Word: gleasons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hero (Paul Newman) is a raucous young crown prince of the cue who challenges the king (Jackie Gleason) to do battle for his throne. For 36 hours without intermission, they have at each other: now hacking fiercely at the glistening balls, now waving their cues exquisitely, like pallid wands, as the balls disappear, and always drinking, drinking, drinking as they play. Hour by hour, rack by rack, the young challenger draws steadily ahead, grows steadily more arrogant. After 25 hours, playing for $1,000 a game, he is $18,000 in the green. "It's my table!" he crows...
...Awash in drink and glory, Newman finds his fingers filling up with whisky, and lets Gleason clean him out. Then, like all the fallen heroes in the legends, he goes down into the underworld. At an all-night coffee counter in a Greyhound bus depot he meets a puffy-pretty alcoholic (Piper Laurie), huts up with her and, whenever he needs money, hustles suckers in low poolrooms where he is not known. One night he takes the wrong chump. Four wharf rats gang him and break his thumbs-a mythological emasculation if ever there was one. Soon after that...
...picture is much too long (2 hr. 15 min.), but it has strength as well as length. Cameraman Gene Shufton has artfully preserved what Actor Gleason calls "the dirty antiseptic look of poolrooms-spots on the floor, toilets stuffed up, but the tables brushed immaculately, like green jewels lying in the mud." The pool-shooting scenes are magnificently staged -the principals were coached by Willie Mosconi, top-ranking pool player in the U.S.-and tellingly edited by Director Robert Rossen (They Came to Cordura). The suspense in the first big game will surely bring sweat to any palm that...
...Kovacs and Lenore Lemmon began talking Hungarian. "I think this program is all outer space," sloshed Joe E. Lewis at one point. Queried Host David: "What's outer space?" Reply: "Outer space is when you're 20 feet away from the bar." Trouble was, hardly anyone was. Gleason rose up, announced, "I'm going to retire to my home in Peekskill," then sat down again. Said Shor: "I'll take a little tea here." "Somebody throw another tea ball in that poor guy's tea," bellowed Gleason...
...confusion, Critic Mannes asked, "Why is The Clan worth two hours of valuable air time?" No one knew, and nobody thought of asking her why she had agreed to discuss The Clan in the first place. And so the program lurched toward the murky end. Gleason: "I'm loaded." Lemmon: "I know that." Mannes: "I feel like a deaf mute in a field of hog callers." Joe E. Lewis: "Out of the mouths of babes very often comes-oatmeal...