The Cincinnati Kid (1965) on Netflix
The Cincinnati Kid, Eric Stoner, plays stud poker in 1930s New Orleans. Lancey Howard, widely considered the best at the game, is in town, and the Kid wants to face him.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.2/1019,943 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1930s New Orleans, Eric Stoner is known at the card tables as the Cincinnati Kid. Lancey Howard, widely considered the best at five-card stud, is in town, and others ask the Kid whether he will play him. Before that match, Howard arranges a tune-up game with William Jefferson Slade and wins $6,000 from him over thirty hours. Shooter, a dealer respected for his honesty and a friend of the Kid, is wanted at the table. Melba is Shooter's wife, and Christian is the Kid's girl. The game itself is set for Monday at five o'clock in a suite at the Lafayette Hotel.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Sam Peckinpah was fired by producer Martin Ransohoff shortly after filming on The Cincinnati Kid began, for what the producer called "vulgarizing the picture".
- Spencer Tracy was cast as Lancey Howard, the poker master the Kid challenges, but ill health forced him to withdraw from The Cincinnati Kid.
- Sam Peckinpah planned to shoot The Cincinnati Kid in black-and-white for a 1930s period feel; Norman Jewison scrapped that footage, judging greyscale wrong for the red and black of playing cards, and muted the colors instead.
SPOILER
Norman Jewison wanted The Cincinnati Kid to end on a freeze-frame of Steve McQueen's face after the Kid loses a penny-pitching contest to a shoeshine boy, but the producer overruled him.- Strother Martin said he was fired from The Cincinnati Kid after Norman Jewison replaced Sam Peckinpah as director; he appears early in the film and is never seen again.
- Ring Lardner Jr. co-wrote the screenplay of The Cincinnati Kid with Terry Southern; it was Lardner's first major studio work since his 1947 blacklisting as one of The Hollywood Ten.
