brings us back to Tony Danza, who clearly knows enough about billiards, English, and backspin, to make the incredible (and very difficult) shot. Nice cut, Tony.

The full episode is shown here:

 

 

Get Smart – “Dead Spy Scrawls”

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Remote-controlled cue ball? Shotgun concealed in a cue stick? Decoding machine hidden inside a billiards table? Leonard Nimoy playing an assassin named Stryker?   Quadruple-check. It’s all part of the hilariously outlandish billiards TV episode “Dead Spy Scrawls” from the first season of Get Smart. The full episode is available to watch here.

http://youtu.be/eUX-dnwtDLc

First aired in 1965, Get Smart was created as a lampoon of earlier spy series, such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and, of course, the James Bond franchise.   The comedy featured Don Adams as bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart (aka Agent 86), who works for the US counter-intelligence agency CONTROL. Many episodes pitted Maxwell Smart and CONTROL against their nemesis KAOS, an “international organization of evil.” Such is the storyline for “Dead Spy Scrawls” in which CONTROL learns that KAOS has a machine that is intercepting US government secret communication.

Get Smart - Dead Spy ScrawlsThe location of the “decoding machine” remains a mystery to CONTROL until the Chief deduces from an informant’s dying words, “Shark…pool…mother,” that “One of the best pool players in town is a man known as The Shark. And he runs a place called Mother’s Family Pool Parlor….Well, if The Shark is a KAOS man, it’s just possible that the decoding machine could be hidden in Mother’s Family Pool Parlor!”

To infiltrate Mother’s and leave time for Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon) to find the machine, Smart must play the Shark (Jack Lambert) in pool. Though Smart tells the Chief he knows the game “inside and out,” the Chief, taking no chances, hires pool professional Willie Marconi (an obvious spoof on, and tribute to, pool legend Willie Mosconi) to teach him the game. But Smart, in the comedic tradition of earlier pool players such as W.C. Fields (Six of a Kind) and Peter Sellers (A Shot in the Dark), is a butter-finger with the cue stick, ultimately maiming Marconi in both the face and the hand and tearing the baize through a bungled masse shot.

Get Smart - Dead Spy ScrawlsFortunately, CONTROL is able to outfit Smart with a can’t-miss cue ball that is remotely controlled by Agent 99’s lipstick and a cue stick that conceals a single-barrel shotgun. So, armed with the necessary pool gadgets, Smart and Agent 99 head to Mother’s to challenge Shark. There, Smart plays Shark in a game with physics-defying shots.   In a final shot, Smart finds himself with the 8-, 10-, 5, and 1-balls in a row, next to the side pocket. (As we learned earlier, these four balls pocketed simultaneously serve as the combination to unlock the decoding machine, which is hidden inside the belly of the billiards table.) Smart makes the shot (which, in fact, is one of the most famous trick shots in billiards), unlocking the decoding machine, and apprehending the members of KAOS.

“Dead Spy Scrawls” is refreshing in its absurdity. In subsequent years, the remote-controlled billiards ball concept would be repurposed in a less satisfying manner (e.g., Mission: Impossible – “Break”; Quantum Leap – “Pool Hall Blues”). But, in “Dead Spy Scrawls” it works beautifully, perhaps because there is still respect for the game, as evidenced by the cultural reference to Willie Mosconi and the use of several well-made trick shots.

Get Smart - Dead Spy ScrawlsIt’s also worth noting that, unlike Peter Graves (Mission: Impossible) or Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap), Don Adams was an exceptional pool player in his own right. (The episode acknowledges as much when Shark references a famous pool player named “Three Fingers” Yarmy. Yarmy is Don Adams’ real surname.) In fact, Adams appeared as a guest on Celebrity Billiards with Minnesota Fats, played (many years later) in the $20,000 “Sportsworld” Celebrity Billiards Tournament, and of course, merged his billiards ability and comedic genius by starring in the famous 1970 advertisement for Skittle Pool.

I Dream of Jeannie – “Help, Help, a Shark”

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My colleague Matthew Sherman, an avid proponent of, and author on, billiards, began his article, “The Most Important Stroke in Pocket Billiards,” by discussing an old tale about a pool genie. In the story, the pool genie offers the lamp-rubber any wish to improve her game. The woman rubbing the lamp responds, “There’s one pool shot that if I made it every time would make me the greatest woman player on Earth!” Perplexed, the genie asks which shot would achieve that. “The next shot!” responds the player proudly.

Help Help a SharkUnfortunately, such simple wisdom is completely lacking in the one billiards television entry that actually features a pool genie. That would be “Help, Help, a Shark” from the fifth and final season of the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. Produced in 1970, “Help, Help, a Shark” continues the romance between astronaut Major Tony Nelson (Larry Hagman) and Jeannie (Barbara Eden), the genie desperate to please her master.

“Help, Help, a Shark” begins with a the final shots of a 500-point straight pool match between General Schaeffer and General Fitzhugh (Jim Backus, better known as Gilligan Island castaway Thurston Howell III). Rivals for years, General Schaeffer is about to win and reclaim the trophy, when Major Nelson screams (in reaction to pocket-size Jeannie busting out of his jacket), causing General Schaeffer to miss the shot, lose the trophy…and rip the felt of the table.

Help Help a SharkTo make it up to the General, Major Nelson is able to set-up a 200-point rematch. Unfortunately, in his giddiness, he slams a door on the General Schaeffer’s hand, making the general unable to play and requiring Major Nelson to step in and avenge the General in the rematch. The only catch…Major Nelson can’t play pool. What’s a spaceman to do?

Well, as we know from other billiards television shows that have since recycled this same theme, the only way to turn a bumbling billiards player into a pool professional is through science or the supernatural (i.e., Quantum Leap – “Pool Hall Blues”; Mission: Impossible! – “Break”; Pretender – “Pool”).   In “Help, Help, a Shark,” which predates all these other episodes, the secret-power to turn Major Nelson into a hustler is his very own genie from a bottle. Jeannie, simply by seeing the pool table and blinking (cue the boing sound effect), can turn the most heinously-played shots into combinations that sink five, six, seven balls simultaneously.

Help Help a SharkTherein lays the absurdity of this episode, for it’s not that Jeannie makes Major Nelson a better player. It’s that she manipulates the movement of the cue ball, so that it makes impossible trajectories and defies physics by caroming into multiple balls. Yet, none of these players (who regularly play 500-point straight pool games) question the improbability of the game. And given the game is straight pool, there is no possible reason why Jeannie can’t just help Major Nelson make “the next shot,” rather than these inane multi-ball shots.

I know, I know…it’s just a TV show…don’t take it so seriously. But, if a sitcom is going to devote a storyline to pool (and most of the screen time in “Help, Help, a Shark” is, in fact, focused on pool), then at least tell a reasonable story or show some exceptional pool-playing. (For example, “Pool Shark Git Bit” from The Steve Harvey Show is pretty lame television, but at least it has some sweet pool sequences.) This lamentable episode gets it all wrong, with one exception – the title. As the name suggests, this episode really needed some “Help, Help.”

Mr. Ed – “Ed the Pool Player”

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My initial problem wasn’t that the horse talked.   That was always the premise of Mr. Ed, the 1960s CBS television series that featured Mr. Ed, a talking horse, and his amiable, goofy owner Wilbur Post (Alan Young), the only person with whom Mr. Ed conversed.

Ed the Pool PlayerNo, my initial problem was the horse played pool, as he does in the 1964 fifth-season episode of Mr. Ed called “Ed the Pool Player.” Talk about preposterous. As I’ve ranted in previous blog posts, billiards is not about simply knowing the angles. It can take years to master one’s stance, grip and bridge, all essential elements of the game. Even for an equine as intelligent and apparently well-schooled as Mr. Ed, it’s absurd – and physically impossible – that a horse could shoot billiards, simply by holding a cue stick in its mouth.

Who am I kidding? This is Hollywood, which has brought to the silver screen far more outlandish feats of animal athleticism than a pool-playing palomino. There have been basketball-playing dogs (Air Bud, 1997), football-playing mules (Gus, 1976), baseball-playing chimpanzees (Ed, 1996), horse-racing zebras (Racing Stripes, 2005), and even boxing kangaroos (Matilda, 1978).

That’s the fictional stuff. But, reality can be stranger than fiction. YouTube is littered with videos of animals excelling at sports, such as bears playing hockey, chimps ice-skating and squirrels water-skiing. Billiards is no exception. In 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported on a real dog named Halo that “not only sinks billiard balls into the pockets, but does so with a technical expertise we never would have thought possible.”

Watching the video of Halo the dog sinking some shots (sans cue stick, of course) pushed me beyond my initial resistance to “Ed the Pool Player” and freed me to evaluate the episode on the merit of its writing and acting. The full episode is available to watch here.

The basic storyline is that Alan’s neighbor Gordon (Leon Ames) needs to get out of the house, so his wife can cook without interruption. Alan suggests they play some billiards at the local men’s club. There, Gordon befriends Mr. Vernon, who turns out to be the pool shark Chicago Cubby (Thomas Gomez, the accomplished actor and Oscar-nominated thespian for his supporting role in Ride the Pink Horse). After a couple of convivial days shooting pool, Chicago Cubby ultimately hustles Gordon out of $430 (about $3200 in today’s dollars).

Ed the Pool PlayerThe ever-ignorant Gordon feels he just had a run of bad luck and proposes trying to win it back from his “friend,” but the ever-wise equine knows Gordon has been hustled and comes up with a different plan. Mr. Ed suggests they invite Mr. Vernon back to Alan’s place to play pool against an unnamed opponent. Mr. Vernon accepts the challenge and returns with Alan, at which time he finds out his opponent will be Mr. Ed. Feeling exceedingly confident that he can beat the horse, Mr. Vernon wagers the full $430. But, Mr. Ed, who earlier in the episode revealed he was an expert croquet player, “picks up” a cue stick and proceeds to demonstrate he is equally competent in billiards, running the tables on Mr. Vernon.

The match culminates with Mr. Ed making the over-used, never-fail, audience-pleasing six-balls-in-six-pockets trick shot. It’s kind of a shame. Up until that point, I was finally starting to believe a horse could play pool. But, the six-ball-six-pocket formation occurring naturally in billiards? Now that truly is preposterous.

Family Matters – “Fast Eddie Winslow”

Family Matters - Fast Eddie WinslowIn billiards sitcoms (yet, ironically, not in billiards movies), the high-school student who thinks s/he can play pool only to subsequently get hustled has become a trope as stale as last week’s bread.   Consider:   Steve Harvey Show – “Pool Sharks Git Bit” (1996); Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – “Bank Shots” (1991).  But, it turns out this particular trope may have a relatively recent genesis, starting with the 1990 episode of Family Matters called “Fast Eddie Winslow.” 

Family Matters was a CBS sitcom about the Winslows, a middle-class African-American family living in Chicago.  Among the show’s claims-to-fame was that it featured one of the most annoying characters ever to appear in television – the nerdy, flood-pants and suspender-wearing, nasal-voiced neighbor Steve Urkel (Jaleel White).

In the second-season episode “Fast Eddie Winslow” (a reference, of course, to Paul Newman’s character Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler), the oldest Winslow son Eddie (Darius McCrary) believes that he is a pool shark when he beats his friend Rodney in ten straight games.  Mistaking cockiness for ability, Eddie goes to the Corner Pocket, an adult pool hall, where he challenges a seemingly friendly and innocent Texan named Boyd Higgins to a game of eight-ball.  While he initially wins when the stakes are $5/game, he quickly loses ten games when the stakes are raised to $25/game.  Moreover, it turns out that with $250 now owed, Boyd is neither friendly nor Texan, but a local hustler, who frightens with menacing ultimatums, such as “When I play, it’s cash or carry.  Give me the cash or get carried out,” or “show up with the money tomorrow or stay home for a month and watch your body heal.”

Now, Eddie needs a savior, or at least someone to loan him the $250.  Initially, that savior appears to be Urkel, who after lecturing Eddie for getting “hustled, taken, fleeced, and conned,” not only loans him the money, but also steps in for Eddie, challenging Boyd to a one-game, double-or-nothing bet.   Turns out Urkel “plays a plethora of pool when [he has] time to [himself], which for some reason is quite often.”   Urkel then geeks out, pulling out tape measures, and proclaiming, “Pool is a game of angles.  One must cue at an angle to the object ball so that it travels in the same angle to the impact point.  An 82 degree angle intersected by a 42 degree vector, cue ball velocity, Jupiter in retrograde, Harvest Moon…”

(No one really know what Urkel is talking about, but then again, did anyone understand the similar pseudo-babble from the billiards scene in the 1990 movie Lambada when the main character pulled out a protractor and started waxing about the rectangular coordinate system while he shot pool?)

Family Matters - Fast Eddie WinslowUrkel’s rescue effort fails, however, when Boyd crushes his thick-rimmed glasses beneath his boot.  Fortunately, new saviors step in, this time in the form of Eddie’s father, Carl Winslow (Reginald VelJohnson) and his grandmother Estelle (Rosetta LeNoire).  Reliving his youth, Carl makes a shot on Eddie’s behalf, and then hands over the cue to Estelle, who sinks the eight-ball on a quadruple bank shot (of course!).

So, what’s the lesson here?  If you’re a dumb enough chump to get fleeced in billiards by a guy with a terrible fake accent, then there better be a bad-ass grandma in the family, otherwise you’re going to be staying home for a month and “watching your body heal.”

“Fast Eddie Winslow” is available to rent or purchase as part of Season 2 of Family Matters.

Boy Meets World – “City Slackers”

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City SlackersThis past Tuesday, Samuel L. Jackson paid tribute to the 1990s sitcom Boy Meets World by performing a slam poem on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.  Even if you’ve never seen the sitcom, it’s hysterical.  Watch the slam poem here.  Unfortunately, the actual sitcom was never this funny, at least not the billiards episode “City Slackers” (1996) from the third season.

For the uninitiated, Boy Meets World is the ABC sitcom kid brother to The Wonder Years.  That show, which ran from 1988-1993, starred Fred Savage navigating adolescence, high school tribulations, dating and love (to Winnie, played by future heartthrob Danica McKellar).  Boy Meets World ran from 1993-2000, with Cory (Ben Savage — literally Fred Savage’s younger brother) navigating adolescence, high school tribulations, dating and love (to Topanga, played by future heartthrob Danielle Fishel).

In “City Slackers,” most of the episode concerns Cory (Fred Savage) and his unsupervised weekend to trip to the mountains.  But, it’s the second story line, featuring Cory’s suave and popular brother Eric (Will Friedle) that is relevant to this blog.

Eric has the hots for Bianca (Julie Benz) who is known to only like jocks.  To woo her, he claims that his sport of choice is pool, in which he is a “grandmaster.”  His charade, however, hits a wrinkle, when he is challenged to play by a fellow high school student.  Bianca indicates that she would love to see that grandmaster play, cooing that “it would make [her] very happy.”

City SlackersThe use of pool to ‘charm/win the girl’ is a familiar trope in billiards movie and television (cf. Kiss Shot), so this is not inherently a bad set-up.  Unfortunately, it is badly executed.  Both Eric and his opponent are unable to make a single shot, causing onlookers to eventually clap (??) when the same game has hit the three-hour mark without any balls going in the pockets.

Bianca, of course, leaves, but Eric and his opponent continue to play pool.  It’s at that point the billiards table appears to become possessed, spitting balls out of pockets, causing balls to swerve impossibly, having balls sit on top of one another, and even, causing balls to explode.  This generates a couple raised eyebrows, and a more than generous amount of forced laughs.

City SlackersIn the episode’s final scene, after “15 straight hours of someone yet sinking a ball,” after all the high school patrons have abandoned the pool table, and even after Eric’s opponent has had to leave for choir practice, Eric has the table to himself.  He walks over and makes a variation (using 12 balls) of Robert Byrne’s famous 15-balls-in-one-shot trick shot.  It’s a great ending to the episode.  Too bad the rest of the episode wasn’t similarly enjoyable.

“City Slackers” is available to rent or own via various online channels.

The Dukes of Hazzard – “A Little Game of Pool”

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Thank god for Daisy Duke.  Because without Daisy (Catherine Bach), there would be nothing eye-worthy or redeemable in “A Little Game of Pool,” a billiards episode from the fateful fifth season of the television series The Dukes of Hazzard.

little game of poolFor the ill-informed, The Dukes of Hazzard was about the Duke family, and in particular, Bo and Luke Duke, who raced around the unpaved roads of fictional Hazzard County, Georgia in their 1969 Dodge Charger stock car (the General Lee), jubilantly toying with and escaping from the county’s porcine commissioner Boss Hogg and his inept sheriff and deputies.  Much of every episode was devoted to the Dukes successfully jumping their car over every conceivable type of hazard and obstacle.  Hardly the best TV, the General Lee, along with Daisy Duke and her eponymous short shorts, have long become pop culture icons.

The fifth season (1982-1983), as Hazzard fans know too well, was the one when the original Good Ol’ Boys (Tom Wopat as Luke Duke and John Schneider as Bo Duke) had a contract dispute with CBS and left the set in protest.  The producers resolved the problem by hiring two lookalikes to literally take their place.  Enter cousin Coy Duke (Byron Cherry) and Vance Duke (Christopher Mayer) as the Bo and Luke Duke doppelgangers.  Cardboard cutouts, these Dukes (especially Coy) are painful to watch. It’s no wonder they were let go one season later.

little game of poolAll of which is to say “A Little Game of Pool” already was facing a bad break.  The rather illogical narrative focuses on Boss Hogg’s (Sorrell Booke) ill-begotten attempts first to buy, then to steal, and finally to win in a game of eight-ball, the General Lee, so that he can sell it to some “road pirates.”  When his efforts to buy and steal the car fail, Boss Hogg challenges Uncle Jesse (Denver Pyle) to a game of staked pool with “ridge runner rules.”  Uncle Jesse, fancying himself a local pool shark, considers Boss Hogg to be a “little warm-up” before the upcoming 37th Annual Tri-County Pool Championship and readily accepts the wager.

To the best of my knowledge, “ridge runner rules” is some Hazzard County malarkey that requires a spit-shake and allows the challenger to define the stakes.  Boss Hogg gleefully announces that he will bet his convertible against the Duke’s General Lee.  Apparently the rules also entitle a player to select someone to play in his place in the event he is physically unable.  So, feigning an arm injury, Boss Hogg reveals his sub-in to be Chickasaw Thins (great name!), a local pool hustler.

little game of pool

What? No cue ball?!

Like so many other billiards TV episodes (e.g., Quantum Leap – “Pool Hall Blues”),   “A Little Game of Pool” is absurdly bad when it comes to its billiards authenticity.  Never mind the common problems that rile pool enthusiasts, such as there’s no way Uncle Jesse ever played pool based on his stroke and grip, or overusing page-one  trick shots to prove Chickasaw Thins is a pool shark. The errors in “A Little Game of Pool” are far more egregious, such as sinking the eight-ball on the break and saying “that’s not bad for starters” or failing to use the cue ball and shooting directly at the five-ball.  Unfortunately, the title of this episode says it all.  It’s treated like a “little game” rather than a sport worthy of at least a smidgeon of on-screen accuracy.  Oh well, at least there’s Daisy Duke.

“A Little Game of Pool” is available to watch on Amazon Instant Video.

Dharma & Greg – “Do the Hustle”

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In the 1984 made-for-TV movie The Baron and the Kid, Johnny Cash (“The Baron”) teams up with his son (“The Cajun Kid”) to shoot billiards on the road.  The fourth-season, 2001 “Do the Hustle” episode of Dharma & Greg reprises the two-generation, family billiards theme, this time by pairing Dharma (Jenna Elfman) with her blueblood mother-in-law Kitty (Susan Sullivan) and teaching her to hustle. The full episode is here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vi6nEYh68c

It’s an awkward set-up, but Dharma & Greg was always a rather odd sitcom. Airing from 1997 to 2002, the show racked up six Emmy nominations and eight Golden Globe nominations.  It centered on the offbeat marriage between Dharma, the free-spirited, yet sarcastic, yoga instructor, and Greg (Thomas Gibson), the upright, aim-to-please lawyer.  Parents and in-laws feature prominently in the show, providing some of the comic extremes, much the way the Byrnes and Fochers do in Meet the Parents and its sequel.

Like many of the earlier seasons’ episodes, “Do the Hustle” taps into the inherent tension between Dharma and her mother-in-law.  When Dharma’s mockery of Kitty’s plan to take the family to a “tulip festival” falls flat, she offers to make a deal.  The two women shall play a game of eight-ball, and the winner decides whether to go to the festival.  Kitty proceeds to beat Dharma, who had no idea her mother-in-law could shoot “like Minnesota Fats.”

Do the HustleOn the way to the tulip festival, Dharma convinces Kitty to a rematch.  Once in the bar, redolent with the smell of curly fries, Kitty starts to enjoy playing pool and begins to cast off her aristocratic mien.  Dharma, finally having found a connection with her mother-in-law, instructs her in the art of hustling (“let me explain something to you Kit Kat”).  After quickly making some money, Kitty, feeling energized, says, “Hell, with the tulip festival, find me another pigeon.”

But, blinded by her hubris and refusing to call it a night (“Who dares to challenge the Queen of Pool?”), she ends up playing “Sweet Lou” who she doesn’t realize has hustled her.  When she is unable to write him a check (“Guys named Sweet Lou don’t take checks.”), Kitty loses her car as the payback.

Overall, it’s a pretty unmemorable billiards TV episode, though it appears Susan Sullivan had fun making her bank shot and behind-the-back shot.   Still, in a genre that is prone to typecasting women as only playing pool for noble purposes (see my blog post “Battle of the Sexes in Billiards”), it’s at least refreshing to know there are a couple of women whose sole purpose in playing billiards is to “do the hustle.”

All in the Family – “Archie is Cursed”

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On September 20, 1973, the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match occurred between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King.  The next day’s headlines summarized what an estimated 90 million people had watched first-hand on television.  “Mrs. King Defeats Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 Amid a Circus Atmosphere,” wrote The New York Times.  “Ms. King Puts Mr. Riggs in his Place,” said The Washington Post.  “Libber Billie Bombs Lobber Bobby,” chided the Springfield Union.

Archie is CursedBut amidst this chorus, one familiar voice had a very different perspective on the match.  “Tennis? That’s not even a man’s sport,” gripes Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) on the All in the Family episode “Archie is Cursed.”  It’s a version of a familiar rant from everyone’s favorite sitcom bigot. In this case, Archie’s point is that “women are not important in sports” and they certainly should “not be messing around with men’s sports because a man can beat a woman any old time.” Quizzed about the women who won gold medals at the Olympics, Archie rejoins, “I see those dames on TV.  They look like a bunch of lumpy men.”

In response to this blather, Archie’s liberal next-door neighbor Irene (Betty Garrett) confronts him, asking what sports he plays.  When Archie mentions pool, Irene jumps at the opening:

Irene:  “Do you think you could beat a woman?”

Archie: “With one eye closed, one hand tied behind my back, and a bad case of the flu.”

Irene: “OK, I challenge you.”

Archie: “You’re crazy, Irene.  A gentlemen don’t play pool with no woman.”

Irene: “I got $10 that says I can beat you.”

Archie:  “You’re on!”

Archie’s confidence (“I got a pigeon I’m going to pluck for 10 bucks”), however, is quickly shaken as he learns Irene has played a lot of pool, and won her own “carrying case with a private pool cue” from the Hudson Billiard Academy. Confronted with the likely humiliation of losing to Irene, Archie feigns a bad back and blames Irene’s husband for cursing him with it. But, his ruse falls apart when his neighbor threatens to broadcast that Archie is a coward who is “afraid to play a woman” in pool.

Archie is CursedIn the only billiards actually shown in the episode, Archie attempts to brush up his game, but is humorously unable to make the most basic strokes.  In the end, after Irene’s husband tricks Archie into revealing his back is fine,  Archie plays Irene in pool (though the game is not shown) and of course loses.  As added insult, Archie’s dingbat wife Edith (Jean Stapleton) tries to cheer him up, saying she’s glad his back is better, as she heard Irene “straightened him out.”

Comedy aside, “Archie is Cursed” is powerful television watching in the way it tackles women’s liberation and female athletics, topics that were controversial when the episode aired in December 1973, just three months after the “Battle of the Sexes” and only 18 months after the passage of Title IX, which outlawed discrimination in sports based on gender.  Interestingly, it would take another eight years before the Billiards Congress of America elected its first woman, Dorothy Wise, into its Hall of Fame.

The complete “Archie is Cursed” episode of All in the Family is available to watch on YouTube below.

https://youtu.be/TLOAyRzfxQ8

 

Red Shoe Diaries – “Double or Nothing”

Pool Nude Postcard

Pool postcard circa 1900

Billiards and sex have long been linked in the imagination.  In part, this stems from the game’s origins and the fact that while it’s always been predominantly male, it was nonetheless a sport accessible to, and played, by women, including historical notables such as Marie Antoinette and Elizabeth I.  But, as Erin Reilly notes in her essay, “All Bust and No Balls: Gender, Language, and Pool,” tastes shifted over time and by 1900, “men may have been more interested in women’s enjoyable company [at the pool table] than in their playing skills.” The presence of women in poolrooms “was largely viewed by men as an opportunity for flirting.”[1]

Regardless, the intertwining of billiards and sex extends beyond the interpersonal.  The evidence is everywhere, from the art world, where between 1900-1930, it was common to see prints and postcards of naked women at the pool table, to the argot, with its sexual puns and linguistic double-entendres (e.g., “shaft,” “rack,” “stroke”, “pocket pool,” etc.).  As Reilly notes, a 2001 Men’s Health article was called, “How to Handle Your Balls” and included a section entitled, “Hey, Nice Rack.”

Blue VelvetMore than a few billiards movies have attempted to make this connection explicit (e.g., Kisses & Caroms; Virgin Pockets) with gratuitous sex scenes and scantily-clad women hustlers. Unfortunately, it’s films like Blue Velvet and The Accused that have cemented this linkage cinematically, albeit by using billiards venues as the locale for depraved individuals and despicable acts of sexual violence.

Red Shoe DiariesIt’s no wonder then that an erotic cable series like Red Shoe Diaries, which aired on Showtime from 1992-1997, would include a billiards episode.  As folks may remember, Red Shoe Diaries had a plot-lite formula that mingled stories of sexual awakening with nudity, soft lens cinematography and mood music.

“Double or Nothing,” from the first season of Red Shoe Diaries, stars the super-sultry Paula Barbieri (former Playboy model and ex-girlfriend of O.J. Simpson) as a woman who is forced to survive by relying on her pool-playing skills.  Having lived under the thumb and shadow of men for a long time, she must now fend for herself.

Red Shoe Diaries - Double or NothingHer newfound independence is challenged when she meets a handsome fellow pool hustler.  Realizing they can earn more money playing as a team, the two pair up, both on and, of course, off the table.  There are some pool-shot montages and a handful of upskirt photos on the billiards table, but since this is Red Shoe Diaries, the real (softcore) action is in the parking lots, the bedroom, and in the episode’s climax, on the actual pool table.

“Double or Nothing” is available to watch on Amazon Instant Video.  The entire first season will be released as a DVD in June of this year.


[1]       Published in Sexual Sports Rhetoric: Historical and Media Contexts of Violence, edited by Linda K. Fuller, 2010.