Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman)’s Timeline and Summary
- We first meet Henry when Johnny goes to meet him. Henry's super hungover and burned out from being on the run from the law for the last few years.
- Henry eventually agrees to teach Johnny the big con, but he reminds Johnny that the only way to run a big con is to be part of a team and to trust the people around you.
- Henry sits down with his criminal buddies and cooks up a big scheme for taking down Lonnegan.
- He plans on using a fake betting shop and a scheme called "The Wire" to break the guy.
- But before Henry can con Lonnegan, he needs to make contact with the guy and get under his skin to throw him off-balance.
- So Henry gets himself into one of Lonnegan's illegal card games and cheats the guy out of fifteen thousand dollars. Lonnegan's furious, but he can't call Henry out because Lonnegan has been cheating, too.
- Henry sets up a fake betting parlor and pretends to have no clue that Johnny is betraying him to Lonnegan. Of course, this is what he wants Lonnegan to think.
- When he realizes that Johnny has assassins after him, Henry hires a gunman to keep an eye on Johnny.
- And it's a good thing he does, because the gunman ends up having to kill an assassin named Salino just as she's about to kill Johnny.
- In the final scene, Henry and Johnny pull off the big con.
- It seems as though Johnny has sold Henry out to the FBI though, so Henry pulls a gun and shoots Johnny dead. Then an FBI agent shoots Henry dead…or so we may think.
- Once Lt. Snyder and Doyle Lonnegan are gone, Henry hops back up and smiles at Johnny.
- He offers Johnny his share of the loot, but Johnny turns it down because he'd only blow it anyway.