Early Life and Career
Rudolf Walter Wanderon, Jr. was born in New York City to Rosa and Rudolf Wanderon, Swiss immigrants. He was born in 1913 but sometimes hinted he was born earlier, even as early as 1900. The surname was later changed to Wanderone.
Known as "Rudy" to friends and family, Wanderone started playing pool as a child while living in Washington Heights, Manhattan. In 1923, he traveled to Europe with his father where he received training from German balkline billiards champion Erich Hagenlocher. His first prominent match was in 1926 when he competed against former nine-ball champion "Cowboy" Weston (Wanderone won, handily). Wanderone left school in the eighth grade and became a traveling pool hustler, spending much of the 1920s playing at a pool hall called Cranfield's in New York City. It was there that Wanderone received his first nickname after beating another hustler known as "Smart Henry". The intensity of their competition led Wanderone's friend, Titanic Thompson, to dub Wanderone "Double-Smart". By the mid-1930s, during the Great Depression, Wanderone had become a manager of a pool hall, owned by a friend, in Anacostia, southeast Washington, D.C. He had acquired more notoriety and nicknames, including "Triple-Smart Fats", "New York Fats", "Broadway Fats", and "Chicago Fats", attracting action from other hustlers, including the then unknown Luther "Wimpy" Lassiter.
In 1941, Wanderone and friend Jimmy Castras arrived in southern Illinois—major hustling center on a fast track to televised tournament play—and settled in Du Quoin, Illinois, where he continued hustling. Eventually he met Evelyn Inez Graff; they married two months to the day later, on May 7, 1941. Following their marriage, the Wanderones settled in Dowell, Illinois.
In 1942, the couple moved to Norfolk, Virginia. Norfolk had become a key mustering point for US soldiers, as well as a shipbuilding center. The growing population led to an enormous interest in gambling; Wanderone, in partnership with fellow hustler Lassiter, quickly recognized the financial possibilities. Following World War II, however, the action "dried up" soon, and the Wanderones returned to Little Egypt. For a period throughout the 1950s, Wanderone entered semi-retirement, making only occasional hustling trips to New York City.
Read more about this topic: Rudolf Wanderone
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“It is a conquest when we can lift ourselves above the annoyances of circumstances over which we have no control; but it is a greater victory when we can make those circumstances our helpers,—when we can appreciate the good there is in them. It has often seemed to me as if Life stood beside me, looking me in the face, and saying, “Child, you must learn to like me in the form in which you see me, before I can offer myself to you in any other aspect.””
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)
“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)