The Sting at 50: The Art of Entertaining

While scrolling through the list of the highest-grossing films in history (adjusted for inflation), there are a lot of obvious hits. Gone with the Wind, The Sound of Music, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But nestled at the end of the top 20 is an offbeat inclusion, a film that made more money than The Godfather, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Avatar: The 1973 Depression-set caper The Sting.

Starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, The Sting premiered Christmas Day 1973 on the heels of one of the greatest shifts in the film industry since its inception. With the contract system eviscerated, the new studio system reinvented itself with a producer-driven model. But while this New Hollywood movement is known for its explosion of gritty dramas and auteur directors like Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola, The Sting is an odd man out. While the world and the film industry around it got darker, The Sting was defiantly joyful.

The Sting was initially developed by screenwriter David S. Ward to be his directorial debut. He sold his script to producers Tony Bill and Julia and Michael Phillips. The script had considerable interest from MGM, branded “the studio of last resort” by Julia Phillips in her memoir You’ll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again. But the producing team knew a better deal was out there. Redford, already attached, said he would drop out if the film went to MGM.

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The major issue, according to Phillips, was that The Sting looked to be an incredibly expensive film to buy for a directorial debut. “Period pieces are not an everyday occurrence in movie production in 1972,” Phillips wrote. The Sting was going to necessitate sweeping sets and costumes to place the film in the 1930s. It wasn’t until George Roy Hill, director of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, got on board that any studio wanted to get involved. Once Hill signed on, the film almost immediately sold to Universal Pictures.

The search to find Redford’s co-star soon began. Redford’s Johnny Hooker, a plucky and ambitious smalltime conman, plays opposite experienced grifter Henry Gondorff. Gondorff was a supporting part, the classic mentor figure that teaches the novice. But with Hill and Redford involved, the producers saw a chance to recreate the Butch Cassidy magic and reached out to Paul Newman.

At the time, Newman was coming off a string of five box office failures and was considered less alluring to general audiences than Redford. The Sting is also a much lighter film than Newman’s usual fare, a challenge that made him more eager to sign on and prove he had a greater range than previously believed. He negotiated the same salary as Redford—$500,000 up front—and top billing for the film. At the time the payment was one of the largest ever received by a single actor.

The double billing of Redford and Newman put two of the most popular actors and biggest heartthrobs together. For Newman, The Sting was a comeback vehicle, a way to prove his acting abilities and regain his status as a bankable movie star. For Redford, The Sting was putting his skills on autopilot. From 1972 to 1975, Redford made four caper films. He described his performance as more running around than acting. Throughout The Sting, Redford bounces around, chewing on and delighting in the scenery. It’s the pinnacle of an actor people love to watch, regardless of what they’re doing.

Instead of his film resting on its stars, George Roy Hill wanted to assemble a team to turn The Sting into a technical marvel. Speaking about Hill, Phillips wrote that “he doesn’t see himself as an auteur, but an administrator.” Taking heavy inspiration from 1930s gangster films, Hill worked with art director Henry Bumstead to recreate 1930s Chicago on Universal’s backlot. He designed a color scheme with cinematographer Robert L. Surtees that bathed the film in a sea of muted browns and reds, recreating the sepia look of old color film. Legendary costume designer Edith Head joined the production and created the cast’s wardrobe.

In his book The Films of George Roy Hill, Andrew Horton describes Hill’s approach to The Sting as “both a period piece and a variation on a film genre.” Taking inspiration from early Saturday Evening Post magazine covers, The Sting features several hand-painted title cards that set up the various stages of the elaborate con Hooker and Gondorff put on. Hill observed the lack of extras in ‘30s gangster films, so big scenes take place on empty streets, with minimal extras staged in wider shots. Even the opening Universal Pictures logo is a recreation of its ‘30s design.

But one of The Sting’s biggest artistic gambits was the use of Scott Joplin’s ragtime music in the score. Composer Marvin Hamlisch did new arrangements of Joplin’s songs, most notably using his classic “The Entertainer” at the top of the film. The music transports the audience back in time to the creaking of old pianos in a dusty bar. The score was technically out of place—ragtime music was created, and most popular, several decades before the 1930s—but according to Hill, “the film is meant simply as an entertainment, and I wasn’t worried about the anachronistic elements.”

And entertaining is exactly what The Sting is all about. The story of two grifters trying to pull off “the big con” against crime boss Doyle Lonnegan (played absolutely perfectly by Robert Shaw) is a non-stop series of twists and surprises. We know a con is going on, but the layers are constantly unfolding. Redford and Newman make every scene a delight. The cinematography is simple, which helps to pull us further into the adventure. The Sting starts off with the con as part of a revenge plot, but it slowly morphs, becoming a testament to creating an exciting spectacle just to see if you can. The Sting does not desire fame or money (even if those are earned along the way). It wants to entertain.

The week of December 24, 1973, audiences had two choices: The Sting and The Exorcist. Despite coming out in the last week of the year, both films became the highest-grossing movies of 1973, with The Sting coming out just behind The Exorcist. The Sting used the innovative release strategy of The Godfather and premiered across all theaters simultaneously rather than in gradual increments. At the 1974 Academy Awards, The Sting swept almost every category, winning seven of its 10 nominations, including Best Picture (making Julia Phillips the first woman to win a Best Picture award).

But The Sting also created a notable cultural wave. The film helped spark a ragtime revival in the 1970s, putting Scott Joplin back on the Billboard charts for the first time in decades. Depression-inspired clothing and the 1930s styling present in The Sting became a fashion trend in the early 1970s. The film even reintroduced the word “sting” into the American vocabulary, making its meaning as in a “sting operation” more common among law enforcement and in general vernacular.

While The Sting is often remembered as being fun without substance or politics, that idea is a disservice. Lonnegan is a powerful, seedy political figure who cannot be taken down in any legal way because he cheats (even at poker). The only way for Hooker and Gondorff to win is to cheat back. For a film that premiered in the midst of the Watergate scandal, its philosophy of out-conning a con man takes on serious political weight. The Sting’s main characters are not motivated by greed—setting them apart from all the other nefarious actors in the film—or the poetic, naive idea of justice. They are in it for the art and satisfaction of outsmarting someone who thinks themself untouchable.

There is also an inherent substance to a movie that represents the technical possibilities of filmmaking during the new studio system. The Sting features some of the finest craftspeople working in film at the time during their prime. The production designer of Vertigo, the most decorated costume designer in history, the editor of The Godfather and cinematographer of Ben Hur all collaborated on one film to recreate a time period known for empty dusty fields, turning it into a tribute to an unloved era of film history. Every shot is a showcase of what was possible when the studio system was working at its best.

The Sting is also a snapshot of two of the biggest actors in history settling into the next phases of their careers. Redford’s successive films throughout the ‘70s are the work of an artist in his prime; from 1974 to 1976, he was voted the top box office star, appearing in hits like Three Days of the Condor, The Great Gatsby and All the President’s Men. Newman slowly decreased his film output through the 1970s, as his films often struggled to make financial returns until he found success in more mature roles in the 1980s like The Verdict and The Color of Money, both of which saw him return to the older type of figure that he portrayed, for the first time, in The Sting.

Hill himself described The Sting as “pure entertainment.” It premiered as the era of the “blockbuster” film was on the horizon. But its association with being “fun” has led us to underestimate what The Sting worked to accomplish. Modern blockbusters are only getting more expensive with bigger cast salaries and VFX budgets. But The Sting fought for every dime, and you can see it. 50 years later, we can still look back at the pop cultural blip in the early 1970s that saw ragtime music and Depression dressings go into fashion. The Sting’s biggest con was being so enjoyable that people mistook crowd-pleasing entertainment for something simple. We shouldn’t care about The Sting just because it was popular. The Sting was popular because so many people cared about it.

Leila Jordan is a writer and former jigsaw puzzle world record holder. Her work has appeared in Paste Magazine, Gold Derby, TheWrap, FOX Digital, The Spool, and Awards Radar. To talk about all things movies, TV, and useless trivia you can find her @galaxyleila