00:06Hey there, I'm Ben Mankiewicz.
00:08Thanks for joining us on Turner Classic Movies.
00:10Tonight, another lineup of marks and ropers,
00:13of playing it on the square in the Kansas City shuffle.
00:17Friday nights in June belong to cons,
00:20not imprisoned felons, but cons as in confidence men.
00:23Up next, Hollywood's signature con artist movie,
00:27certainly one of the movies that's on the Mount Rushmore of con man movies.
00:31But snap, there is no Mount Rushmore of con man movies.
00:35I can't believe you went all the way to South Dakota looking for it.
00:38Suckers.
00:40This is from Universal in 1973,
00:43the winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture.
00:46George Roy Hill directs Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting.
00:50Redford plays Johnny Hooker,
00:52a talented but low-end con artist outside Chicago in the 1930s
00:56who scams the wrong guy,
00:58a mobster played with power and menace by Robert Shaw.
01:02The payback is deadly and sends Redford into the city
01:06where he meets Henry Gondorf.
01:07That's Newman, a big-time confidence man
01:10who can teach Redford the long con,
01:12the long big con,
01:14the revenge con.
01:16The Sting reunited Newman, Redford, and George Roy Hill
01:20after their joyous first collaboration four years earlier,
01:23the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid from 1969.
01:27When producers approached Redford to star in The Sting,
01:31the film's talented screenwriter, David Ward,
01:34was attached to make his directorial debut.
01:36Redford was intrigued by the story,
01:39but suspected that the complex script
01:41needed a veteran filmmaker behind the camera.
01:44George Roy Hill had already read the script and loved it
01:47when he signed on to direct Ward's screenplay,
01:50Redford committed.
01:52When George Roy Hill called Paul Newman
01:55at his home in Connecticut
01:56to ask about renting Newman's Beverly Hills house,
02:00Newman asked why.
02:02Hill told him he was coming out to L.A.
02:04to make The Sting.
02:05Then Hill described the plot,
02:08which got Newman to ask,
02:09anything in it for me?
02:11With Paul Newman interested,
02:14the Henry Gondorf character,
02:15originally a small role intended for a character actor,
02:19was successfully rewritten and expanded.
02:22The Sting became a huge hit,
02:24second biggest box office hit of the year,
02:26trailing only The Exorcist.
02:28Here it is, from 1973,
02:30nominated for 10 Academy Awards,
02:33winning seven,
02:34also with Charles Durning,
02:35Eileen Brennan,
02:37Harold Gould,
02:38Ray Walston,
02:39Jack Kehoe,
02:40Demetra Arliss,
02:41and Robert Earl Jones.
02:43The Sting.
02:45The Sting.
02:47The Sting.
02:49The Sting.
02:49The Sting.
02:50The Sting.
02:52The Sting.
02:53The Sting.
