The Sting is a 1973 caper film set in September 1936 and revolving around a complicated plot by two professional grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) to con a mob boss (Robert Shaw). The story, created by screenwriter David S. Ward, was inspired by some real-life con games perpetrated by the brothers Fred and Charley Gondorff and documented by David Maurer in his book The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man. However, in the 1951 Orson W...
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The Sting is a 1973 caper film set in September 1936 and revolving around a complicated plot by two professional grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) to con a mob boss (Robert Shaw). The story, created by screenwriter David S. Ward, was inspired by some real-life con games perpetrated by the brothers Fred and Charley Gondorff and documented by David Maurer in his book The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man. However, in the 1951 Orson Welles radio show, The Third Man, in an episode airing in November titled "Horse Play", the plot is very much the same, along with many similar details, so the actual genesis of the idea may be in question. The movie was directed by George Roy Hill, who also directed Newman and Redford in the classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The title phrase refers to the moment when a con artist finishes the "play" and takes the mark's money. (Today the expression is mostly used in the context of law enforcement sting operations.) If the con game is...
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