{"id":210628,"date":"2025-12-31T22:07:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T22:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/210628\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T22:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T22:07:10","slug":"the-true-story-of-marty-supreme-whats-fact-and-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/210628\/","title":{"rendered":"The True Story of ‘Marty Supreme’: What’s Fact and Fiction?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Table tennis is finally having a cultural moment\u2014the kind bobsledding saw with Cool Runnings and figure skating with I, Tonya\u2014all thanks to Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet<\/a> and director Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems, Good Time). It’s called Marty Supreme<\/a> and it’s not like most sports films. Essentially: it’s a table tennis movie that’s not really about table tennis. <\/p>\n

The A24 film<\/a> tells the story of a gifted but impoverished table tennis hustler in 1950s New York, who wants nothing more than to leave his parent\u2019s shoe shop behind to showcase his ping-pong skills on the world stage. Played at full throttle by Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet, Marty Mauser is a motormouth, sharp in both wits and tongue. He\u2019s selfish, manipulative, and not particularly nice to women, but boy can he smack a ball over a netted table. <\/p>\n

So, to London he goes, after cobbling together enough cash, where he ends up playing the world\u2019s best, Koto Endo (played by the real-life player Koto Kawaguchi) from Japan. It goes badly, so Marty returns to America, determined to have another pop at glory. To do that, he just needs to raise more money. In the meantime, he impregnates his former flame (Odessa A\u2019zion), who happens to also be married to another man, seduces and exploits a sad, faded movie star (Gwyneth Paltrow), and lets down his best friend (Tyler, the Creator) as he begs, borrows and steals his way back to the Big Leagues. <\/p>\n

Marty Supreme likely left you wondering: Is there any shred of truth to this insane story? The simple answer is yes. Marty Mauser is loosely based on the real-life ping-pong hustler Marty Reisman\u2014a fascinating, colorful and complex man. He died in 2012 at 82 years old of lung and heart complications. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise Josh Safdie gravitated toward Reisman\u2019s story. Like the characters in Uncut Gems and Good Time, Reisman lived in a perpetual state of forward motion\u2014always scheming, chasing the next score. And, as he has said, he was always one bad decision away from disaster. He wasn\u2019t a clean hero. But he also elevated a disregarded sport, survived on sheer nerve, and proved that talent plus hunger can take you anywhere.<\/p>\n

This is the incredible true story behind Marty Supreme.<\/p>\n

\"martyNew York Daily News\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Behold, Marty Resiman\u2014the real-life inspiration behind Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s character in Marty Supreme.<\/p>\n

Why Was Marty Reisman Called \u201cThe Needle?\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, Marty Reisman was stick-thin with a sharp wit. That, and he used to \u201cneedle\u201d his opponents\u2014needling them about their serves, their girlfriends, and their nerves. He needled spectators, referees, and sometimes himself. Reisman believed that if you weren\u2019t smack-talking, you weren\u2019t trying hard enough. To him, silence was surrender. <\/p>\n

He Was a Master Talker<\/p>\n

\u201cTable-tennis players have to survive by their own wits,\u201d Marty wrote in his highly acclaimed memoir, The Money Player. \u201cTop players were either gamblers or smugglers.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a way, he was both. Growing up, he often cut school to hustle in city parks for money, before graduating to the basements of New York bars or restaurants, relieving \u201cmarks\u201d of their money across the city. He became a regular haunt of Lawrence\u2019s Broadway Table Tennis Club on 54th and Broadway, where he would lure in challengers by losing a few games before offering to double the stakes and demolishing them. After he wrote The Money Player in 1974, he would sometimes offer it to people he\u2019d just fleeced for a cut price. \u201cI only bet on a sure thing: myself,\u201d he once said.<\/p>\n

Some days\u2014for the right money\u2014he would even play sitting down or blindfolded. Or he would play with\u2014instead of a bat\u2014his shoe, a lightbulb, his own spectacles, or a dustbin lid. Once, he beat the comedian Jonathan Katz with the flat end of a chess piece. “The first rule of hustling is to let your opponent suggest the match,” he told Sports Illustrated in a florid 1977 profile<\/a>, \u201cand when he does you mustn’t seem too eager.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, he explained, you must make the opponent think he is hustling you. \u201cThat’s why I’ve developed a special ‘hustler’s grip.’ I hold the racket the way a thirsty truck driver holds a beer bottle. That way every winner you hit looks so crazy, so completely accidental that the guy is willing to bet anything that you can’t do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"tableBettmann\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Reisman (left) sits alongside fellow New Yorker Richard Miles in London for the 1948 World Table Tennis Championships.<\/p>\n

Smuggling Into (and Out of) the Big Leagues<\/p>\n

The New York street scene couldn\u2019t contain him for long. Reisman\u2019s talent was too obvious. Soon, he clawed his way into organized competition\u2014a transition that didn\u2019t exactly smooth his edges.<\/p>\n

He became a dominant figure in American table tennis, winning national titles in singles and doubles across multiple decades. When he travelled to London for the 1948 World Championships in London, the wily sixteen-year-old Reisman brought with him a suitcase full of nylon stockings\u2014contraband he sold off for five times what he\u2019d paid for it at home. On his return, he smuggled back ballpoint pens and Orrefors crystal glassware.<\/p>\n

As his fame within New York grew, he caught the attention of the Harlem Globetrotter basketball circus. They invited him to provide halftime entertainment by playing comedy games on court using different frying pans to bang out the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb.<\/p>\n

Japanese Rubber and \u201cThe Atomic Blast\u201d<\/p>\n

On the international tournament circuit, Reisman became known for his massive, 115-mile-per-hour forehand smash, which the British press dubbed \u201cthe Atomic Blast\u201d\u2014presumably a reference to the two atomic bombs America had dropped on Japan two years earlier.<\/p>\n

But Japan had the next laugh. At the 1952 World Championships in Mumbai, a Japanese player named Hiroji Satoh arrived with a never-before-seen \u201csandwich bat\u201d\u2014a wood paddle generously layered with slices of foam and rubber. Satoh destroyed Reisman, and everyone else, winning the tournament with ease. <\/p>\n

This would change the sport of table tennis forever. But not for Reisman. Not yet. <\/p>\n

\"martyMichael Gold\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

“The first rule of hustling is to let your opponent suggest the match,” Reisman told Sports Illustrated in a florid 1977 profile, \u201cand when he does you mustn\u2019t seem too eager.\u201d<\/p>\n

Revenge is a Dish Best Served on Wood, Not Rubber<\/p>\n

First, Reisman wanted revenge. So he and his playing partner Doug Cartland spent the following months playing exhibitions around Asia, hustling and doing whatever else they could to raise the money for a flight to Tokyo and publicly challenge Satoh (and his partner Nobi Hayashi) to a rematch. <\/p>\n

Before 5,000 fans, the encounter took place in a cinema in Osaka, culminating in a singles match between Reisman and Satoh. Points plickety-plocked between the two men\u2014Satoh with his sandwich bat and Reisman with his made only of wood and the thinnest layer of pimpled rubber\u2014as the lead changed hands like chips at a poker table. After dozens of epic rallies, Satoh\u2019s concentration blipped and Reisman won. Glory at last. Satoh, it was said, was so disheartened by the defeat that he never played another international game again. <\/p>\n

This led to a bountiful few years for Reisman, who embarked on an exhibition tour of Asia, including the safer parts of war-torn Vietnam to entertain soldiers. Military flights home meant no customs checks, which meant easy smuggling opportunities. This time: gold bars and Rolex watches. <\/p>\n

He married and had a daughter. Reisman and his wife divorced in 1964. He bought Lawrence\u2019s Broadway Table Tennis Club for $6,000.<\/p>\n

\"tableBettmann\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Marty Reisman (left) photographed in his early days as a table tennis champion.<\/p>\n

“You Can’t Play Table Tennis Without Money”<\/p>\n

When the sport moved from hardbat paddles to sponge rubber, Reisman refused to make the change. \u201cI feel I’d be prostituting a talent that I devoted a lifetime to learning,\u201d he told Sports Illustrated. \u201cThe sponge offends my dignity.”<\/p>\n

At an age when most athletes were long retired, Reisman was still winning major tournaments, including world hardbat titles well into his sixties and seventies. He once joked that he stayed competitive because he \u201ccouldn\u2019t afford to quit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t play table tennis without money,\u201d he has said, \u201cIf I hadn\u2019t have played for money I wouldn\u2019t have become the world class player that I am. Because in a fun game you can do all sorts of wild things out there and say, \u2018Hey I\u2019m playing successful table tennis.\u2019 But when money\u2019s on the line you\u2019d better think twice about what you\u2019re going to do out there to succeed.\u201d <\/p>\n

He once said he never played a game for fun in his life. <\/p>\n

Was Gwyneth Paltrow\u2019s Kay Stone Based on a Celebrity Actress?<\/p>\n

Stone is the sad, faded but wealthy Hollywood actress and socialite who takes a shine to Marty, and even gives him a diamond necklace that he can sell. But there is no evidence that any such person existed in Reisman\u2019s life. Which isn\u2019t to say he didn\u2019t enjoy the odd Hollywood connection. The New York table tennis club where he plied his trade in the 1940s and ’50s\u2014the Riverside Table Tennis Club\u2014was frequented by all strata of New York society. Per a 1977 Sports Illustrated profile of Reisman<\/a>, it was a place where \u201cHousewives traded backhands with U.N. diplomats. Schoolboys took on retired stockbrokers. Cabbies battled paraplegics in wheelchairs. And Reisman, never to be outdone, once played a chimpanzee that wore short pants and stood on a chair.\u201d<\/p>\n

On top of all that, Sports Illustrated revealed, were \u201cother celebrity primates\u2026 added occasional glitter,\u201d including Dustin Hoffman, Art Carney, Bobby Fischer, Walter Matthau, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and Zero Mostel.<\/p>\n

\"usaNeville Elder\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Marty Reisman died in 2012 at 82 years old of lung and heart complications.<\/p>\n

Was Odessa A\u2019zion\u2019s Rachel Mizler a Real Person?<\/p>\n

Rachel is the married pet-store employee with whom Marty has an affair and impregnates. But again, she is most likely a fictionalization. That said, the Sports Illustrated profile does include one telling line about an incident in the late 1950s: \u201cBack in New York, he was discovered naked hiding in a closet by an angry husband wielding a 12-gauge shotgun.\u201d<\/p>\n

What About Kevin O\u2019Leary\u2019s Milton Rockwell?<\/p>\n

Plenty of businessmen played ping-pong at Riverside club, so it\u2019s a perfectly reasonable association. But the mogul\u2014and accompanying storyline\u2014is fictionalized.<\/p>\n

Did Marty Work in a Shoe Shop?<\/p>\n

Yes. In 1957, after a stint smuggling gold bars and Rolexes from Asia to the United States in a specially made vest, Reisman did take a job as a shoe clerk at New York\u2019s B. Altman\u2019s luxury department store. But he was fired for repeatedly turning up late for work.<\/p>\n

Related StoriesWas the Story About the Beehives at Auschwitz True?<\/p>\n

This is the moment B\u00e9la, a Hungarian-Jewish camp survivor played by G\u00e9za R\u00f6hrig, recalls stumbling across some beehives at Auschwitz and covertly smearing the honey across his chest so fellow inmates could lick it from his skin later for nourishment.<\/p>\n

Incredibly, this is true. In an interview with The Guardian, director Josh Safdie said it\u2019s based on the story of a real-life table tennis champion and Auschwitz inmate called Alojzy Ehrlich. \u201cThat\u2019s based on a true story,\u201d Safdie told The Guardian.<\/a> \u201cI learned more about the Holocaust in that little story than from some movies that are only about the Holocaust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did Marty Really Perform Halftime Shows for the Harlem Globetrotters?<\/p>\n

Yes. Beginning in 1949, Marty Reisman and U.S. teammate Doug Cartland spent three years touring with the Harlem Globetrotters as a halftime attraction. In Berlin, they performed before an audience of 75,000 people. According to Sports Illustrated: \u201cNever before had anyone seen two men play with five balls at once or, using pots and pans as paddles, bang out the melody of Mary Had a Little Lamb.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Table tennis is finally having a cultural moment\u2014the kind bobsledding saw with Cool Runnings and figure skating with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,2115,128114,2117,156,2462,111,139,69,128113],"class_list":["post-210628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-099a5ec9-42b7-49d9-8b60-743f99bd17af","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-entertainment","tag-locale-us","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-shorttitle-the-incredible-true-story-behind-marty-supreme"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}