Where to watch The Sting (1973)

Trivia & production notes

• Screenwriter David S. Ward came up with the concept while researching pickpockets, realizing he'd never encountered a film centered on a confidence man before.
• Ward spent a year refining the script to determine how much information could be withheld from audiences while keeping the main characters sympathetic to viewers.
• Rob Cohen discovered the script in a slush pile while working as a reader for an agent and wrote in his coverage that it would become an award-winning film with major stars and director, leading the agent to promise firing Cohen if he couldn't sell it on that recommendation.
• Universal settled a plagiarism lawsuit from academic David Maurer for $600,000 after he claimed the screenplay borrowed too heavily from his 1940 book about real-life con artists.
• Jack Nicholson turned down the lead role despite recognizing the film would be a commercial success, choosing to make Chinatown and The Last Detail instead.
• Paul Newman negotiated for top billing, $500,000, and a percentage of profits before agreeing to star, at a time when his previous five films had underperformed at the box office.
• Robert Shaw's character's limp was authentic—Shaw had injured his leg playing handball shortly before filming started, and director George Roy Hill incorporated it into the role rather than recasting.
• Director Hill deliberately avoided using extras in street scenes to mirror 1930s gangster films, believing that era's movies rarely featured background characters.
• The production used a color scheme of muted browns and maroons with 1930s-style lighting combined with modern techniques to achieve the desired vintage aesthetic.
• Co-producer Tony Bill, an antique car collector, sourced period vehicles for the film including his own 1935 Pierce-Arrow limousine, which was used as Lonnegan's private car.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Sting, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.