With Marty Supreme in cinemas and its star, Timothee Chalamet, hotly tipped to get an Oscar nomination later this week, we take a look at the World Championships medallist who was inspiration for the character Marty Mauser.

World Championships results courtesy of Matt Solt.

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Born in New York in 1930, Marty Reisman was already a well-known character in the city when he was barely into his teens.

Brought up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he became a fixture at Lawrence’s Broadway Table Tennis Club when he was 13, where he would hustle unsuspecting challengers into money matches.

While this aspect of his life is depicted reasonably accurately – at least in spirit – in the film, much of the rest of the storyline if fictitious.

However, one thing the character Marty Mauser certainly has in common with Marty Reisman is the world-class table tennis they play(ed).

Chalamet reportedly trained for seven years so he would look authentic in the scenes where he competes in the ‘British Open’ and when he takes on his Japanese nemesis ‘Koto Endo’ in Japan.

Reisman’s early years hustling for money set him on a journey to compete at five World Championships and had a real-life rivalry with Japan’s Hiroji Satoh.

His first Worlds was in London as Wembley hosted the 1948 edition and started with a medal – a bronze as USA finished third in the Men’s Team. Along the way, he defeated England’s Johnny Leach, who would go on to be Men’s Singles champion the following year, 22-20, 25-23 as the USA beat England.

In the individual events, Reisman went out in the last 32 of the Men’s Singles, losing to England’s Richard Bergmann in what looks to be a thriller – the score 3-2 (22-20, 18-21, 21-14, 19-21, 21-12) to Bergmann, who went on to win the gold. He went out in the last 16 of the two doubles contests.

Three bronze medals followed in 1949 in Stockholm as he reached the Men’s Singles semi-finals, where he lost 23-21, 21-18, 21-15 to Bohumil Vana of Czechoslovakia, who was beaten by Leach in the final.

Reisman & Peggy McLean lost the Mixed Doubles semi-finals to Vana & Kveta Hrusakova of Czechoslovakia, and the USA again won bronze in the Men’s Team.

Having not competed in 1950, Reisman returned to the Worlds in Vienna in 1951 but there was no medal. As he had in 1948, he came up against the English player who would go on to win the Men’s Singles. This time it was Leach, in the last 16, the Englishman winning 21-9, 21-17, 21-17.

Reisman’s final World Championships was in Bombay in 1952, where Satoh became the first world champion to use sponge on his bat – and he beat Reisman 18-21, 21-12, 21-15, 21-12 in the second round. Reisman, supposedly a favourite to win the title, went into the consolation event, which he won.

He did, however, pick up his fifth and final Worlds medal, another bronze alongside Douglas Cartland in the Men’s Doubles.

Reisman was vocal in his opposition to sponge and rubber on bats and it is likely he stepped away from international competition because its use became widespread and he was unable or unwilling to adapt.

As well as his successes at the Worlds, he won two United States Opens and the English Open in 1948/49.

He is also notable for having toured the world from 1949 to 1951, performing a table tennis comedy routine alongside Douglas Cartland for the opening act of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Reisman continued playing for most of the rest of his life and became the oldest player to win an open national competition in a racket sport by winning the 1997 United States National Hardbat Championship at the age of 67.

He competed at the World Veteran Championships in Manchester in 1998, and was featured in the Table Tennis News report of the championships, photographed alongside one of his opponents, England’s Henry Buist. The pair were described as having played a hardbat “epic”.

Reisman, who became known as The Needle because of his slender build – plus his ability to use his gift of the gab to get under opponents’ skin – died in 2012.