THE WORLD ACCORDING TO FATS : He Has Had a Long and Colorful Life; These Days, He Is Spending Time Looking Back at It

NASHVILLE, Tenn. —  The Western Room is dead tonight. The long bar is sprinkled with maybe 10 people. It’s Memorial Day, and even in Printers’ Alley, where tourists swarm at night to hear country and western music, there is little action.

In the back, Fatty is sulking. No one is talking to him, and no one notices him. Also, the music is too loud. He hates that.

Abruptly, the music stops.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a world-famous celebrity right here in our audience tonight,” the band leader drawls. “The world’s best pool player, Man-ah-soda Fay-ats.”

Scattered applause. This is enough for Fatty. He lumbers to the stage and arrives just as the band is about to kick into yet another Randy Travis song. Fatty takes the microphone.

“What is it? What is it?,” he says in his New York honk. “How ya doin ? I been around the earth six times in a boat . I wore out Cuba and all other bodies of water. Been to Nashville when there was no Alley. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis used to rack balls for me.”

Someone shouts from the bar, “Did you know any gangsters, Fatty?”

“Knew ‘em all. Knew ‘em when they was looking for work ,” he says, just warming up. His left hand is gesturing and his diamond pinky ring, the one he won off a guy playing poker, is glittering.

“All of ‘em. I knew every show person on earth. Capone--you couldn’t miss knowing them people. Gangster never hit a pool ball a day in his life. That’s so ridiculous it ain’t even funny . First of all, a gangster is a joke to start with , you understand. That’s the most ridiculous thing in the world, a gangster. I know more about all that than anybody living .”

The band leader had been thinking that, maybe, Fatty would come up under the lights, give a little wave. But this! The musicians are looking on with horror as Fatty works the room, taking their audience and wringing it out.

They have been hustled by the biggest pro of them all. The most fantastic pool player the world has ever known, magnificent beyond compare . Minnesota Fats, and that’s where that came from.

Fatty lives in the Hermitage Hotel, across from the Tennessee State Capitol. He lives in a suite on the fourth floor.

What else?

Mainly, Fatty sits in the lobby in the same chair and watches people. Twice a day he walks across the street and feeds the birds with the stale bread they save for him in the hotel kitchen.

If he is approached by fans, of which there are many, he reaches into his front pocket and brings out a silver case. It holds his pre-inked stamp, which he uses instead of a pen for signing autographs.

These days, Fatty isn’t interested in meeting people. Doesn’t care about it. Thinks he knows enough people.

Thing is, people still want to meet Fatty. There is something about him. Something more than celebrity. Someone suggests that pool players embody an element of danger, something on the edge. People want to be around it.

That’s the way it has always been, since New York and now here. In his long career, Fatty would get calls. Some calls Fatty would take and for others he would not be in.

He is not stupid. No matter how busy things got, Fatty always managed to find time for the very rich. This led to Fatima and the dance of veils and the fabulous palace.

“I had a friend who was big on the Ivory Coast, he took me there,” Fatty said. “You used to be able to drive from Ankara to Istanbul to Iran and Baghdad. That’s where The Thief of Baghdad came from, when I was there. Anyway, I played in the sultan’s palace. The most unbelieveable joint in the world. Solid gold stairs and a gold pool table.

“Fatima danced on a table right in front of me. Years later her daughter came after me. In India, I used to entertain all the important ones, the Ali Kahn and what his old man’s name? Aga Kahn. I was around with what’s his name way back in the olden days. What’s his name? Maurice Chevalier.

“Everybody invited me around in them days. I could go on a ship and it don’t cost me a match. Captain’s guest. I go on the ship and go clean around the earth and it’s no way I could spend two dollars.

“I knew everybody who ever breathed in the olden days. Couldn’t miss ‘em, in London, in Paris, in Casablanca. I knew all the generals. I could go right now, I could take a map and hardly ever look. Been six times around the world.

“I had already been clean around the earth by the time I was 10. I went to Europe and London and Switzerland and places like that. Came back through the Caribbean. I wore that place out. I wore out all them islands. Trinidad.”

Fatty traveled any place where card games or pool games could be got up. Anywhere. This led to the scientists at the top of the world.

“What happened was they heard me sounding off and everything, a bunch of top scientists who knew me from Philadelphia. They called me on the phone and says, ‘Man are you still shooting pool?’ I says, ‘Sure.’

“I had to go up there at a fantastic hunting lodge. It’s a town, a real good-sized town, not like Minneapolis or St. Paul. It’s way up on top of the world, you understand. I didn’t play or nothing, I just went up there to talk with them and to be there.

“Antarctica, I went down there on a ship. I didn’t do nothing there, either. I just talked to top scientists and people who happened to be there. What can you do in Antarctica? It’s 180 below.”

This is how it is to talk with Fatty. He is fond of saying, “To make a long story short . . . “ but he is just kidding when he says that. It is an endless stream of anecdotes, expertly delivered in his W. C. Fields-like voice. The stories are wonderful, but are they true?

To Fatty, truth in conversation is only a rumor.

It is true that Fatty has had a long life--perhaps 80-plus years?--and a colorful one. These days, he’s spending much of his time looking back at it.

There are six for dinner and no reservations. Not to worry. Fatty announces to the kid behind the desk that he’s Minnesota Fats and could he find a table, no smoking.

As he waits, Fatty, driven as if by instinct, stamps everything in sight. The restaurant’s menus and wine lists are covered.

Fatty eats only ice cream at dinner and drains endless cups of coffee.

Dispatch one wrong idea. Fatty is not fat. He was once. Once he ballooned past 300 pounds and kept going. He says he used to be two inches taller, too.

“I kinda sagged,” he says.

He still has sharp blue eyes and his habit of hitching his shoulders as he pulls up his collar. Still wears custom shoes that he buys in Las Vegas. Still gets a manicure. Fatty, who fancies himself quite a dresser, invariably wears polyester pants and shirts.

“Yes, but it’s the sharpest polyester,” a friend says.

He’s come a long way from 167th and Amsterdam, the Washington Heights section of New York. His story is that he was pretty much on his own since age 4. His uncle took little Fatty with him to bars, a pool table became a crib.

Fatty says he never went to school but began gambling instead.

“School, to me, was the biggest joke the world has ever known ,” he says. “I learned everything I ever needed to know from lawyers and doctors and legislatures (sic), all them people who was brilliant .”

He launched his fabulous career when he was 8 and proceeded to travel the world and become a millionaire while living through WWI, prohibition, the Depression, WWII, and other conflicts.

Fatty married Evelyn Inez Grass in 1941 and always called her Eva-line. He also called her, in the happier days, “The most fabulous-looking tomato of all time.”

They retired to Dowell, Ill., Evelyn’s hometown, because no one would play Fatty anymore. “Ironed ‘em all out,” he says.

By 1951, Fatty had laid down his last hustle after more than 40 years in the business.

He settled down to feeding 27 dogs and 14 cats and every stray in the vicinity. He used to drive around with a fragrant carload of Kentucky Fried Chicken and throw out tubs of it to baying packs of dogs.

“What’s more ridiculous than an animal?” Fatty asks. “He don’t know where his next meal is from. I hear about the thing people do to dogs, it makes me sick. Brutal murder.”

It was also widely known that Fatty was a soft touch. He would cave in to every sob story in the area. He gave boxes of clothes to children. He peeled off countless bills to the infirm, the unemployed and the very clever.

“I gave millions out,” he says, and for once it may not be an exaggeration.

Those were tough times in Dowell, a coal mining town that prosperity passed by.

This was all pre-Minnesota Fats. This was before Minnesota Fats had been born in the mind of Hollywood. In the movie, “The Hustler,” Jackie Gleason played a pool hustler named Minnesota Fats, based on a guy named New York Fats.

The movie was a hit and New York Fats, never one to pass up a free ride, figured if they were going to use his story, he might as well use their name. In 1961, Minnesota Fats was (re)born.

“They was making that movie and Barbara Walters interviewed me all day and all night ,” he said. “I knew her father real well, Lou Walters. Him and I and Damon Runyon used to hang out together at Lindy’s and down the street and up the street. Barbara interviewed me, one of the greatest interviews the world has ever known . She had just come back from someplace, the Shah of something.

“If it ain’t for me, ‘The Hustler’ never would of been as fantastic as it was because everyone on earth knew me. That’s the secret of movies, everybody knows you. Frank Sinatra, you could take him and stand him in a nightclub and holler his name and the joint would be packed. That’s how that came about.”

With the movie, Fatty’s dormant career awakened. Not as a hustler, but as a celebrity. If ever a person was born to play a role, he was that person. Minnesota Fats became a fixture on ABC-TV’s “Wide World of Sports,” beaming his fast-talking hustle into alarmed living rooms across America. And America discovered that Fatty was funny when he told his stories.

This second career was dependent on two elements: television exposure and Fatty’s ability to capitalize on it. It was a new sort of hustle and it was hard work. As he had in his youth, Fatty crisscrossed the country, shooting pool, only this time for guaranteed money.

He says he’s turned down “6 zillion dollars” in the three years he’s been in Tennessee.

Fatty and Eva-line were divorced in 1984, after 44 years of marriage. Don’t ask.

They are packed, pointy boot to pointy boot, downstairs at the Stockyard on Tuesday night. There is a raucous country-western band belting out various she-done-me-wrong-and-I’m-mad-and-I’m-gonna-drink-beer songs. Loudly.

Fatty, whose idea it was to choose the table up front, is nearly hysterical from the noise. He views the lead singer with distaste. “I seen people go down on sinking ships in the middle of the ocean didn’t holler that much.”

Soon his mood brightens as, between sets, fans begin to filter over and ask for his autograph. Out comes the stamp. He’s stamping everything in sight. To be safe, people take their hands off the table.

Two women have their picture taken with Fatty. Strobes flash in the dark bar. The women are on vacation from Schenectady, N.Y. Did they spot Fatty and make a beeline over?

Not exactly.

“We asked the bartender if there were any stars in here,” says one. “I knew his name, but I never would have recognized him.”

No matter, Fatty is in gear now, what with all the cocktail napkins to be stamped and boasts to be made. And all the living dolls. Fatty likes pretty young women. With him tonight is Ginger Lynn, who wants to break into the recording business. Ginger is a tiny woman with major hair, major makeup and major jewelry.

She and Fatty are skating around the dance floor and everyone in the bar is watching. This is, of course, the point.

Fatty prefers the company of women. When he was promoting his instructional video in 1986, the people from Karl Lorimar made sure that there was a public relations woman around Fatty at all times.

“We discovered that no matter what kind of mood he was in, if he was with women, he would wind up being OK,” says Steve Gertz, whose job it was to oversee the marketing of the video. “I think Fatty was calmed by having women around him. Obviously, he liked the attention.”

It has always been this way, if you listen to Fatty. In his book, “The Bank Shot and Other Great Robberies,” Fatty tells of growing up bathed in adoration:

“I’ve been eating like a Sultan since I was 2 days old. I had a mother and three sisters who worshiped me, and when I was 2 years old they used to plop me in a bed on a jillion satin pillows and spray me with exotic perfumes and lilac water and then they would shoot me the grapes.”

Here’s the thing about Fatty’s real name. It has been largely forgotten, which may be a good thing. Going by Rudolf Walter Wanderone Jr. is not going to get any hustler a lot of mileage as a tough-guy name. He knew that right away.

“See, all of them things you hear, don’t mean nothing,” he says. “You got no idea on earth, all that jazz you hear. Here’s the way it was. I was known as Double Smart until I moved over Smart Henny. He was the smartest man in the world. They don’t use last names, or nothing. Like Titanic Thompson. Titanic Thompson got his name when he went down with the Titanic in 1912. He put on ladies’ clothes to save himself. Got off the boat first.

“So, Smart Henny was the sharpest critter on sports, on everything under the sun. He was the master. So was I, you understand, but he was older than me at that time. In the early ‘20s, he was already 45. To make a long story short, I moved him over, then all the smart guys called me Triple Smart.

“I moved him by playing poker. Two flights up over Lindy’s, called the 51 Club. Known all over the world. That’s where the high rollers went. If you came from Germany, you played Klabberjass. If you came from Russia, you played Russian Pinochle.”

So, for about 61 years he was a pool-card player called Triple Smart. Then, age and weight brought about a new name. New York Fats. What New York Fats did was not to enter the world billiards championships or the world 8-ball championships. What New York Fats did was park himself at the hotel where the tournament was being played, then cool out hustling poker games for two weeks.

After the tournament was over, and New York Fats had gotten fatter and richer, he would then emerge from the back room to challenge the new champion. He would hustle the champion and his new backers. That’s how he made his money and that’s how he made his reputation.

Fatty doesn’t claim that he never lost a pool game. He most certainly has. He claims he never lost a pool game with money on the table.

“I beat them all,” he says. “There was Blue Hamilton, the Bromo Seltzer King, Sniffy Moore who sniffed from morning till night. The Yellow Kid. Ralph Greenleaf, and his wife Princess Nai Tai Tai, who was beautiful beyond compare. Wimpy Lassiter, Tuscaloosa Squirrelly and Cornbread Red. Some of the greatest action men of all time. I ironed ‘em all out.

“Sniffy, when I got through with him, he didn’t own nothin’. He was a vagrant. I could tell you stories from now until doomsday. My long suit was, I don’t know how to explain it at all.

“I could be sitting here right now, or up at the hotel and a guy would call me, he would say, ‘Did you know Eddie Taylor was back in Knoxville and he’s got a hell of backer,’ you understand.

“I’d go over and I’d break ‘em. Then I’d take a walk. And as I’m leaving, maybe I’ll come back here. Then a guy would say, ‘They are playing with both hands in Norfolk.’ During the war, Norfolk was a hot place. High rollers would follow me there. Play day and night.

“I’d play for three days and nights, then sleep for 48 hours. They had multis on top of multis, there from the war. They had four or five joints that were unbelievable, millions of dollars on the table. They had action like you never saw. Norfolk was unbelieveable during the war.”

Which brings up the question of why Fatty was never drafted.

“Drafted? I played in Army and Navy hospitals till it came out of their ears so they bypassed me on account of all them charity things. And me, I wouldn’t shoot a fly myself. They would be wasting their time, drafting me.”

Here are the things Fatty either will not talk about, or, will talk endlessly about but will get very cranky:

--Attorneys.

--The Internal Revenue Service.

--Wives in general, or his ex-wife in particular.

--His health, or anything about how he may or may not have been admitted to a hospital in Carbondale, Ill., in 1974 for emergency surgery.

--Sportswriters.

--His age.

--Any hint that he is not known the world over as a fabulous superstar beyond compare, one of your all time greats.

Want to make Fatty mad? Suggest to him that he is old enough to have been a busboy at the Last Supper. Makes him real mad. Yet, as he is fond of saying--several times and in a loud voice--”I dated Mae West when she was a young woman.”

So try to figure out how much of this bluster about age is genuine indignation and how much is part of the whole I-am-not-to-be-questioned deal.

Few people around Fatty challenge him on much. There’s his partner, Jack Ray, who is helpless with laughter within a few minutes of talking to Fatty each day.

Jack is building the new Minnesota Fats fitness center complex on the edge of town. Typical Fatty, there’s little hint of fitness in the place. It’s got video games, which Fatty dismisses with his simple logic: “What a joke them things are. Can I win anything playing it? See what I mean?”

There are miles of pool tables in the place, which is Fatty’s idea of exercise.

“Exercise is the most ridiculous creature that ever lived ,” Fatty snorts. “Jogging. All you have to do is sit in the lobby of the hotel and watch a bank executive come in, you hear, climbs the stairs, lifts the suitcase. It’s a joke. And aerobics, it’s so ridiculous it ain’t even funny. I never watch TV in my life, but I’m down in the bar and I see it. Here’s a woman who looks like Tarzan. Unbelievable. So ridiculous it ain’t even funny.

“I wouldn’t carry a golf bag if you put a machine gun in my mouth. Carry a golf bag, 100 pounds of clubs in the joint . You gotta put it in the car and take it outta the car. To me, it’s the silliest thing on earth .

“Ninety-nine out of 100 people think exercise is the greatest thing. I’ll show you anybody who is an exercise nut, he’s 50-60 years old--looks like he’s 90. Ordinary humans are imbeciles to start with. A lot of people don’t know the strength of that.”

Often, in speaking on one subject with Fatty, he builds up steam and it’s clear there are conversational rapids ahead. It is this way with attorneys.

“Attorneys flimflammed me for zillions, for billions,” Fatty says. “I’m not crazy about ‘em. Melvin Belli is my friend, he’s not going to do anything to me. I known him all his life . I knew what they’re subject to do for a price, that’s their racket, what the hell. There ain’t an attorney on earth that wouldn’t double you or turn you upside down . I got hundreds of ‘em in town, friends of mine. But I don’t deal with them, you understand.

“The ones that doubled me or done me in, I’m not crazy about them. How would you like to pay $30,000, $40,000 for something that cost $300? That don’t bother me. Because, me, I can overcome anything on earth . So what do I have to worry about attorneys?

“Most of the people I ever dealt with always flimflammed me, because I was so easy. That was automatic. I never cared to start with because I never cared to be in on the swindle. They stole it all or most of it.

“But if it ain’t for me, they were out of business. I made lawyers and other people totally rich. I’m talking about billionaires. The reason it don’t matter to me is very simple. I can go in any direction. I could leave here without a quarter, you understand, and go anywhere on earth , north, south, east or west and in two-three days make lots of money.

“It is easy for me to make money. I got so many different outs it ain’t even funny. I could hustle cards and make $200,000-$300,000 a year, a million. I could hustle pool again. I can do things a lot of people can’t do. I can overcome all that. Ordinary people can’t do that.”

Except that there doesn’t appear to have been much to overcome in Fatty’s life. There have been some chilling moments stemming from a hated IRS audit.

“The IRS, to me, is a joke,” he says. “I’ll tell you what the IRS is. They run around harassing people, that’s 100%. The rest of the story is, I’m not against them or nothing, everybody got their job to do. Rich people are running around taking this off and that off, where an ordinary human can’t take a hot dog off. That’s what I’m talking about.

“They come after me. They got no right. All you gotta do is go anywhere I’ve ever been, my reputation is so great, I never got a blemish, no way, shape or form, you understand. To make a long story short, if you want to find out about any living creature on this earth, ask around. I’m purer than the Pope of Rome. Purer than nine Popes of Rome.

“This is the most ridiculous situation. I’ll sit in a lie detector from now until doomsday and make a fool out of ‘em if they bother me anymore. If they ever looked me up and looked at the awards, I’m national chairman of the Easter Seals Society, alone. Do you know what you gotta do to get that? I never take a penny. How come they don’t know that? Unbelievable engagements. I played in a hundred different childrens’ hospitals. I played in zoos and veterans’ hospitals.

“I’m so famous and known by everybody, if they could harass me it will straighten other people up. That’s automatic, No. 1. I don’t do nothing, I never done anything in my life I’m ashamed of. I don’t do things those other suckers and ordinary humans do every day. I never had to do none of them to start with, the other reason is I’m pure, I mean baby pure. That’s ridiculous.

“I’ll tell you something you don’t know. Finally something will come over me and I’ll expose all of this jazz, worldwide. I come from a long line of honest people. Me to cheat would be like me sweeping up the entire downtown area with a nickel broom, you understand?”

Yes, except that Fatty was once arrested in Nashville for shoplifting a $1.99 box of Ex-Lax. This is the point about the stories. They are wonderful. To know if they are true or not might ruin the whole thing.

In his instructional video, Fatty tells us, “When the cue ball stops rolling, it’s all over.”

It is something to bear in mind, these days, as he sits alone in the hotel lobby. What happens to a man, whose life is all about action, when there finally is none. When life is slow and dull? What happens to a person whose ego has been fed to within an inch of its life and suddenly there is little adulation?

His old friends are dead. His new friends are too young to recognize the names of his old friends. More and more, he has to tell people himself what a fabulous pool player beyond compare he was, because when he plays now the balls no longer do his bidding.