pinballspotting: black and white

Showing posts with label black and white. Show all posts

29 Dec 2016

Quicksand (USA, 1950)

Quicksand (USA, 1950). Director: Irving Pichel. Stars: Mickey Rooney, Jeanne Cagney, Peter Lorre, Barbara Bates...

Rooney makes one stupid decision after another. To impress his date (Jeanne Cagney), he’s gotta have cash, so he borrows money from the cash register where he works... of course things go wrong, and get worse and worse...

In the diner where Jeanne works we can spot an aviation-themed pinball...
Fleet (Bally, 1940)...

Nick (Peter Lorre) runs a penny arcade (I include these shots because there are a lot of other vintage coin-operated amusement machines that may interest someone)...

Rooney and Jeanne go for some pinball, and we can spot a Big Hit (Exhibit, 1946) partially visible on the left, and a Ballerina (Bally, 1948) that she plays...

Jeanne Cagney wins a payout after one ball (she knows the trick because she used to work at the arcade)... “Hey Nick! Pay me! I hit the jackpot.” Lorre begrudgingly comes over...

He pays her, but then puts an “Out of Order” sign on it saying “That’s all for you.”...

Later there’s a reverse angle on Ballerina, with a card-themed game (not necessarily a pinball) on the left...

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!

Thieves’ Highway (USA, 1949)

Thieves’ Highway (USA, 1949). Director: Jules Dassin. Stars: Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Millard Mitchell...

Written by A.I. Bezzerides (based on his novel), who also wrote They Drive By Night (1940), which I featured near the beginning of this blog in this post.

The subject matter is similar... dealing with truckers driving long hours to haul loads as quickly as possible, but this one focuses more on greed and the nasty dealings in the produce industry. I prefer They Drive By Night, but there are a couple of great scenes in this one.

Valentina walks into a restaurant in the market area and we can spot the backboxes of two machines through the window...

The first machine is a Smarty (Williams, 1946)...

The second machine is a Super Score (Chicago Coin, 1946)...

Both pinball machines were originally manufactured flipperless. However, since the first flipper machine came out in December 1947 and made flipperless ones obsolete overnight, operators may have retrofitted them with flippers by the time the movie was filmed. It’s impossible to tell from what we can see in the footage.

Ida Lupino: Out of the Fog (USA, 1941) and Road House (USA, 1948)

Out of the Fog (USA, 1941)
Director: Anatole Litvak. Stars: Ida Lupino, John Garfield, Thomas Mitchell, Eddie Albert, George Tobias...

I’ve seen this movie many many times, but mostly in the 80s and early 90s. It was one of the three movies with the great Ida Lupino in it that CBC had in their Warner Bros. late night movie collection. But I had not remembered the scene with pinball machines in it until seeing my friend Mark Loeser’s supercut video that is projected in a loop at the North Star bar in Montreal.

Ida walks into a drug store / soda shop, and there’s a kid playing a Snooks (Stoner, 1939)...

The “kid”, played by Walter Tetley (better known as a voice actor due to his perennially adolescent voice) wins a payout, exclaiming “I hit it! I hit it! For once in my life I beat the machine!” then he rushes over to the bartender and says “Fourty-eight thousand! Pay me nine nickels!”. In those days, pinballs were flipperless gambling machines...

There’s something a bit strange about the backbox... it has a second section on top which isn’t seen in the flyers on IPDB.

Behind the Snooks machine is the one with the famous mysterious cabinet which could be a Rink (Genco Manufacturing Co., 1939), as seen in They Drive By Night (1940), also starring Ida Lupino, which I wrote about previously in this post.

Road House (USA, 1948)
Director: Jean Negulesco. Stars: Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Celeste Holm, Richard Widmark...

An Argentine (Genco, 1941) pinball machine can be spotted in the opening credits and a few scenes...

Cornel Wilde and Richard Widmark (who plays Jefty, the owner of the titular road house) walking by the machine...

And to my knowledge, this is the only other movie scene where Ida appears in the same frame as a pinball machine...

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...

Dead Ringer (USA, 1964)

Dead Ringer (USA, 1964). Director: Paul Henreid. Stars: Bette Davis, Karl Malden, Peter Lawford...

A not great but watchable thriller with Bette Davis playing twin sisters (the second film in which she does so).

There’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it glimpse of two pinball machines in a bar as Bette walks by in a huge hat and veil. One is a Deluxe Duette (Gottlieb, 1955) and the other I could not identify. [Sorry about the poor quality of the image... I had to photograph my TV screen, and it’s such a quick scene. The better shot is the second one, when Bette’s almost out of view...]

Bette Davis bonus:
A much earlier film Bette starred in was Special Agent (USA, 1935) directed by William Keighley. George Brent goes undercover to bring down a racketeer with Bette’s help.

There’s a scene in the racketeer’s penny arcade, where we can spot some very early pinball machines, definitely flipperless, possibly bumperless for the most part, but in any case, difficult to identify...

room91334 has managed to identify the one in this first photo as a Major League (Model 44) (PAMCO, 1934)... the others could very well be the same machines, or similar...

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...

The Whole Shootin’ Match (USA, 1978)

The Whole Shootin’ Match (USA, 1978). Director: Eagle Pennell. Stars: Lou Perryman, Sonny Carl Davis, Doris Hargrave.

I was unaware of this film and director until I followed a trail from his fellow Austin, Texas based filmmaker Richard Linklater, who has said that this film was the one that made him believe it was possible to make films. Robert Redford has said that after seeing this film, he was inspired to start the Sundance Institute.

It’s a low-budget independent production shot in black & white on 16mm. There’s some pretty nice music by Pennell’s brother. The story follows two buddies who can’t seem to hold down jobs, and try to come up with ideas to get rich quick. They drink a lot, flirt with women, and of them is a tinkerer, trying to come up with a money-making gadget.

In a scene in a bar restroom, two women get into a fight over one of the guys (the one who’s married!). The fight moves out into the bar, knocking over a pile of boxes next to a Spirit of 76 (Gottlieb, 1975) machine...

L'attentat (France, 1966)

L'attentat (France, 1966). Director: Jean-François Davy. Starring: Roger Sweig, Marie-Hélène Broca, Dominique Erlanger...

Thanks for Mark Loeser for mentioning this film to me whilst I was trying to amateurishly fix a bug with his pinball machine....

It’s a French “New Wave” film about a disillusioned pinball repair man who can barely make ends meet and is frustrated with society.

Wanting to get things happening with the Leftist movement, he eventually plants a bomb in a train station and rigs up a pinball machine to trigger it from a distance when it scores 500 points.

First up on his rounds, a Ship-Mates (Gottlieb, 1964)...

A pinball player says to him whilst he’s repairing a machine, “That must be a cool job”, but he replies “Yeah, it seems so in the beginning.” Then he goes on to say that “Pinball is like politics. You need reflexes and to be alert.”...

When he makes his rounds, a bartender calls him “Mr. Gottlieb”, yet at this other place, there are a couple of Williams machines... Big Chief (Williams, 1965) and a Merry Widow (Williams, 1963)...