Flesh and Bone (USA, 1993)

Flesh and Bone (USA, 1993). Director: Steve Kloves. Stars: Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, James Caan, Gwyneth Paltrow...

Quaid plays a guy who operates a bunch of vending machines, jukeboxes, etc in rural america. At one point he checks out a cigarette machine in a warehouse filled with coin-operated machines of all sorts.

From left to right: 3 of the same bingo machine, Night Club (Bally, 1956). Then some pinballs: Fireball Classic (Bally, 1985), Doozie (Williams, 1968), Big Shot (Gottlieb, 1973), and a Target Alpha (Gottlieb, 1976)...

Bonus:
After being being ripped off by the claw crane machine (Quaid explains that the watch prize she was trying to grab is greased), Meg wanders around the various machines and amusements...

She finds a Gypsy Grandma fortune teller machine  (Genco, 1957) and gets her fortune...

Other bonus:
Brainy Betty: 10 cents to play tic-tac-toe against a live chicken! I couldn’t find any info about this particular machine, or even if the chickens were trained or it was some sort of electro-mechanical computer trick. This type of thing existed in the 60s, and apparently even into the early 90s in NYC’s Chinatown... Quaid’s advice to a curious kid: save your dimes for the jukebox....

Bird wins.

Portland Exposé (USA, 1957)

Portland Exposé (USA, 1957). Director: Harold Schuster. Stars: Edward Binns, Carolyn Craig, Virginia Gregg...

A low-budget sortof gangster noir, although with some rougher stuff than most. It does seem, as the main character remarks, that these organized crime goons and their methods are from another era, but apparently, this kind of thing was really going on in the 50s in Portland, OR.

The basic story is that a tavern owner is forced by the mob to run his place “wide open”, with all that evil stuff like slot machines, pinball machines, general gambling and B-girls. When his daughter is attacked by one of the gangsters, he starts collecting evidence in order to bring the syndicate down.

In the beginning, a local pinball machine supplier manages to convince the tavern owner to take a pinball machine, who doesn’t want more because he’s afraid of the evil gambling aspect. It’s a Yuma Arizona (United, 1950). BTW, The jukebox looks like it’s a 1954 Wurlitzer model 1700...

It was still the early days of flippers, and this machine had a pair that were activated simultaneously with one button. The kid even stands on one side to play after putting in a coin.

The gangsters rough up the pinball supplier to get his list of clients so they can move in on them. We spot a bunch of machines that end up in the tavern. In the foreground, an Ump (Stoner, 1941), and directly behind that is a Super Hockey (Chicago Coin, 1949), and on the right is the Yuma Arizona (United, 1950) again. Behind the goon’s head we can spot a bit of a Bally Beauty (Bally, 1952) bingo machine...

Behind the goon is the backbox or backglass of a “Match Bowler” (Chicago Coin, circa 1952) bowling machine...

As the goons leave, we spot a Pin-Bowler (Chicago Coin, 1949)...

Now the tavern is in full swing, with people playing the Yuma Arizona (United, 1950), and in the background we see bits of the Pin-Bowler (Chicago Coin, 1949) and Bally Beauty (Bally, 1952) bingo machine.

The place has a bunch of slot machines and we can spot a bit of the Super Hockey (Chicago Coin, 1949) on the left...

Here’s a closer shot of the Bally Beauty (Bally, 1952) bingo machine...

And a closer shot of the Pin-Bowler (Chicago Coin, 1949)...

And here’s the baseball-themed Ump (Stoner, 1941) again...