Harper (USA, 1966)

Harper (USA, 1966)

Director: Jack Smight. Stars: Paul Newman, Lauren Bacall, Julie Harris, Janet Leigh, Robert Wagner...

Newman plays Harper, a private investigator who gets embroiled in a case and meets some crazy people. His character is a little bit of an S.O.B., tough, but loses some fights, quite witty and very entertaining to watch.

In some joint, he pumps a waitress for information next to a pinball machine...

He then talks to the barman, and finally asks for some dimes, walks over to the pinball machines -- Cross Country (Bally, 1963) and Go-Cart (Keeney, 1963) -- sticks his gum under a table, but before he's able to coin one of them up, he hears a cop car screech in and he goes to hide in the restroom to avoid them...

Although this blog is not about jukeboxes, this one was intriguing and easy enough to identify, so why not... At one point Harper ends up in a bar trying to get some info from Shelley Winters. We can spot a 1963 Rowe/AMI JAL model jukebox with a cool little animation thing (here's a fuzzy animated GIF showing that a bit)...

Not-quite Pinball Bonus:

Nine years later, they made a sequel called The Drowning Pool (USA, 1975)  and Harper embarks on another adventure. It was directed by Stuart Rosenberg and starred Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Franciosa, Melanie Griffith...

There's a scene in a bar where Harper talks to Richard Jaeckel and in the background, blurry, I believe is a pinball machine, but of course, too hard to identify. There appears to be a jukebox as well, again, too blurry to identify...

No Pinball Bonus:

Paul Newman also starred in The Hustler (USA,1961) which features several pool halls. There are no pinballs, but there are some interesting coin-operated machines...

Intro scene has an All-Star Deluxe Bowler (Bally, 1958)...

In a later scene in a bus station, we can spot a Deluxe Short-Stop (Williams, 1958) baseball (with part of cabinet painted over in a solid color), a rifle / gun game that looks like a Crossfire (Williams, 1956) and a Ten Strike (or Ten Pins), (Williams, 1957), a two-player, mechanically-animated manikin bowling game...

In the rest rooms, we can spot a Zodiac fortune teller / horoscope machine. It appears to be an "Astroscope", made by Crabb Manufacturing circa 1939. I spotted this machine before, in Dazed And Confused (USA, 1993), see this post...

The "Is this your lucky day?" seems to be an optional topper...

Crack-Up (USA, 1946)

Crack-Up (USA, 1946). Director: Irving Reis. Stars: Pat O'Brien, Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall...

A crime drama with noir influences. Good ol’ Pat O'Brien thinks he was in a train wreck, goes a little crazy down at the art museum he’s a curator at. While trying to figure out what really happened and why, he ends up in a bustling penny arcade, trying to avoid cops with Claire Trevor.

A friend of his has this to say about them: “I’m very fond of arcades. They give the visitor a wonderful cross-section of average people; hard-working, law-abiding, looking for a little fun. The human pursuit is reduced here to the simplest terms. You change a half-dollar for a handful of hope. Five shots at happiness for a nickel.”

I spotted this stuff a couple of years ago, but was too intimidated trying to identify this era of pinball machines... there were so many manufacturers making them before WWII. Finally, I tackled it, and identified a good number of them, plus a bat game or two...

From left to right: Exposition (Chicago Coin, 1938),  Mr. Chips (Genco, 1939),  Sports (Chicago Coin, 1939),  Keen-a-Ball (Gottlieb, 1939)  (just a corner of the backbox visible over O’Brien’s left shoulder), and Avalon (Exhibit, 1939)...

On the left, a bit of the backbox of a Nippy (Chicago Coin, 1939), and on the right the cabinet of another Mr. Chips (Genco, 1939)...

It was difficult to get a good still showing the full machine since it was a moving shot, so here are a couple... as the pair continues past the Mr. Chips machine, an O'Boy (Chicago Coin, 1939) comes into view...

... and now the front end of the O’Boy cabinet and behind it a Texas Leaguer  (Keeney, 1941) bat / baseball game...

Whilst O’Brien plays a Challenger counter top pistol shooting game (A.B.T. MFG Co. 1946), we can spot behind them a Jolly (Chicago Coin, 1940) (the one with the “1 2 3 4 5 6″ on the backglass), and the Nippy (Chicago Coin, 1939) seen earlier...

Whilst O’Brien is about to take care of an annoying guy by showing his punching strength, we spot a “Coast Leaguer” baseball bat machine, manufacturer and date unknown... (a Billboard ad lists it in 1942)...

Whilst O’Brien puts a coin in the Challenger machine, we can spot a Rotation (Stoner, 1940) on the right...

They Drive By Night (USA, 1940)

They Drive By Night (USA, 1940). Director: Raoul Walsh. Starring: George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino...

When I first started pinballspotting, this is one movie that came to mind immediately. I’ve seen it many times since first getting into the 1930-40s black & white Warner Bros. classics back on late-night TV in the early 80s.

However, I hesitated to post it because of the two machines spotted, I can still only identify one of them despite a good view of the cabinet and part of the playfield. But this one is interesting because it’s quite an old film.

The machines spotted in this movie are flipperless; flippers only appeared in late 1947. So the player launched the ball, and tried to shake the machine just enough to influence where it would go and avoid tilting.

A minor character, played by Roscoe Karns, is seen playing pinball in two comedic scenes. Rather than shake the machine, he (and an onlooker) jerk and contort their bodies trying to influence the ball. Here’s the first scene in a truck stop diner, with the table whose cabinet appears to be a Rink (Genco Manufacturing Co., 1939) [Note: it doesn’t match the photos on ipdb, but it does in this one on photoseeum]...

There are shots of the ball moving on the playfield, which are hilarious because it moves unnaturally and is so obviously done with a magnet underneath. The playfield turns out to be from a Ricochet (Stoner Manufacturing Co., 1937), but the cabinet and backbox of that table do not match what we see in the other shots…

In the second scene, he plays a Big Six (J. H. Keeney and Company Inc., 1939)...

He’s on his last game, and will finally be able to go back to his job, but then is dismayed when he wins 58 free games and will never get out of there. In the background, we can see someone playing the Rink/Ricochet machine from the first scene...

Payout.

pinballspotting, an introduction

I like old pinball machines and started playing an obsessional game, spotting them in movies I watched, collecting still images and then trying to identify them. In this blog, I document the fruits of that effort. My profuse thanks to the internet pinball database, which is an invaluable resource.

Originally this blog was on tumblr, but I finally realised that it wasn't the right venue for it. That site seems more geared toward single-image posts rather than text illustrated with photos. I also prefer the better search capabilities here. So I've moved all the posts made there from late December 2014 to late December 2016 to here.

I've been playing this "game" for a couple of years, and whilst I was preparing some stuff in advance for the original incarnation of this blog in late 2014 – organizing stills & screen grabs, getting links to the movies and machines – I stumbled upon an extensive list of pinball machine sightings in movies over at pingeek's Pinball In The Movies. Not sure how I missed that page before!

However, I'm going to avoid peeking at pingeek's list so I can spot pinball machines in a more serendipitous manner. So this is more of a personal blog of what I've spotted rather than attempting to be an extensive list.

I'm interested in vintage pinball tables, say roughly up to the mid-80s.

Also unbeknownst to me when I had started this blog originally, my friend Mark Loeser had been compiling a "supercut" video featuring pinball in movies. In late 2015, he finally revealed his secret project, and occasionally I "steal" some "spottings" from it. I provide him a list of spottings I've made in case he didn't have them already. The current version of this supercut is projected in a continuous loop at the North Star pinball bar in Montreal, Canada.

And then in 2017, I took over the supercut and this blog has fallen a bit by the wayside, and the serendipitous aspect has given way to more active searching and consultation of pingeek's list.

Thanks for looking,
James Schidlowsky.

P.S. Comments & questions are appreciated, but please refrain from suggesting movies, since I prefer to discover them myself.