Saturday Afternoon Singalong Five Card Stud
Watched Five Card Stud this afternoon (on Showtime Extreme) … a 1968 western starring Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum about a drunken poker game that turns into a lynching when the new guy turns out to be a cheat. But when the lynch mob starts dying off one-by-one, no one knows who’s seeking vengeance, nor which player will be the last man standing.
It takes place in Colorado in 1880 … the gold rush is on and the town of Rincon is fast becoming known for its juicy games and associated vice. And as much as I was intrigued by the role of black people and Christianity post-Civil War (as portrayed in the late ’60s) … what really stood out was how the players shuffled their chips.
Anyhow, the music is kinda country meets the Doors, with gambler’s lyrics sung by an old-school Vegas crooner. And with last month’s news that production of Rounders 2 is underway … well, Five Card Stud, a song about the game that was the great Uncle to contemporary Texas Hold’em, reminded me how much poker stories have changed over the years, and how much they haven’t.
Alan C. Lawhon says:
January 24th, 2011 at 3:15am
Five Card Stud (along with “Prizzi’s Honor”) are my two favorite movies. The opening credits indicate that the screenplay for Five Card Stud is based on a novel by Ray , so that incident (and many similar incidents) very likely occurred back in the old west. (Poker does have a “history” of sorts that goes way back.)
The nice thing about “frontier justice” – unlike today – is that poker cheats got what they deserved back then. Nowadays poker cheats can steal $20,000,000.00 (if their first name just happens to be “Russ”) and not have to worry about “the smell of a rope.” Oh, well …
Mark Conner says:
January 24th, 2011 at 4:05pm
It is interesting I’ve never heard of this movie, and I thought I’ve watched them all. I basically got the titles from http://www.pokermovies.org and watched everything on their list. The california split is especially good.