warns him the place is a "jungle." At a ghetto bar, Axel meets a prostitute, and they go to an upstairs room of a hotel. Threatened by her pimp after refusing to pay her when she refuses to take off all her clothes, Axel eggs the pimp to cut him with his switchblade. The pimp, thinking Axel crazy, backs off, and Axel repeatedly punches him, knocks him to the floor, and kicks him over and over. Frantic, the prostitute picks up the fallen blade and slashes Axel across the face. Bleeding from his facial wound, Axel staggers down the stairs, looks at himself in a mirror, and smiles enigmatically at his slashed cheek. Cast James Caan as Axel Freed Paul Sorvino as Hips Lauren Hutton as Billie Morris Carnovsky as A.R. Lowenthal Jacqueline Brookes as Naomi Freed Burt Young as Carmine Carmine Caridi as Jimmy Vic Tayback as One Steven Keats as Howie London Lee as Monkey M. Emmet Walsh as Las Vegas Gambler James Woods as Bank Officer Carl W. Crudup as Spencer Allan Rich as Bernie Stuart Margolin as Cowboy Ric Mancini as Sal Beatrice Winde as Hospital Receptionist Antonio Fargas as Pimp Richard Foronjy as Donny Frank Sivero as Donny's Driver Frank Adonis as Man in Park with Donny Philip Sterling as Sidney Patricia Fay as Bank Teller Production The film was the first produced screenplay by James Toback. Toback had worked as an English lecturer at the City College of New York and had a gambling problem. He originally wrote The Gambler as a semi-autobiographical novel but halfway through started envisioning it as a film and turned it into a screenplay. Toback completed it in 1972 and showed it to his friend Lucy Saroyan, who introduced Toback to Robert De Niro. Toback became enthused about the possibility of De Niro playing the lead. He showed the script to his literary agent who gave it to Mike Medavoy who attached director Karel Reisz. Reisz did not want to use De Niro and cast James Caan instead. "Caan became a great Axel Freed, although obviously different from the character De Niro would have created", wrote Toback later. It was filmed at a time when leading actor James Caan was battling his own addiction to cocaine. Caan says the film is one of his favorites. "It's not easy to make people care about a guy who steals from his