Follow the money. First, there is the $100,000 bet between Mr. Lucky and the gambling thug Nick Popolous. Then, confident Mr. Lucky will throw him the game, Nick convinces the high-roller Mark Langdon to also bet $100,000 on Mr. Lucky. Knowing Mr. Lucky will have to lose $100,000, his good friend Andamo creates a hedge, convincing J.B., another high-roller, to bet him $100,000 against Mr. Lucky. This series of bets, summing to more than $2.5 million in today’s dollars, forms the plot of the 1959 Mr. Lucky episode “That Stands for Pool.”
If you blinked in 1959, you may have missed the short-lived CBS television series Mr. Lucky. Created by Blake Edwards, who had much more success with The Pink Panther series, Peter Gunn, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Mr. Lucky ran for just one season. The show starred John Vivyan as Mr. Lucky, an honest professional gambler, who operated a legal, floating casino aboard the ship Fortuna. He is assisted by his close friend Andamo (Ross Martin). Each episode focused on Mr. Lucky playing host to various millionaires, playboys, rogues, and roughnecks, typically engaging in some kind of betting activity.
In the episode “That Stands for Pool,” available to watch here, Mr. Lucky is forced to accept the aforementioned $100,000 bet, having been assured, in the typical hooligan vernacular, that if he chooses to win, welch, or decline the wager, he will lose his life. As subsequent sidebets and hedges are lain, the episode builds to the culminating match of straight pool, which initially is for 100 points, but becomes a 500-point game to avoid any lucky streaks.
The match itself, like the overall episode, is pretty unremarkable, marked by an absurd number of unrealistic thrown shots and standard trick shots. The match’s onlookers also seem to have an over appreciation for even the most basic shots. And, Mr. Lucky’s inability to stay awake to finish a 500-point game is unbelievable, even for cheap laughs. (After all, it was only 5 years before the airing of this episode when billiards legend Willie Mosconi ran 526 balls in straight pool in just one turn.)
The circle of bets, however, is mildly interesting, as it got me thinking about betting and the legality of gambling in billiards. While ample celluloid has been dedicated to hustling in pool, less has been devoted to betting. The irony, of course, is that the very word “pool” has its origins in betting. Whereas today a “poolroom” means a place where pool is played, in the 19th century a poolroom was a betting parlor (for horse racing, no less. The pool tables were added so patrons had something to do between races.).
Even after having done some research, the legality of gambling on billiards seems a bit murky to me, and can depend heavily on state law, but the best I can discern is:
- Lucky’s initial bet with Nick would be legal in most places because it’s legal to bet on yourself in a game of skill when you’re playing the game. (Of course, threatening to kill someone is not exactly legal.)[1]
- Nick’s initial bet with Mark Langdon would be illegal, at least in some places, because Nick is betting with someone not playing the game on the outcome of the game.
- Andamo’s bet with J.B. would be illegal, pretty much everywhere, because neither person is playing the game.
Ultimately, a bunch of people are threatened, some guns are waved, some goons do some chasing, a face is right-hooked (Mr. Lucky’s, no less by his inamorata Maggie) and yet somehow, all debts are settled, followed by Mark Langdon’s parting words of warning, “don’t you ever try to pull another fast one on me…if Lucky didn’t win that game, you’d both be dead.”
All this makes for a rather happy Mr. Lucky. Unfortunately, Mr. Lucky was not as fortunate. After just 34 episodes, the series was cancelled. According to Mr. Vivyan, “[the series] had good ratings, but Jack Benny’s production company had another show it wanted for our time slot. It wasn’t much of a contest, and CBS dropped us.”[2]
[1] Fun #billiardsmovies fact: Stanley Adams, who plays Nick Popolous, later played Sure-Shot Wilson, another chain smoking pool hustler, in “The Hustler” episode of The Odd Couple from 1973.
[2] Interview given by John Vivyan to Vernon Scott at United Press International in 1960. (Source: Television Obscurities.)
