The real ping pong star who inspired ‘Marty Supreme’ : NPR

In the 1940s and ’50s, New York City table tennis was a gritty subculture full of misfits, gamblers, doctors, actors, students and more. They competed, bet on the game or both at all-night spots like Lawrence’s, a table tennis parlor in midtown Manhattan. A talented player could rake in hundreds in cash in one night. In this world, a handsome, bespectacled Jewish teenager named Marty Reisman was a star.

His game was electric. “Marty had a trigger in his thumb. He hit bullets. You could lose your eyebrows playing with him,” someone identified only as “the shirt king” told author Jerome Charyn for his book Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins: Ping-Pong and the Art of Staying Alive.

The new movie Marty Supreme recreates this world. Timothée Chalamet’s character, table tennis whiz Marty Mauser, is loosely inspired by Reisman.

Nicknamed “The Needle” for his slender physique, Reisman represented the U.S. in tournaments around the world and won more than 20 major titles, including the 1949 English Open and two U.S. Opens.

Like Chalamet’s Marty Mauser, Reisman was obsessed with the game. In his 1974 memoir The Money Player: The Confessions of America’s Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler, Reisman wrote that he was drawn to table tennis because it “involved anatomy and chemistry and physics.”

One of the game’s “bad boys”

Reisman was a daring, relentless showman, always dressed to the nines in elegant suits and hats. “His personality made him legendary,” said Khaleel Asgarali, a professional player who owns Washington, D.C. Table Tennis. Asgarali would often see Reisman at tournaments. “The way he carried himself, his charisma, his flair, the clothing, the style … Marty was a sharp dresser, man.”

He was also one of the game’s “bad boys,” just like the fictional Marty Mauser. In 1949 at the English Open, he and fellow American star Dick Miles moved from their modest London hotel into one that was much fancier. They ran up a tab on room service, dry cleaning and the like and then charged it all to the English Table Tennis Association. When the English officials refused to cover their costs, the players said they wouldn’t show up for exhibition matches they knew were already sold out. The officials initially gave in to the players’ demands, but later issued a $200 fine and suspended them indefinitely from sanctioned table tennis worldwide for violating the sport’s “courtesy code.” He wrote that the game consumed him so completely that he had no time to worry. Leigh described finding table tennis and discovering his exceptional talent as an escape and a form of meditation. Reisman aspired to be the best ping pong player in the world, equating the champions in the sport to iconic figures like Einstein, Hemingway, and Joe Louis. While ping pong was highly respected in Europe and Asia, it was seen as a mere pastime in the U.S., except in New York City where large bets were placed on the game. Reisman’s skill and showmanship on the table captivated audiences, with his moves being compared to Houdini’s tricks. It was like a performance in itself.”

One of his signature shots involved breaking a cigarette in half with a slam.

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Marty Reisman after winning the final men’s singles game at the English Open in 1949.

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Chasing a dream “that no one respected”

Marty Supreme co-writer and director Josh Safdie grew up playing ping pong with his dad in New York City. “I had ADHD and found it to be quite helpful,” he told NPR. “It’s a sport that requires an intense amount of focus and an intense amount of precision.” Safdie said his great uncle played at Lawrence’s and used to tell him about the different characters he met there, including Reisman’s friend and competitor Dick Miles.

It was Safdie’s wife who found Reisman’s book in a thrift store and gave it to him. When he read it, Safdie was finishing a dream project that was years in the making, the 2019 movie Uncut Gems starring Adam Sandler. “Every step of the way, there was either a hurdle or a stop gap or a laugh in my face,” said Safdie, “And very few believers in that project.”

Safdie likened the experience to Reisman’s obsession with becoming a table tennis champion “who believed in this thing and had a dream that no one respected.”

A new racket changes the game

In 1952, Japanese player Hiroji Satoh stunned the table tennis world by winning the Men’s Singles at the World Championships playing with a new type of racket that had thick foam rubber. Unlike the traditional hardbat, the sponge rubber silenced the pock of the ball hitting the racket. Reisman wrote that the new surface caused the ball “to take eerie flights … Sometimes it floated like a knuckleball, a dead ball with no spin whatsoever. On other occasions the spin was overpowering.”

“Marty really liked the sound of the old hardbat,” said Asgarali, “When the sponge racquet came out, Marty wasn’t competitive anymore.