Marty Reisman: the ping pong showman who inspired a movie

Marty Reisman was one of the most colorful characters in table tennis history. Champion, showman, hustler and author, he played ping pong for money in New York clubs, won World Championships medals and spent decades defending the "old-school" game played with paddles without sponge. His life loosely inspired the 2025 movie Marty Supreme.

This page covers who Marty Reisman was, what he achieved and how much of the movie is based on the real story.

Who was Marty Reisman

Marty Reisman was born on February 1, 1930, in Manhattan, New York. He learned to play in the city's ping pong clubs, such as Lawrence's Broadway Table Tennis Club, which drew players, gamblers and onlookers alike. Skinny and quick-witted, he earned the nickname "The Needle".

As a teenager he was already playing for money. His reputation as a "money player" would follow him for the rest of his career.

His world medals

Reisman was one of the best American players of the postwar years. At the World Championships he won five bronze medals:

He was also U.S. national singles champion in 1958 and 1960 and won a British Open title. Over his life he collected 22 major titles, from 1946 to 2002.

Showman and hustler

Reisman turned the game into a show. From 1949 to 1951, he and partner Douglas Cartland toured as the opening act for the Harlem Globetrotters, with a comedy table tennis routine full of impossible shots.

In the clubs, he was famous for his money matches: he would often drop the first games on purpose, raise the stakes and only then turn the match around. Sometimes he played sitting down or blindfolded. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he ran the Riverside Table Tennis Club on 96th Street in Manhattan, which drew a varied crowd.

In 1974 he told these stories in his book The Money Player.

Championing the hardbat

Reisman played with a hardbat: a wooden paddle with short pimpled rubber and no sponge. In the 1950s, sponge paddles changed the sport, giving the ball far more speed and spin. Reisman criticized the change for decades, arguing it took the artistry out of the rallies. The full story is in history of the ping pong paddle.

To prove his point, he kept playing hardbat all his life. In 1997, at age 67, he won the U.S. Hardbat Championship.

Marty Supreme: what is real

In 2025 came Marty Supreme, directed by Josh Safdie, with Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser, a young ping pong player in 1950s New York. The character is fictional, but he was loosely based on Marty Reisman.

The movie is not a biopic. Elements like postwar New York, the money-match clubs and the ambition of an American player on the international stage come from Reisman's world, but the plot and characters were created for the screen. If you want the true story, start with his results and his book.

Marty Reisman's legacy

Reisman died on December 7, 2012, in New York, at 82. He helped keep alive the memory of an era of American table tennis that came before ping pong diplomacy, and showed that the sport can be both competition and entertainment. For an American star of a much more recent era, see Lily Zhang.

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