The 2025 film Marty Supreme is not a biographical movie, but features the fictional character Marty Mauser, played by Timothee Chalamet. In the movie, Mauser is a New York City table tennis hustler. The character is based on Marty Reisman, a table tennis genius. Here’s Reisman’s story.
Born in Manhattan, Marty Reisman started playing table tennis after suffering a nervous breakdown at the age of 9. He found the game relaxing, and he also became very good at it. Reisman earned the title of city junior champion at the age of 13. Not long after, Reisman started hustling at Lawrence’s Broadway Table Tennis Club in Manhattan.
Marty in his youth (photo courtesy New York Historical posts, Facebook)
Reisman got in trouble at the age of 15 when he placed a $500 bet on himself at a national tournament in Detroit. The man he thought was a bookie was, in fact, the head of the United States Table Tennis Association. The police were notified, and Reisman was escorted from the tournament.
Reisman then figured out another way to earn money playing the game. For three years, Reisman and Douglas Cartland, an international table tennis player, were the opening act for the Harlem Globetrotters. A comedy routine, they would hit balls with frying pans and even use the soles of their sneakers.
Besides being a hustler and a showman of table tennis, Reisman played professionally. He won five bronze medals at the World Table Tennis Championships, the bronze in the 1948 World Table Tennis Championships, and another three in the 1949 World Table Tennis Championships. His final bronze medal came in 1952. He lost to Hiroji Satoh, a Japanese player who was the first table tennis player to use a better paddle with a rubber-foam sponge. Reisman used the old paddle called the hardbat. The hardbat style led Reisman to win 22 major table tennis titles from 1946 to 2002. He won two United States Opens and a British Open.
Dashing Marty (photo courtesy New York Times)
Reisman operated the Riverside Table Tennis Club, right off Broadway. The club had many familiar guests, including chess prodigy Bobby Fischer, author Kurt Vonnegut, and Dustin Hoffman. Known for his exuberance and flamboyancy, Reisman wore fedoras and Panama hats. He was also a trendsetter, wearing bright, fashionable clothing.
In 1997, at the age of 67, he became the oldest player to win a national championship in a racket sport by winning the United States National Hardbat Championship.
Reisman also appeared on television. In 1961, he was a guest on I’ve Got a Secret. His secret was that he was going to play table tennis with three balls at once. In 2008, he appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman. Guest Matthew Broderick mentioned Reisman while discussing his hobby of playing ping-pong. At that point, Reisman came on stage and performed his trademark trick of attempting to split a cigarette with a ping pong ball live on stage.
Marty Reisman died in 2012 at 82. Prior to his death, he was the president of Table Tennis Nation, an organization he founded to make the sport of table tennis more exciting and fun.
British Journalist Harold Evans credited Reisman with “the greatest drop shot ever seen on the face of the earth.”
