David S. Ward and The Big Con The Sting
David S. Ward's screenplay for The Sting won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, was named #39 on the Writers Guild of America's 2006 list of 101 Greatest Screenplays, and generated a $10 million copyright infringement lawsuit. The paradox at the center of the film's creation is the paradox at the center of the con it depicts: Ward built something original out of borrowed materials, and the question of how much borrowing crosses into theft was never definitively resolved.
Ward found the subject while researching pickpockets
Ward was a recent UCLA film school graduate when he stumbled into the world of confidence men through an adjacent subject.
"Since I had never seen a film about a confidence man before, I said I gotta do this." — David S. Ward, (wikipedia)
The research led him to David W. Maurer's 1940 book The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man, a landmark work of linguistics and criminology. Maurer, a professor at the University of Louisville, had spent years interviewing hundreds of real grifters, documenting their vocabulary, folkways, and the "astonishingly complex and elaborate schemes" they deployed. The book is populated by characters with names like Devil's Island Eddie, the Honey Grove Kid, and Limehouse Chappie. (penguinrandomhouse)
The Big Con provided the con's mechanics, terminology, and the Gondorff name
Ward drew heavily on Maurer's book for the specific mechanics of the wire con -- the telegraph-delay swindle that forms the film's central scheme. He also borrowed the terminology that gives the film its structural vocabulary: "the wire," "the rag," "the payoff," "ropers," "shills," "the convincer," "the cold poke," and "to put on the send" all come from Maurer's glossary of underworld argot. Most conspicuously, the name "Gondorff" comes from brothers Fred and Charley Gondorff, real-life early-twentieth-century con men whom Maurer documented.
The screenplay transforms Maurer's academic ethnography into dramatic narrative. The book describes how cons work in general terms; Ward's script shows a specific con executed by specific characters with specific motivations. The revenge structure -- Luther's murder driving Hooker to seek Gondorff -- is Ward's invention, not Maurer's.
Maurer sued for $10 million, and the case settled for $600,000
In 1974, Maurer filed a copyright infringement suit against Ward and Universal Pictures, alleging that the film had "the same names and same plot" as his book. The claim was strengthened by the revelation that a gambling consultant for the film confirmed The Big Con was in use on the set, and a Universal publicity booklet for The Sting contained quoted excerpts from Maurer's book. (slashfilm, wikipedia)
Ward disputed the allegation, insisting that The Big Con was one of several historical references and that the screenplay was original work. The case settled out of court in 1976 for approximately $600,000, of which Maurer received roughly $300,000 after legal fees. Ward resented the settlement for implying guilt through payment.
A separate suit from Followay Productions, which claimed to have purchased film rights to Maurer's book in 1952, sought $110 million from Ward, the producers, Universal, and parent company MCA. Writer-producer Roy Huggins also alleged that the screenplay's first half plagiarized his 1958 Maverick television episode "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres." (slashfilm)
Ward was supposed to direct and lost that too
Ward was originally slated to direct his own script. Robert Redford's insistence on an experienced director brought in George Roy Hill and cost Ward his directorial debut. The consolation was an Oscar for the screenplay -- but the episode established a pattern in Ward's career. He went on to write and direct The Sting II (1983) without the original cast, and the result was a critical and commercial failure that proved the first film's success depended on chemistry Ward could write for but not recreate.
The Big Con endures as the definitive account of American confidence games
Maurer's book was reprinted in 1999 with an introduction by Luc Sante and remains in print. Its influence extends well beyond The Sting: the terminology Maurer documented has entered general usage, and the book's detailed descriptions of the wire, the rag, and the payoff remain the standard reference for anyone writing about confidence schemes. The irony is that Maurer's scholarly work is now best known as the source for a Hollywood entertainment -- the kind of cultural theft that a con man would appreciate.