Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a year-end holiday treat: a 50th anniversary screening of the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 1973, ‘The Sting,’ featuring the boffo box office team of Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Our screening is presented almost 50 years to the day when it originally opened, on December 25, 1973. It captivated audiences eager for lighthearted holiday entertainment and snagged huge box office returns in addition to seven Academy Awards in the spring of 1974. We’ll screen it at the Royal next Wednesday, December 27, at 7 PM.

Newman and Redford had scored an enormous success four years earlier when they teamed with director George Roy Hill to make the western romp, ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.’ They joined Hill again when they agreed to play two grifters in the 1930s. Their characters set out to get revenge against a mob boss (played by Robert Shaw) by devising an elaborate con to bilk him of a huge fortune. The Oscar-winning script by David S. Ward (inspired in part by a nonfiction book, ‘The Big Con,’ written by David Maurer) is full of nifty twists and turns as the grifters stalk their prey. The expert supporting cast includes Charles Durning, Ray Walston, Eileen Brennan, and Harold Gould. The movie was produced by Tony Bill, Julia Phillips and Michael Phillips.

In addition to its Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, the film was recognized for its expert art direction by Henry Bumstead and James Payne, costumes by veteran Edith Head, editing by William Reynolds, and music scoring by Marvin Hamlisch. The composer’s adaptation of ragtime hits by Scott Joplin (especially his signature tune, “The Entertainer”) helped to start a ragtime revival craze throughout the country. The award marked Hamlisch’s third Oscar that year; he also won for his Original Score and Best Song from another of the year’s hit movies, ‘The Way We Were.’

Variety raved about the movie, “George Roy Hill’s outstanding direction of David S. Ward’s finely crafted story of multiple deception and surprise ending will delight both mass and class audiences.” Roger Ebert agreed that it was “one of the most stylish movies of the year,” and the Los Angeles Times called it “an unalloyed delight.” According to New York magazine critic Judith Crist, “What glitters here is pure movie gold.” More recently, Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times called ‘The Sting‘ “one of the most enduring and exquisitely crafted blockbusters of all time.”

The movie took in over $160 million, a huge amount at the time, and it was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2005.