Depression-Era Chicago as Setting The Sting
The Sting is set in September 1936, in the middle of the Great Depression, and the setting is not incidental to its meaning. The Depression makes the class dynamics visible: Lonnegan's rackets exploit desperate people, the con men live one step from destitution themselves, and the $500,000 score represents a fortune in an era when tent cities lined the railroad tracks. The period also provides the film's aesthetic foundation -- the muted browns, the empty streets, the sense of a world operating on the margins of legitimate society.
The film was shot mostly in Los Angeles, not Chicago
Despite its Chicago setting, the production used the Universal Studios backlot in Hollywood for most interiors and street scenes. Location work supplemented the studio sets in specific locations:
- Chicago: Union Station and LaSalle Street Station provided period-appropriate railway interiors
- Wheeling, West Virginia: Additional exterior shooting
- Santa Monica: The Looff Hippodrome carousel doubled as Gondorff's Chicago carousel
- San Pedro Harbor: Storage facility locations
Co-producer Tony Bill supplied period vehicles from his personal collection, including his 1935 Pierce-Arrow limousine, which served as Lonnegan's car. The production recycled an elevated-train set from a 1969 film. (wikipedia, grahmsguide)
Hill chose to evoke the period through cinematic convention rather than realism
Hill's decision to film on the backlot rather than on location in Chicago was deliberate. He was not making a documentary about 1936 -- he was making a film that felt like 1936 through cinematic shorthand. The iris shots, editing wipes, vintage Universal logo, sparse extras, and Gebr title cards all evoke Depression-era cinema rather than the Depression itself. The distinction matters: the film's Chicago is a stage set, which mirrors the fake betting parlor that the con men build within the story.
"The main characters, despite their general alienation and outsider stature, are imbued with fraternal distinction and seedy glamour when surrounded by the victims of the Depression camped out in the street and in tent cities under railway lines." — Conall McManus, Frame Rated (2023)
The Depression is visible in the background -- the tent cities, the empty streets, the grimness of Joliet -- but it functions as atmosphere rather than subject. The film does not interrogate the Depression; it uses it as a stage on which the con men's skill and camaraderie appear more vivid.
The 1930s setting masks a 1970s sensibility
Despite its nostalgic trappings, the film reflects the Watergate-era suspicion of authority that pervades 1970s American cinema. Every authority figure is corrupt: Snyder shakes down grifters, Polk (apparently) coerces informants, Lonnegan runs a criminal empire through legitimate-looking channels. The only honest actors in the story are the con men, whose honesty consists of being upfront with each other about their dishonesty.
"Despite its 1930s setting, the film reflects Watergate-era skepticism toward authority figures and embraces sympathetic portrayal of 'worthless riffraff,' positioning it squarely within 1970s revisionist cinema." — Roderick Heath, Film Freedonia (2021)
Richard Roeper, writing at the film's fiftieth anniversary, described it as "one of the most acclaimed and popular and enduring and exquisitely crafted blockbusters" -- a film whose period setting gave it both distance from contemporary politics and permission to express them. (chicago sun-times)
The 20th Century Limited and the geography of class
The 20th Century Limited -- the luxury express train between New York and Chicago -- functions as a microcosm of the film's class structure. Lonnegan's private poker game in the club car represents the world of money and power. Hooker and Gondorff can enter this world only through disguise and performance. The train is neutral territory: both the con men and the mark are in transit, away from their respective power bases, and the rules that govern their interaction are the rules of the game rather than the rules of the street.
The geographic movement from Joliet (small-time grifting) to Chicago (the big con) to the 20th Century Limited (direct confrontation with Lonnegan) traces an arc of escalating ambition that the Depression setting makes legible. In 1936, a small-time grifter from Joliet and a New York racketeer would not normally occupy the same social space. The con is what makes it possible -- and the poker game is the moment when the class boundary dissolves.