The Gator McKlusky duology (USA, 1973 & 1976)

The Gator McKlusky duology : two films starring Burt Reynolds wherein he played a character named Gator McKlusky. They are White Lightning (1973) and Gator (1976)...

White Lightning (USA, 1973)
Director: Joseph Sargent.  Starring: Burt Reynolds, Jennifer Billingsley, Ned Beatty, Bo Hopkins...

Skeeter (Gator's grandpa) plays a Rack-A-Ball (Gottlieb, 1962) on the porch of the family home...

There are flippers, but he doesn't seem to use them much, preferring to nudge the machine like in the days before flippers.

Skeeter: Just can't beat one of these Sears-Roebuck pinball machines, no siree!
Sheriff Connors: You gotta hit the flippers there once a while.
Skeeter: I hit the flippers all the time!

Sears-Roebuck may possibly have distributed Gottlieb pinball machines. The only info I could find on this is that they sold a bagatelle table called "Happi Time" in the 1930s.

Gator  (USA, 1976)
Director: Burt Reynolds.  Starring:  Burt Reynolds, Jack Weston, Lauren Hutton, Jerry Reed...

Scene 1: Southside Shuffle Disco... Jerry Reed goes in to collect his protection money and we can spot a couple of pinball machines in the background: on the left is a Pot 'O' Gold (Williams, 1965)  [although the cabinet might not be right.] On the right is a Playtime (Chicago Coin, 1968)...

On the right of the image, there seems to be an arcade game, which at the time would likely be a car-racing type or a rifle/shooting type?

Scene 2: Hard-Hearted Hannah's.  Reed shows Reynolds the ropes on collection. We can spot an animal-themed pitch & bat game,  Target Gallery (Midway, 1962).

Not getting the results he wanted, i.e. cash, Reed decides to take out the place's Wurlitzer 3700 - Americana jukebox (Wurlitzer, 1972/73)...

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.