The real ping pong champion — and hustler — who inspired 'Marty Supreme'

The real ping pong champion - and hustler - who inspired 'Marty Supreme' Marty Reisman practicing in New York in 1951. Ed Ford/AP hide caption toggle caption In the 1940s and '50s, New York City table tennis was a gritty subculture full of misfits, gamblers, doctors, actors, students and more. They competed, bet on the game or both at all-night spots like Lawrence's, a table tennis parlor in midtown Manhattan. A talented player could rake in hundreds in cash in one night. In this world, a handsome, bespectacled Jewish teenager named Marty Reisman was a star. His game was electric. "Marty had a trigger in his thumb. He hit bullets. You could lose your eyebrows playing with him," someone identified only as "the shirt king" told author Jerome Charyn for his book Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins: Ping-Pong and the Art of Staying Alive . The new movie Marty Supreme recreates this world. Timothée Chalamet's character, table tennis whiz Marty Mauser, is loosely inspired by Reisman. Nicknamed "The Needle" for his slender physique, Reisman represented the U.S. in tournaments around the world and won more than 20 major titles, including the 1949 English Open and two U.S. Opens. Like Chalamet's Marty Mauser, Reisman was obsessed with the game. In his 1974 memoir The Money Player: The Confessions of America's Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler , Reisman wrote that he was drawn to table tennis because it "involved anatomy and chemistry and physics." One of the game's "bad boys" Reisman was a daring, relentless showman, always dressed to the nines in elegant suits and hats. "His personality made him legendary," said Khaleel Asgarali, a professional player who owns Washington, D.C. Table Tennis. Asgarali would often see Reisman at tournaments. "The way he carried himself, his charisma, his flair, the clothing, the style ... Marty was a sharp dresser, man." He was also one of the game's "bad boys," just like the fictional Marty Mauser. In 1949 at the English Open, he and fellow American star Dick Miles moved from their modest London hotel into one that was much fancier. They ran up a tab on room service, dry cleaning and the like and then charged it all to the English Table Tennis Association. When the English officials refused to cover their costs, the players said they wouldn't show up for exhibition matches they knew were already sold out. The officials capitulated - but later fined the players $200 and suspended them "indefinitely from sanctioned table tennis" worldwide for breaking the sport's "courtesy code." Marty Reisman demonstrates an under-the-leg trick shot in 1955. Jacobsen/Getty Images/Hulton Archive hide caption toggle caption Ping pong offered quick cash - and an outlet Reisman grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His dad was a taxi driver and serious gambler. "It was feast or famine at our house, usually famine," Reisman wrote. His parents split when he was 10. His mother, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union, worked as a waitress and then in...

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