Poker Spices Up Movies
Known as a game of wits and adventure, poker has been a part of action and suspense movies over the years. It has been portrayed that macho protagonists beat opponents at all cost, even at poker games. Here's how poker has helped build up images of leading Hollywood actors.
Almost real life poker adventures were shown in a 1974 movie about poker players seeking a fortune from poker winnings. George Segal and Elliot Gould played the role of tough poker players from Gardena who dedicated their lives to a life of poker. The movie, California Split, was a realistic rendition of what life committed to winning a fortune at poker could be.
The movie, The Sting, made in 1973, was a movie about poker cheats. Starred by Paul Newman, the cheat champ in the movie, and Robert Shaw, the cheat contender, the movie depicted a fancy type of poker playing that mostly zeroed in on poker cheating rather than the actual skillful playing of the game, which involves wit, strategy, and some luck. Poker shown in movies almost always involves a measure of luring cheating skills to make the movie more appealing and exciting, and the leading actors or actresses more interesting.
In 1965, poker was even more daring in movies, especially in Cincinnati Kid, a movie starred by Ann Margaret and Steve McQueen. The movie, with its poker scenes, is remembered with the daring dialogue that says wrong things done at the right time is what everything is all about, including poker.
How else to win poker easily than to literally read the opponent's cards? A film in 1966, Kaleidoscope, was about a guy who tampered with casino cards in a manufacturing outfit that distributed to major casinos worldwide. Thus, everywhere he went he won poker and blackjack sessions. He was making a fortune from poker when a casino tried to outwit him into playing poker with a new batch of unmarked cards. With a well thought of poker plot the scene came out with a fantastic poker winning trick.
In the middle of a tense poker game a poker player walks out, cards still in hand, and goes somewhere in the streets. A 1966 movie had this scene exactly in one of its poker scenes in A Big Hand for the Little Lady played by Henry Fonda and Joanne Woodward.
Poker has been adding colorful hues of thrilling and suspenseful scenes of amazing poker cheating and betting. It has been building up movies and movie personalities.
