Pinballspotting: Unidentifiables

Several pinballspottings that are too blurry, far in the background or just plain too difficult to identify due to lack of clues. Here are a few, in chronological order...

Black Angel (USA, 1946)
Director: Roy William Neill.  Stars: Dan Duryea, June Vincent, Peter Lorre, Broderick Crawford...

Two flipperless and headless machines. Flippers arrived in 1947, i.e. after this movie was released, and headless machines were pretty much over by the later 30s, in favor of backboxes with illuminated backglasses. However, these are too tough to identify without more clues. For example, for 1935 alone, ipdb lists 309 machines from 54 different manufacturers!

Criss Cross (USA, 1949)
Director: Robert Siodmak.  Stars: Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea...

There's a flipperless and headless pinball machine, and the cabinet artwork looks like one of the ones in the above-mentioned Black Angel, as well as The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) (see this post) and it could well be the exact same machine. e.g. the set dressers ask for an old pinball machine and this is what they have in their props department...

Midnight Cowboy (USA, 1969)
Director: John Schlesinger.  Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Sylvia Miles, Brenda Vaccaro...

Voight is playing a rifle game, probably a mid-50s Williams (the backglass is similar to Cross Fire but with a different theme). Far in the background, three pinball machines, two of which are the same...

The guy talking to him is in front of another rifle game with a space theme, in the background are two of the same rifle game...

Five Easy Pieces (USA, 1970)
Director: Bob Rafelson.  Stars: Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Billy Green Bush, Sally Struthers...

Jack and friends are in a bowling alley, and we can spot a row of pinball machines in the background, too blurry to easily make out...

Porky's (USA, 1981)
Director: Bob Clark.  Stars: Dan Monahan, Mark Herrier, Wyatt Knight, Kim Cattrall, Susan Clark...

Set in Florida in 1954. A couple of machines in the corner of Porky's place. In a bad movie like this, I highly doubt that the machines are even remotely from the same time period, so even though I cannot identify them, I will declare this another pinball anachronism.

As an aside, the neon-ringed clock looks just like the one in Montreal's Le cheval blanc brewpub, which I used to frequent...

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.

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.

Tchao Pantin (France, 1983)

Tchao Pantin (France, 1983). Director: Claude Berri. Stars: Coluche, Richard Anconina, Agnès Soral, Philippe Léotard...

Coluche was a famous stand-up comedian in France, and this was one of his few dramatic roles (for which he won a César award for best actor). Here he plays a sad, middle-aged, solitary gas-station attendant on the night shift, with a bottle for company. The atmosphere is dark and often rainy, in a working-class neighborhood in North Paris. He strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young small-time drug dealer (Anconina) who comes into his station one night.

The latter hangs out in cafés and bars, and in one of them, we can spot a couple of pinball machines, Devil’s Dare (Gottlieb, 1982) and Pink Panther (Gottlieb, 1981)...

In a later scene, we can spot a Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man Pinball (Bally, 1982)...

Bonus: Anconina playing a Barcrest “Ambassadeur 2000” slot machine...

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...

Bad Day at Black Rock (USA, 1955)

Bad Day at Black Rock (USA, 1955). Director: John Sturges. Stars: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis...

This one is thanks to my friend Mark Loeser, creator of the pinball supercut video that is projected in a loop at the North Star pinball bar in Montreal, Canada. Even though this blog is more about me stumbling upon pinball appearances in movies, sometimes I can’t resist dipping into sources like this.

Anyway, it’s just after World War II ended, and good ol’ Spencer tracy arrives in a one-horse town, looking for some answers. Everyone in town makes it clear that he is most unwelcome.

At one point Ernest Borgnine disrupts his meal, pushing for a fight. In the background, Robert Ryan plays a Follies of 1940 (Genco, 1939). The whole scene lasts several minutes, and the machine is visible a lot of the time...

The fight happens... and hey, that’s Lee Marvin sitting there...

So nice to see an old machine like this in color...

Robert Ryan was previously featured playing pinball in my post about the 1949 movie Caught.

Sleepwalk With Me (USA, 2012)

Sleepwalk With Me (USA, 2012). Directors: Mike Birbiglia, Seth Barrish. Stars: Mike Birbiglia, Lauren Ambrose, James Rebhorn, Carol Kane...

Caught this on netflix... a meh story of a stand-up comedian, and musings on his career, relationship and sleepwalking.

In a bar he frequents, there are a couple of scenes with a nice old wedgehead pinball machine... a Pro Pool (Gottlieb, 1973)...

  

Ha! The girl is a redhead like the one depicted on the playfield art...