There was once a TV show called Celebrity Billiards and it starred a gent named Rudolf Wanderone Jr. who was then famous as "Minnesota Fats." Mr. Wanderone was a professional pool player with no actual connection to Minnesota. He was, in fact, billed as "New York Fats" for much of his career.
Novelist Walter Tevis created the character "Minnesota Fats" for his novels, The Hustler and The Color of Money, both of which became successful motion pictures. When the first book came out, Wanderone claimed the character was based on him and proclaimed that he'd sue Tevis into oblivion. He apparently never sued; just claimed they'd settled out of court, a claim Tevis denied. After the hit movie of The Hustler, wherein Jackie Gleason played the portly billiards whiz from Minnesota, Wanderone took to billing himself as "Minnesota Fats" and had a pretty good career as a result. He had lots of colorful anecdotes about playing pool with Al Capone and Charlie Chaplin and who knows? Maybe one or two of them were even true.
I don't know from billiards but I recall Wanderone getting occasional slams from tournament-winning players saying he wasn't deserving of the hype; that he really was a hustler but not because he was that skilled with a cue. He hit all the talk shows, usually telling grandiose tales of winning huge bets, and he'd demonstrate trick shots.
No one seems to know for sure when his syndicated TV show, Celebrity Billiards, went on or off. Googling will tell you it debuted in 1965, 1968, 1970 or other years. My sense is that it was a series that was done on such a low budget that they could sell it to stations for next-to-nothing — the kind of show stations kept on the shelf in case they had to fill a hole at 3 AM or if a baseball game got rained-out. The producers probably shot a dozen episodes in a day and once in a while, they even managed to snag a guest who didn't trivialize the label of "celebrity."
Here's a quick sampler with Groucho Marx and Milton Berle. I'll betcha Groucho lost but since he didn't care, was very funny doing it. And it wouldn't surprise me if Uncle Miltie cared a lot, played to win — and wasn't very funny doing it…
