29 Dec 2016

The Man with the Golden Arm (USA, 1955)

The Man with the Golden Arm (USA, 1955). Director: Otto Preminger. Stars: Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, Eleanor Parker, Darren McGavin...

Sinatra plays Frankie Machine, arriving home to a run-down Chicago neighborbood, fresh off the bus from a rehab/prison facility, tries to avoid his old life as a skilled card dealer and heroin addict...

Chicago was of course the pinball capital of North America, being home to the giants of the industry, so perhaps it’s normal that one finds a couple of old machines on the sidewalk?! In the opening scene, we can spot a pair of “Majors - 1941” (Chicago Coin, 1941), which were already pretty old by the time the movie was shot...


In Frankie’s hangout bar, there’s a headless machine probably from the early-to-mid 1930s. By about 1936 or so, machines with backboxes (heads) were taking over, even if the heads were often only a few inches tall. It’s hard to identify the actual machine because back in the 1930s, there were so many machines being made... for example, according to the Internet Pinball Database, there were 309 machines made in 1935 alone, by some 54 different companies!



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