Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2019 February 13 • Wednesday

In the movie The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950) Lee J. Cobb has his hands full as a homicide detective trying to cover a murder that's being avidly investigated by his new partner who happens to be his younger brother.

While Cobb's character didn't commit the murder he did dispose of the body and is trying hard to steer the police away from the killer and to a suitable scapegoat.

This is a stressful situation, naturally, and Cobb has to keep his cards close to his chest, to borrow a metaphor that the younger brother uses to refer to Cobb in another context.

And so, when you see Cobb reading a book in bed about halfway through this story, it makes sense that he'd be reading a book called Memories of a Poker Player.

Not only is he keeping his cards close to his chest, gambling and bluffing and hoping for luck, he also has to maintain a poker face.

At the climax of the movie he actually says that he's going to try a bluff, so this card game thread is deliberately woven throughout.

So deliberately, in fact, that it seems that this Memories of a Poker Player book was created just for this scene in this movie. As far as I can tell, no such book existed in 1950.