By Rick Jensen
In 1961, Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason and George C. Scott starred in a classic black and white movie about pool called “The Hustler.” In the movie, Newman plays “Fast” Eddie Felson, an upstart pool shark who was out to dethrone “Minnesota Fats” (Gleason) as the reigning king of pool. In the film, Newman and Gleason square off in two epic matches at a famous pool hall in New York City called Ames. And when he arrives at Ames to challenge Gleason to a match for the first time Newman asks the Ames proprietor about the absence of a bar and pinball machines at the pool hall. And in what has become a famous movie quote, the Ames proprietor replies: “No bar, no pinball, no bowling alley, just pool... nothing else. This is Ames, mister.” The film has become so iconic over the years that the image that the film presented of Ames as a dank, dimly lit, smoky hole in the wall filled with pool hustlers has endured and has even become what many people commonly envision a pool hall to be like. Still, both the “The Hustler” and a 1986 sequel called the “The Color of Money” starring Newman and Charlie Sheen, are credited with sparking a resurgence of pool at a time when many pool halls across the country were closing. And that is the case in Northwest Indiana today. Many pool halls have closed and those that remain are few and far between. But there is one pool hall in the
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