The Sting borrowed its swindle from real con men, and its music from Joplin
The 1973 caper that reunited Paul Newman and Robert Redford drew on actual cons pulled by the Gondorff brothers, as recorded in a 1940 book called The Big Con. Its ragtime soundtrack topped the Billboard chart, revived interest in Scott Joplin and helped the film win seven Oscars.
George Roy Hill directed; he had first teamed the two stars four years earlier, in the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. David S. Ward's screenplay drew on David Maurer's study of confidence tricksters, especially the schemes of Fred and Charley Gondorff. The story is set in 1936, during the Great Depression, and splits into chapters announced by painted title cards by Jaroslav Gebr, designed to evoke old covers of The Saturday Evening Post.
Redford plays Johnny Hooker, a small-time grifter in Joliet, Illinois, whose crew unknowingly fleeces a courier working for the ruthless mobster Doyle Lonnegan, played by Robert Shaw. When Lonnegan has Hooker's partner Luther killed, Hooker runs to Chicago and persuades Luther's old friend Henry Gondorff, played by Newman, to help him hit back. Their weapon is an outdated scheme called the wire: a fake betting parlour staffed by a whole troupe of con artists. Along the way Gondorff out-cheats Lonnegan at poker aboard the 20th Century Limited train, and the gangster is lured into a $500,000 bet designed to ruin him.
Marvin Hamlisch adapted several Joplin pieces, above all The Entertainer, for the score. The result was a number one soundtrack album and a single that reached the top ten, and it sent a new generation looking for Joplin's ragtime.
Opening on Christmas Day 1973, the film was a hit with both critics and audiences. At the 46th Academy Awards it turned 10 nominations into seven wins, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. It went on to gross $257 million worldwide and revived Newman's career after several flops. The Writers Guild of America ranks its script among the finest ever written, and in 2005 it entered the National Film Registry. Ward also wrote a sequel, released in 1983.
Source: The Sting
