Playing cards in song and story

Cafe Society
1

Sort of a game, sort of not, let’s see if we can do the whole deck.

The idea is to find an example (from film, plays, literature, music, whatever) in which each of the 52 cards in a standard deck (plus the joker, what the heck) figures in the plot in some way. Some ground rules:

All uses of climactic card games are right out, on the basis of it’s too easy. So for example, “In (name of movie), (name of character) caught (card) to beat (name of character) to win back the family farm” doesn’t count. However, if it’s not the big climactic scene it’s fine.

A character named for the card doesn’t count. So “Batman fights a character called The Joker” is a no, but “In a Batman comic, the Joker uses a giant Joker to (fill in the blank)” is fine. Similarly, “In Alice in Wonderland, Alice meets the Queen of Hearts” doesn’t count because in the context of the meeting the Q of H is not a playing card.

Just mentioning the card doesn’t count. So “Motorhead wrote a song called ‘Ace of Spades’” doesn’t cut it, unless the song is actually about someone doing something with an Ace of spades (which, since the lyrics are pretty incomprehensible, might be true for all I know).

Be aware of spoilers and use spoiler tags as appropriate.

I’ll start:

Ace of spades: In the movie Shade, one character gives another an Ace of spades as a token of esteem and it also symbolizes something of a torch-passing.

Queen of diamonds: In The Manchurian Candidate*, the Queen of diamonds serves as Raymond Shaw’s trigger.

Jack of clubs: In Cher’s song “Dark Lady,” the fortune teller turns up a “two-eyed Jack.” The narrator’s eyes “saw red, but the card still said black.” The black two-eyed Jack is in clubs.

2

I’m not sure if this is what you’re going for, but here goes.

In the song Desperado, there is a line that goes somewhat like this:

*"Don’t draw the **Queen of Diamonds ** - she’ll beat you if she’s able.
You know the *Queen of Hearts ** is always your best bet."

Which I’ve interpreted as “Love is more valuable than material wealth”

3

Bah, you took mine. I came in to mention the jack of clubs from dark lady, should’ve known that you’d have that already. :slight_smile:

4

Okay, I think this qualifies:

In the pilot of the show ‘Tru calling’, Tru goes to the hospital because her gambler brother, Harrison, was badly beaten. He moans that he’d been praying for the ten of clubs and it didn’t come through.

When Tru rewinds in time for the first time, she buys a pack of cards, and gives Harrison the ten. (Presumably she knows that he’s a skilled enough cheat to use it without getting caught.) It works, he wins enough to cover some outstanding debts, and later Harrison thanks her and asks how she could possibly have known that that particular card would be ‘the answer to her prayer.’ She doesn’t explain at the time, but I think that example is used later in the series when Tru manages to convince Harrison that she’s rewinding, so that he can actively help her out.

5

Bah. So much for my first choice (Dylan’s “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”).

The Clash, “The Card Cheat”:

The gambler’s face cracks into a grin
As he lays down the king of spades
But the dealer just stares
“There’s something wrong here,” he thinks…

6

Joker: at the end of Batman Begins Commisioner Gordon gives Batman a Joker card as evidence from a crime scene.

7

Deck of Cards (sometimes called The Solider’s Bible) was a glurgy song from the late 40s, sung by Tex Ritter, written by T. Texas Tyler, famously covered by Wink Martindale and Wispering Bill Anderson. The song asigns meaning to each card in a deck with nausiating lines like “When I see the “KING”, it reminds me that there is but one King of Heaven, God Almighty;”.

8

In “An Officer and a Gentlemen” the trainees are in a low-pressure tank to simulate oxygen deprivation. They take out a deck of cards to see how long they can concentrate on it. Brian Keith starts out correctly but pretty soon he’s just saying “Ace of Spades…ace of spades…ace of spades…” and then Mayo has to rescue him.

9

Dylan’s “Lily, Rosemary & the Jack of Hearts”:

Backstage the girls were playing 5 card stud by the stairs
Lily had two queens and she was hoping for a third to match her pairs.
Outside the streets were filling up and the window was opened wide
A gentle breeze was blowing, you could feel it from inside.
Lily called another bet and drew up the Jack of Hearts.

10

And the Reprise:

The Queen of Diamonds let you down, she was just an empty fable.
The Queen of Hearts you say you’ve never met.
Your twisted dreams have found you out and they finally turned the table.
They stole your dreams and paid you with regret.

11

I’m also not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but in The Ring, Naomi Watts is investigating her niece’s death and while questioning the manager of the cabin the girl had stayed at, he tries unsuccessfully to show her a card trick where he guesses which one she picked. After a few incorrect guesses he says" seven of spades" which is still wrong, but Naomi says “you guessed it” presumably to shut him up. The number seven figures prominently in the movie, but you don’t know that yet, so it was kind of a forshadowing element.

12

Looking more for physical manifestations of the cards as opposed to symbolic ones. So referring to a woman as “the queen of hearts” wouldn’t count because she’s a woman and not actually a pasteboard card.

For the game aspect of the thread there’s no need to repeat a card that’s already been “played” (but if you simply must, go ahead) and it should be a specific card rather than an entire rank or suit. So a “king that reminds of the one king in heaven” doesn’t fit unless the song assigns a suit to it.

13

“Deck of Cards” in Snopes’ Glurge Gallery

14

the ace of clubs and spades, the 8 of clubs and spades - ‘dead mans hand’. This was described in a novel I read years ago ( can’t recall the name) about americans held hostage in soviet russia. They were kept in a recreation of an american town where it was their job to train russians on how to act american to assimiliate into american life. One character describes the dead mans hand and states that he tells the russians it’s something else, so as to introduce an incorrect element into their knowledge, I forget what hand he actually said was the dead man hand.

king of spades - in the 1936 movie The Plainsman. It appeared as the kicker in the dead mans hand as shown in the film.

15

In the movie “King of Hearts” the main character gets his “name” during a card game.

16

There’s a Jack of Diamonds on Golden Earring’s Cut album. It’s being, well cut, by a bullet. There are also lots of cats in the video for Twilight Zone, I’m guessing because of the album cover.

17

I don’t know anything about it, but there’s a movie from 1923 named, Nine of Spades. It may not fit with the OP…but I thought it sounded cool.

18

Townes Van Zandt’s song Mr. Gold and Mr. Mud features the King and Queen of Clubs, the Ace of Diamonds, and a bunch of others that I can’t quite identify from the lyrics.

The Diamonds favored the underdog for a change.

19

In Bizet’s opera “Carmen”:

Not a specific card, but she keeps on picking up diamonds and spades, signifying death (which turns up later in that act).

20

How about this one?

Phoebe Snow, “All Over”:

Nine of diamonds, nine of diamonds
Lord, that’s a lucky card.
We’ll celebrate it, when we’ve made it,
I’ll jump all over your yard