Blue Pool

Pool, as a national pastime, has long been behind an eight ball of its own making. Main Street's billiard academy allowed itself to become a gathering place for grifters and idlers, then was run out of town. The shark-infested pool halls of the big cities retreated into one-flight-up locations, shrinking into such shabby anonymity that parents no longer bothered to warn the young against them. And the era has passed when every self-respecting millionaire's mansion was big enough to include a billiard room, where even a lady might join the gentlemen for an after-dinner round. No longer does a super-champ like Willie Hoppe draw thousands to his exhibition games.

Pool playing is becoming respectable again. The recent film, The Hustler, may have done little to elevate the game's social position, but it demonstrated to millions its hypnotic appeal. A memorable photograph of Britain's Queen Mother neatly pulling off a southpaw shot did wonders in selling the game to women. But pool's biggest push has come from bowling.

Bowling alleys, which have transformed themselves into highly respectable meccas of organized togetherness (don't say "alleys," say "lanes"), are featuring billiard rooms (don't say "pool," say "pocket billiards"), where Mom and the kids can click away in an air-conditioned, Muzaked atmosphere as wholesome as mah-jongg.

Jackie Gleason, the massive Minnesota Fats in The Hustler, once observed that poolrooms have a "dirty antiseptic look--spots on the floor, toilets stuffed up, but the tables brushed immaculately, like green jewels lying in the mud." The Brunswick Corp. of Chicago, largest commercial U.S. billiard equipment manufacturer, is determined to change all that, has produced some innovations aimed straight at Mom; e.g., tables have been contoured along Detroit lines with chrome doodads and two-tone coachwork. But the feature that will bring the loudest howls from Gleason and other reactionary cue sticklers is the new look of the table-topping: it now comes in blue, beige, tangerine and gold. Green? You could order it, too, if you want to be quaint.

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