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Ruth McGinnis

The Queen of Billiards

players nowadays - their names are not household
words. But during McGinnis’ age this was not the
case. You could find plenty of stories about Ruth
McGinnis and other pool players in the New York
Times.” McGinnis’
game, popular in the
1930s, was straight
pool, which is what
Paul Newman and
Jackie Gleason play
in the iconic film The
Hustler. (Today, if you
walk into an American
bar with pool tables,
patrons are likely
One January day in 1938, a slight, wide-eyed playing 8-ball.) In
woman named Ruth McGinnis walked into a pool
hall in Washington, D.C, called the Arcadia, where straight pool, the player
calls what ball she will
six of the district’s most accomplished players
waited to play her. try for—stripes or solids doesn’t matter. If she
sinks 14 balls in a row or “runs a 14,” she can use
McGinnis powdered her hands and picked up her the 15th to start into another rack and continue
cue. McGinnis played a straightforward game, not shooting. - From the Smithsonian Article
chatting or joking with anyone as she played, the
balls clacking cleanly as she cleared the table.

The manager teased that he should borrow a
bowling ball from the alley next door and paint
a big 8 on it, so the men stood a chance. But it
was a weak joke. And she beat them all. That was
just an average day at the tables for McGinnis,
who triumphed in the male enclave of the pool
room, earning her the nickname “The Queen of
Billiards.” Born in 1910, she started playing in
her father’s barbershop at 7 years old: her father
kept two pool tables for waiting customers, and a
soapbox for tiny Ruth to stand on.

Pool was a big deal in those days. “You have to
understand that pool back in the 1920s, 1930s
and 1940s was in a very different space in this
country than it is now,” says pool historian and
author R. A. Dyer. “Now the sport is relegated to
bars and play in leagues, but most prominent pool

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