Joan Crawford was a great fan of gin rummy. Even Flora Robson as Elizabeth I and Errol Flynn as the Earl of Essex appear to be playing it – though, unfortunately, not mentioning it – in The Sea Hawk (1940). Hardly a film of that period fails to mention it somewhere, or at least get it on screen. Gin was much simpler to learn than Contract Bridge, and more congenial in the family circle than Poker.īut perhaps what really helped it on its way was its popularity with actors, stars and the celebrity-seeking riff-raff of Broadway and Hollywood, and the consequent publicity the game attracted to itself. One circumstance that helped it was the Depression, when more and more people had less and less to spend on going out and enjoying themselves and had to rediscover the art of amusing themselves at home. One of the reasons why the history of Gin Rummy remains tantalisingly obscure is that it didn’t really come into its own until the 1930s, for as late as the 1926 edition of Official Rules of Card Games it was still being recorded under its older title Poker Gin or Gin Poker. For this reason, Conquian is often called the prototype of the game. It is believed that it is merely a modified version of Conquian with different rules and scoring methods.
The origin of the game can be traced back to a 17 th century game called Conquian which was played in Central American states such as Mexico.
