September 29, 2020 • 46 mins
Today, pinball is seen as a sort of retro novelty -- it's enjoyable, kitschy and wholesome. Yet for decades, political officials in cities across the United States worried pinball might lead to the downfall of the nation's children, become a driving force for organized crime, and dissolve the moral fabric of the US. So what led to this odd war on pinball -- and why aren't people worried about these games in the modern day?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Uh, this is this is
a fun one. This is a neat one. My name
is Ben. My name is Noel Ben. You know we
only trade in fun. We don't do it well, that's
not sure. There there there have been the the odd
Nazi related ones or horrible sterilization. Yea, somehow they're still managed.
(00:49):
I mean they are ridiculous that that maybe they go
against the spirit of the show. But today's episode is
squarely within the spirit of the show because it's a
really innocuous thing that we all know. Some of us
may be better ahead it than others. But I don't
think anyone has ever thought of a pinball machine as
being like a tool of the devil. Not not in
(01:11):
our modern day. No, that's that's true. Uh, most of
us these days associate pinball with kind of like a
a retro vibe, you know what I mean, the days
of arcades, And I've always been fascinated by them. I
love them. Uh. Growing up a very eccentric neighbor, family
friends collected pinball machines for some reason. That's a cool
(01:34):
flexi collector item there. Yeah he had a barn like Pa,
you had a pinball barn. Yeah, he had a pinball
barn and he had you know, fixed it so that
you didn't have to use quarters. So to me, this
this guy was kind of a demi god. It did
not take much to impress me. But did you did
(01:54):
you get regular entry into the pinball barn then? Uh?
Huh Yeah? Yeah, like a child's dream come true? Dude,
What a cool neighbor. It was a cool guy, it was.
It was cool, very very strange dude. But I guess
that's a prerequisite for getting a pinball barn in the
first place. Secret murderer perhaps or their body is buried
beneath the pinball barn, you know. I I don't know,
(02:16):
but I thought the guy was so cool that if
I had found that out in my head being a
very creepy kid, it would have just made him cooler.
But still not as cool as our superproducer Casey Pegram,
who is here in a digital personhood. Before we hopped
on this show, Casey Casey said, look, I'm gonna hang
(02:38):
back for a while because I I just got lunch
so I mean so one. You know, number one favorite
thing people love to hear on a podcast is somebody
chewing into the mic mouth sound pegram we have. There
was a podcast that came out Canton, which one it was,
but one of the features, one of the things they
talked about was leaving those sounds in. I don't know
(03:00):
about you all, but I have a little bit of
miss aphony. I think we all do with certain sounds.
But in Casey, I didn't mean to blow up your spot.
I just love the idea, the fact that Noel and
I are the lunchtime entertainment. So we're gonna do our best.
We're gonna do our best to regale you. You guys
are very synackable. Yeah, try the veal we're here all
(03:21):
week or at least for the next couple hours. Um.
You know, I really last thing on the mouth sounds,
you guys. UM, there's this filter that we use, or
the suite of of plug ins for audio clean up
UM that has a mouth sound remover setting and it
has this like hell raiser puzzle box button that no
(03:42):
one should ever venture near, where it filters out everything
but the mouth sounds where you can hear just the
mouth sounds that it filters out and it is nightmare fuel,
my friends. Let me tell you that is terrifying. I
think I just had a spontaneous waking nightmare about that.
What's it to nightmare when you're awake? Is it a day? Maare?
(04:02):
It's just life, It's just life. There we go that. Well,
today we're going to talk about something, uh hopefully a
little less dark, but but we'll see where it goes.
So pinball. Um, none of the three of us are
pinball prodigies, but I think we all enjoy the game
and we all, you know, being roughly the same age,
(04:23):
we have a similar kind of idea of what pinball is.
But it might surprise you to know that once upon
a time here in the good old US of a
pinball was an enormously controversial thing. Yeah that's right, um,
just just really quickly. Uh. The the origins of pinball
(04:45):
come from a French table game called bagatelle, and the
first ever pinball machine was patent in eight seventy one.
But it's not the ones we think of today with
the little flippers and the little Yeah, there's a there's
a number of ways you can kind of make pinball
game more elaborate with targets that you hit and little
ways to sink the ball and double balls and all
(05:05):
that stuff to blow up your score. Honestly, I never
understand how to play a pinball game, like it's always
just a mystery to me. I'm just kind of like
shooting it at whatever seems cool. But there are definitely
people that very much know exactly how to get the
perfect score on some of these specific pinball michiganes, which
we'll get into it bit, but those have things like
flippers where you hit the buttons and you launch the
ball with a plunger and shoots the ball up into
(05:27):
this kind of rampi encased in glass, you know, table,
And then in this early version it was more like
what we think of today is maybe pachinko, where you're
shooting the ball and then it's popping around on these
little little pins hence pinball, I guess, and then it
just falls into whatever hole, sort of like ski ball
or something, but it goes up to the top and
(05:48):
then it bounces down. And that's still very much a
thing with pachinko. Not sure if it's exactly one to one,
but it's very similar, but in n that's when you
started to see the advent of the modern ball machine,
where you have those flippers that we're talking about, so
you could actually kind of control where the ball went
when it rolled back down that hill. If it didn't
go right down the middle, which is like the bane
(06:09):
of any pinball players existence, it goes to either left
of the right side, you have the opportunity to keep
the ball in play and flip it around the table
with those little flippy boys and that pinball machine. While
we would consider it, you know, quote unquote the modern
pinball game, it was still very different from what you
would see in your average retro arcade today. You could
(06:33):
try to tip or tilt the machine in your favor,
but you were very much at the mercy of the
random movements bounds of the ball. And because of that
element of chance, people started gambling on pinball games. So
of course, anybody has been to Vegas or Macau or
something can assure you that some people will gamble on
(06:56):
virtually anything, but gambling on pinball was a cool like
it was a cool happening thing to do. People would
get prizes all the way from like free games or
you know, the kind of stuff you would win at
ski ball play chuck e cheese, all the way up
to pretty expensive stuff like fine china or jewelry. And
(07:17):
soon this affected the reputation of pinball. What we think
of is like a fun neat arcade game was seen
as this uh machine built for iniquity that catered to
like Slee's bags, uh low lives and ne'er do wells. Yeah,
(07:39):
And if I'm not mistaken, the reason it's just in
the same way like maybe video poker machines, you know,
sort of skirt the law in some parts of the
country where they can get away with it not being
considered illegal gambling by like just handing out tickets or
making things like an equivalent of like you know, goods
and services, I guess, but they don't actually give you cash, right, Um.
(07:59):
And I think that was the deal with early pinball,
because you know, gambling was outlawed in in in many places,
and um, this was sort of a way around that.
But like you said, ben Um, in Chicago in particular,
pinball machine started getting associated with organized crime because Chicago,
as we know, was a massive, you know, sort of
(08:21):
hub of mob um and gangster activity, and these machines
were cash based, and it became kind of like a
way to make a quick buck by criminals, maybe in
these back rooms and these kind of illegal gambling parlors,
and it was easy to make a lot of money
(08:42):
at scale, like if you were organized uh an organized
crime ring and he wanted that income stream, pinball would
be a great thing to hop onto. I mean, think
about it. So gambling, we would ordinarily think of things
like card games, but with these gaming machines or coin
opera rated the players did not have to know the
(09:03):
rules like a lot of us don't for pinball, and
the you know, full disclosure, I have no idea what's
going on when I when I pulled that plunger, I'm
just holding on. And the unlike a card game, like
a mid to high stakes poker game or something, you
didn't have to have much money at all to play pinball.
And now we see pinball as entertainment, but back then
(09:28):
it was just seen as almost like another kind of
slot machine. Right, yeah, that's right, and um, it's pretty cool.
In the research for this game, our research associate extraordinaire
stumbled upon a fantastic article from the Portland Mercury that
quotes a girl friend of the show and the network
(09:48):
a guy that I've worked with on the podcast called
Murder and Oregon, a gentleman by the name of Phil
Stanford who wrote a book called Portland Confidential, and it
was all about just kind of how Portland's has this
reputation of being this sort of shining liberal bastion on
a hill, but it actually has has been a a
place rife with corruption for a very long time. And
(10:08):
that's what Murdering organs about. But he specifically talks about
um in an interview he did with the Portland Mercury
about how pinball machines were kind of seen as a gateway,
uh to gambling, to like more heavy gambling, the way
marijuana is today. And he says, quote, the people who
wanted to get rid of slot machines went after pinball
machines too much in the same way that law enforcement
(10:29):
goes after marijuana. UM, So it was kind of perceived
as being a gateway into more heavy vices and types
of gambling. It reminds me of that uh oh, where
is that song from the musical Trouble. It's all about
playing pool? Oh, that's the music man music man, where
were the Knickerbocker's trouble. Yeah, with a capital T that
(10:53):
rhymes with P that stands for pool. I love that.
Seth McFarland from Family Guy is a great cover of
that was weird, but but you're you're absolutely right it was.
It was seen kind of as a gateway to gambling
into wickedness and sin. And part of this public perception
I think came about because people were teetotalers during the
(11:16):
age of Prohibition needed something else to focus on. So
we know that, we know that law enforcement in Portland's,
Chicago other places had always kind of given pinball the
side eye because they knew it was connected to gambling. Uh.
Churches school boards also said, you know, this is making
your kids bad. It seems like fun, but little Johnny
(11:38):
is gonna steal a nickel. The next thing you know,
he's gonna hold up a bank. They're skipping school. Uh,
they're gonna go hungry. These kids are starving to death
because they keep putting their money into the devil's balls.
I'm just making things up. I like it. I like it. No,
it's true. Um and this Alice Obscure as a great
(12:00):
article about this called the war on pinball, and they
categorized these folks, um, these anti fund types as crusading
do gooders, which I love because you're right. Then they
needed something else to spoil people's good times with and
and this was what it was. Uh. And so it
did leave this outcry and this you know, this rallying
around pinball being sort of like you know, doorway to
(12:24):
iniquity led to pinball being banned a lot of cities,
especially New York. And that specifically because New York had
this mayor you've probably heard of. Uh, it's got a
pretty big airport named after him, Mayor fear Ello LaGuardia. Um.
He was a massive anti pinball guy. He hated the game.
(12:45):
And in nine three he came into office with this
anti crime, anti mob kind of you know platform, and
he has this great quote where he he self proclaimedly
wanted to quote drive the bums out of town. Yeah.
He got rid of the illegal slot machines, had quite
a few of them dumped into the Hudson River in
(13:07):
nineteen thirty five, just after he's elected to let the
public and the mafia know that he meant business. And
so mobsters replaced the slot machines with pinball machines, and
he was like, you're not getting past me. As a
matter of fact. In Free for All News, we have
a great quote from LaGuardia where he says the pinball
(13:27):
machine racket is a direct out growth of the slot
machine racket. And as was the case, whether it's evil
parents is dominated by interest heavily tainted with criminality. There
was no difference between the two rackets other than the
more subtle and furtive methods of robbing the public. It's
twenty million dollar profits taken from the pockets of school
children in the form of nickels and dimes given to
(13:50):
them as lunch money. Like this was his passion project.
Almost yeah, and it's because, like we were saying earlier,
I mean, gambling was illegal. These slot machines were a
lead goal. And because pinball machines sort of occupied this
gray area. Um, but kids were allowed to play them.
But they had like a payout. You could win um
by you know, dumping all your nickels in, you know,
(14:11):
your lunch money or whatever. Um. God forbid the bullies
that like, you know, beat up other kids to steal
their nickels and dimes, you know, that. You know, that image,
classic image of like the bully kid holding the kid
up by his ankles and shaking him until all his
nickels fell out, That's what I'm picturing. And then just
scooping all that up and going right to the arcade. Um.
You know, and those kids are already on a on
(14:33):
a very dire path to criminality. So this is just
enforcing that. Um. And and La Guardia wasn't standing for it. Um,
You're right, Ben, he had already had the slot machines
dumped in the river, and next he had his sight
set on the sort of de facto gambling machines. And
as if that moral panic angle wasn't enough to get
(14:55):
people on his side, just in case they also start,
Lombardy and his team also started rolling out anti pinball statements. Uh,
in a very weird flex. When the Japanese military at
the time bombed Pearl Harbor in one December seven, Mayor
LaGuardia went patriotic with it. It was like, not only
(15:18):
is pinball morally terrible and the cause of starving children
and criminals, but uh, but also it's a waste of
America's valuable resources. We're wasting copper, aluminum and nickel making
these devil ball machines, when when we could be sending
that to our our boys on the front lines, right
(15:40):
to make guns and bullets and weapons of war, which
is so much better for the world. I do love
too that he referred to the pinball machines as insidious
nickel steelers. I think that should be the name of
a sports team. I don't know, maybe a band, or
maybe a comedy troupe, who knows. H So LaGuardia had
(16:06):
the city council on his side, he had public opinion
on his side because he's done such a good job
at making the case for this and tying it to
our precious resources. And as we know, during this time
like it was important to be able to you know,
fund the war effort. And it was easy because patriot
patriotism was rampant. After an event like the bombing of
Pearl Harbor, an attack on you know, American soil, we
(16:27):
have to do everything we can, you know, pull in
together to defeat this enemy, this common enemy. And so
he got the city council to approve a ban on
pinball machines in public places, um even ones that didn't
use the payout system or any kind of you know,
even like with of gambling. That just the machines themselves
were enough because they were a waste of time. Uh,
(16:50):
they were breeding this idea of criminality. They were a
gateway into more serious gambling. And they were a waste
of materials. Yeah. Absolutely. And when LaGuardia and the various
police chiefs got together with the press and smashed pinball
machines with sledgehammers, they put their money where their mouth was.
(17:12):
You know. They dumped this stuff into barges bound for
Long Island Sound. And just like that Mental Floss article
we referenced earlier mentions. Uh, the New York Times got
ahold of this headline and they noted that cutting down
pinball manufacturing at least was making a meaningful contribution to
(17:33):
the war effort. The military got ten thousand pounds of
scrap metal courtesy of pinball machines, and that was enough
if you did the math to make four two thousand
pound bombs. It's very it's the opposite of swords to plowshares. Really,
it's super is And I love this little little nugget
here from Mental Floss and how Pearl Harbor led to
(17:56):
the War on pinball. You know how pinball machines have
those like legs, it's like a a table, and then
they have these legs and you could presumably they're probably
not welded on, they're probably screwed on in some way.
And you know, there's four of them. And they used
each of those four legs for pinball machines, uh, to
make them into billy clubs, uh for police. So it's yeah,
(18:17):
it's very interesting, uh dynamic here Seligarty is leading this,
you know, war on pinball single handedly. You know, it's
like the War on Christmas, only it's no, it's not
a good comparison at all. Forget I said anything, but
it's true. He essentially had successfully had pinball band It
was really portrayed as being this menace. And then places
(18:40):
soon followed suit, like major cities around the country like California, Chicago,
which is actually where a lot of the pinball machines
were manufactured. I didn't realize that, uh, And laws went
on the books that either outright banned or limited the
use of pinball machines to certain places. Yeah, they were
really they were really cracking down. Let's see what was
(19:03):
it Los Angeles, New Orleans, Chicago, Milwaukee. They followed New
York's leading banning pinball as much as possible. Some other
cities started to heavily regulate it, like if you are
a kid and you're uh supposed to be in school,
you can't be found playing pinball during school hours. And
that's why, all of a sudden, like the counter culture
(19:27):
embraces pinball, the rebels without a cause. You know, they've
got the leather jackets, the cigarettes rolled up in the
short sleeve T shirt, grease r pompadours, and and they've
got the pinball fever. There's a bunch of low life
layabouts if you ask me, no, but that's certainly the
(19:47):
way they were seeing by the folks that were against this,
this whole thing. I do want to point out something
that I think is interesting. It's always interesting to hear
how Washington, d C. Throughout history has maintained sort of
like a pretty progress of approach, you know, being one
of the first places to legalize marijuana. When you think
of it as being like the seat of government, but
it always has been super progressive. And Washington, C. Was
(20:10):
one of the places that didn't outright ban pinball playing. Um,
But they just did what you said, Ben, They limited
it and made sure that kids couldn't be found playing
them school. But I also think that's sort of like
aren't isn't Aren't kids not supposed to be caught out
of school? Period? Does that is like add to the
badness of the of the behavior, Let's give them like
another strike. I don't know how that works, yea, is
(20:30):
it one of those tricky things? Like uh, in areas
where marijuana is decriminalized, is getting a ticket for it
up to the discretion of the officer? What happens when
they're out for summer? Because I mean, uh, I always
said mean, But could like a crotchety uh law enforcement
agent have prosecuted a kid anyway because they would have
been in school if school was happening. I don't know. Yeah,
(20:53):
like Officer Krupkey, you know, like it wasn't he from Greece?
Doesn't they say Officer Krupkey krup you because the research boys, No,
it is the whole song and he's he's like the
kind of like you know, old school square beat cop
that doesn't understand the these crazy kids and they're greaser
ways and their pinball playing. There's something weird here, though
(21:15):
I don't know. This is one thing that fascinates me
about history, because we'll will never know the thoughts of
the anti pinball crowd on this, but it seems like
all the restrictions that they put into place in cities
across the US played a big role in at least
temporarily turning pinball into exactly what they were afraid it
(21:40):
would be. You know what I mean? Because now now
that the game is moving increasingly off of main Street,
it's starting to pop up in seed to your places,
and you're finding it insect shops. Uh and and Hollywood
picks this up and it puts it in the zeitgeist
mass media. If you saw a rebellious character in a film,
(22:04):
and you know, the forties or fifties or something, then
the quick way to establish them as a as a seedy,
uh untrustworthy person was to just have a scene in
there where they're hanging out around a pinball machine, they're
playing a pinball machine, and then they're like, all right,
you're ready for the murder exactly. That's that's a very
(22:25):
short walk from pinball to to murder to to homicide.
I love that, and then you know, it's sort of
like reefer madness. You know, it's this idea of creating
this narrative around a thing that in and of itself
is pretty innocuous. But when you start to like connect
it to all these other elements and behaviors, people focus
in on the thing, you know, as being like, oh,
(22:47):
it's like it's it's like heavy metal music, like with
Tipper Gore and all that stuff, you know, blaming Marilyn
Manson for kids being basically just like moody brooding kids. Yeah,
this reputation continued for decades through the fifties and the sixties. Again,
the I really feel like the anti pinball crowd shot
(23:10):
themselves in the foot, or they've they tilted their own machine,
I should say, because they created a self fulfilling prophecy.
They turned pinball into the thing they feared it always was.
So the flipper comes out. We talked about that in
the invention of pinball. The flipper comes out. And now
the game is no longer just to pull the plunger.
(23:32):
Game of chance nowadays a test of reflexes and if
you practice, you can become better. So pinball becomes a skill.
Even though people I think grew a little less hot
headed about the connection to gambling in the nineteen fifties,
and a lot of that having to do with the
flipper turning pinball into a game of skill nationwide. If
(23:56):
you asked the average US resident at the time time,
they would still be kind of like, pinball's naughty. What
do you know, pinball's naughty. You definitely don't want your
daughter in a pinball hall, which is a phrase I
made up, may as well have been an opium den,
you know, for all intents and purposes. Ben really quickly,
when did the flipper come out again? And this, I know,
(24:18):
this like sort of like made it harder to gamble
with because it then became more of a game of skill.
What year was that? Okay, so this really is like
right on the cusp of the greaser culture, like right
in that kind of like pocket of history. That's really interesting.
So they weren't so much worried about robbing the children
of their nickels. Well, they still could have been, because
(24:39):
it was a time suck. You know, it's sort of
like a frivolous waste of money, but with the gambling
part removed at least it was a little more accepted legally,
but it still had kind of a bad rap, right,
Is that about where we're at? Yeah, yeah, I mean
history doesn't always repeat, but it certainly has a rhyming
structure to it. Right. So, so lot of the arguments,
(25:01):
especially the more sensationalistic ones against pinball and against children
playing pinball, I feel like they're exactly the same as
other later arguments about video games, like yeah, I get it,
I have a PlayStation. I know it's a time vampire.
I I understand that. But there were there were being
alarm as there was still this kind of moral panic.
(25:23):
And uh, in fact, this became part of a political
strategy used against John F. Kennedy himself during the nineteen
sixty presidential election. Kennedy was a Democrat and Republican operatives.
His opponents leaked a group photograph of Kennedy and some
friends and uh, he is at a he is with
(25:48):
someone who's the silent partner in an Indiana pinball business. Gasp, horror, Oh,
the horror. Yeah, And and this was used, like, you know,
as as a compromise against him, essentially right, as though
they had like a sex taper. Think about what goes
(26:09):
down as like, you know, smear campaign stuff. Today, this
is so tame it makes me laugh. I yearned for
the years when a picture with a pinball machine was
enough to get you out of a race. Yeah. Yeah,
I could see that. I could hear the conversation in
households across America where they're like, well, you know, Kennedy's
(26:29):
Kennedy comes from a bootlegging family and he's a papist
and a pinballer. I hear the pinballer God forbid, Yeah,
and and tangentially, this is just interesting. Um. There was
a guy named Jim Garrison who was a distrie attorney
of Orleans Parish who was like a kind of Kennedy
conspiracy truther. And he actually was indicted in nineteen seventy one.
(26:53):
UM suspected and convicted of accepting bribes to protect illegal
pinball gaming in New Orleans. But he was he was
found not guilty. Yeah, what were saying is pinball was
a big deal. It's tough to part this because the
truth of the matter is, yes, pinball was part of
(27:13):
the world of gambling, in the world of organized crime
for a time. It itself was just not an inherently
uh sinful, wicked thing. It wasn't a vice. But wait,
you're saying, how on earth did pinball go from being
like visual shorthand of a of a bad character and
film too, something that's seen as like cute even someone
(27:37):
kitchen today that that switch occurs in the nineteen seventies. Uh,
for a couple of reasons. I believe it was seventy
For the Supreme Court in California apparently was having a
slow day. Uh. They ruled that pinball was officially more
(27:58):
a game of skill and chance, and therefore it did
not qualify as a gambling device. So this overturned the
prohibition of pinball in Los Angeles. Very cool, big win
for pinball there, and then perfect timing. About five years later,
the zeitgeist really caught up with pinball um in a
(28:20):
big way. Everyone knows the Who's rock opera Tommy about
a pinball Wizard, the titular character of the famous Who
song Pinball Wizard Um, and I love it. There's a
there's a line in the movie or in the song.
Maybe I've never fully known all the lyrics of the song,
but apparently he's described as having crazy flipper fingers and
(28:40):
in the film. He's played by Elton John. He's wearing
these amazing platform shoes, super glam and it takes Pinball
out of the realm of like, you know, No Good
Nicks and into the realm of like glam rock, you know, superstardom.
Um and kids ate it up. Yeah, I was gonna
ask you about that too. Do you think that there's
(29:00):
a little bit of a little bit of extra legitimacy
because this was coming from the UK? You know what
I mean? Baby, Yeah, that's certainly a good point. I mean,
there was a certain mysticism applied to like, you know,
British rock and and and bands like the Who and
led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and all that stuff. Uh,
(29:22):
there were obviously American equivalent sort of but not not
quite as as mystical and like you know, um looming
large and the zeitgeis to some of these British bands. Uh,
that's very obviously kicked off with the Beatles in the
British invasion and all of that. So it's a really
good point. So yeah, I'm wondering if part of that
goes back to the uh, the longstanding American inferiority complex
(29:47):
about British things like our story about the actors and
the Shakespeare riots. You know, so maybe that played some
small role. But either way, putting the providence of Tommy
a saw Hide, we know that it did exactly what
you described, nol. It put pinball a little bit further
away from its seedy reputation of the past and at
(30:09):
bit closer to mainstream because Tommy was successful and people
love the musical. Who doesn't love a good musical? And
then New York is in the midst of a bankruptcy
crisis yet again, that's one year later, that's ninety six. Uh,
the city council said, hey, maybe we should get rid
of that pinball band because movie theaters, bars, hotels, they
(30:35):
can all be making some serious coins, some literal serious coin,
and uh not everybody was on board. There was one
councilman from Queens who said, look, it appears the pinball
is innocent, but it will bring rampant vice and gambling
back to the city. So they had to they had
to try to prove to everyone, to the pinball skeptics,
(30:57):
that this was definitely no fooling, a real game of skill.
So enter Roger Sharpe. Um. This kid who well, I say, kid,
but he was an adult at this point. But he
had learned to play pinball very skillfully while he was
(31:21):
in college. Um on like black market pinball machines in
New York, you know, because they were they were against
the law, so he had to hone his skills and
like these secret back room pinball parlors or whatever. Um.
And there's actually a book from nineteen seventy seven that
he wrote called Pinball Exclavation Mark um and uh. He
(31:45):
was a magazine editor by you know, by day and
a pinball wizard by by nine, because that's when you
play pinball is at night. It's definitely a nighttime game.
And on April two of nineteen seventy six, he stood
in front of a pinball machine in the New York
City Council Chambers and essentially demonstrated his skill in in
(32:08):
on the machine and showing how he could win. He could,
you know, play better than other people, as simple as that.
And he talked about some of his little tactics. And
I don't understand this fully, I guess he says, if
I pull the plunger back just right, the ball will
go down the center lane. So he's explaining to like
pinball nubes, to just trying to demystify the thing and
show that, like we were talking about the beginning of
(32:30):
the show, you have to bounce the ball around using
those flippers, and it's about aim, and it's about trajectory
and how far you pull the plunger back. If you
just pull it back a little bit, it will go
a certain distance, etcetera. Um. And he seems to make
a pretty darn good case for it. Yeah, Yeah, there's
a really important thing that happens here. It's strange how
history hinges on such small moments. The fact that Roger
(32:55):
Sharp was able to in front of people predict where
the ball would go based on his actions. The fact
that he was able to do that was huge and
persuading people that he wasn't just you know, rolling the dice.
We have to wonder what would have happened if he
had whipped it, If they had said, well, this sharp
(33:15):
kid is lying to us, then maybe there wouldn't have
been an overturn of the band. But when Sharp managed
to accurately predict that shot he took, the council was persuaded.
They got rid of that three decade long pinball band
and they were going to issue I think it was
(33:36):
a fifty dollar licensing fee on every pinball machine in
the city, which would bring them an estimated one point
five million dollars. So it also goes a long way
to helping their bankruptcy crisis. It's nuts thinking a single
a single shot. And once New York rolls this out again,
(33:57):
it's kind of like marijuana. Remember once call A Rotto
was selling marijuana. We're making so much money off of it,
and it became easier for other parts of the country
to uh to try to pursue the same thing, just
because they were following the money. And that's what happened
with a lot of other cities. And it's it's not
it's nineteen. It's just like the next year, right, nineteen
(34:19):
seventy seven, Chicago officially legalizes pinball. Imagine. Uh, I'm totally
making this up as unfounded speculation. I don't know if
we have a sound cue for that yet, but I
(34:44):
just loved the idea of like some mafia so sitting
around and their local uh, their local restaurant or front business,
they get the news about the pin ball and they
get up and they started like dancing and they roll
out the machines from the back. Well you have to
remember too, this was like right at the cusp of
like arcade machines coming into into prominence, things like pac
(35:08):
Man and Space Invaders and Paperboy and all of those
games that some of them are still a lot of
fun and do require skill. Some of them have not
aged well, but that was creating a demand for arcades
and with that, um, these kind of gussied up versions
of the old school pinball machines that now had TV
and movie tie ins like the ones we see today
(35:29):
like the Adams Family Pinball Machinery, Indiana Jones or whatever.
Unclear as to how you're playing of the pinball machine
makes you feel participatory in any kind of movie plot line.
They try, they try to force those little bits down
your throat, but again I never know how do I
do the thing? How do I like save the Galaxy
in the Guardians of the Galaxy pinball machine. But there's
(35:49):
still a lot of fun um and there absolutely are competitions,
and I think there's like a pinball museum. Then, didn't
you go I have not been to the museum. I
think it's is it in Vegas. Who went? Was it
you Casey? I think it was Ramsey? Yep, yep, one
of our one of our colleagues. Here a ridiculous history.
(36:10):
Great guy Ramsey went to the Pinball Machine Museum. I
remember that because I was bummed I wasn't able to
make it. But but it's still there. I think you
should be able to visit it there. There's a great
documentary on Netflix about the early days of these arcade
games high score one that um that maybe yet Yeah,
(36:34):
the creation of the early electronic based games, right uh.
And what's fascinating about this is at the same time
pinball was gaining legitimacy, it was running up against these
electronic games, these digital games. And so you would go
into an arcade and you would see this more analog
(36:56):
pinball set up, but then you would also see video
game games. Audiences loved both, by the way, but people
who own the arcades light to the electronics stuff. Because
there were fewer repairs, they didn't take up as much
floor space. You can pack more stuff in. And that's
why you know, in the twenty one century, pinball is
(37:19):
becoming uh, increasingly rare. It's weirder and weirder to find
a machine, but I love a man. It's like high
speed putt putt on LSD. I don't know I'm doing.
You hit the right ball in the right place and
it's like propel. So yeah, but it has become more
niche kind of where there are like you know, in
(37:40):
bigger cities and like I went to one in Brooklyn.
Actually that was was really funny. It's actually a combination
laundromat and pinball emporium. Uh And it's got a little
bar and they just serve like beer and sold you.
Very strange but small place packed full of pinball machine
is very popular, but it has become more of like
a hipster thing or like you out, like what's old
(38:01):
is new again. They're like people that like Vinyl records.
They're like old school stuff. Not not to say that
sound like a grandpa. Vinyl is obviously incredible and going
through huge resurgence and it absolutely, uh objectively sounds great.
But there is that kind of niche like people that
only want to play any s games, or people that
like you know, insist on having a Nintendo sixty four,
(38:22):
all these like old school systems. Pinball kind of occupies
that niche, and I know they still make new ones,
but I have a feeling it's probably much less so
because you're right, then they're very They're like clockwork. You know,
there's all these moving parts and you have to get
them serviced. And you know what a nightmare that must
be when you could just literally have a firmware update
for your arcade machine and then you're done. Have you
(38:44):
ever seen the innerds like the bat? Have you ever
opened the back of a pinball machine? See what looks like?
Oh but it must it must just be incredibly complex.
It's like steampunk man, at least based on my memories.
You're You're right, it is. It has acquired a new
life as a kind of novelty. There was for a
time just this great bar that I miss here in
(39:06):
Atlanta called Joystick. I loved it because it was this
is this very nerdy adult moment for me when I
was like, Wow, how strange life is from the pinball
barn to the pin bar. I guess it's true. And
if any listeners, I'm sure you already know about this place.
(39:27):
But one of the coolest ones I've ever been to
is in Los Angeles. It's called Button Masher and they
have like every cabinet machine you could ever think of,
but also have a really like a whole room. I
think it's nothing but pinball machines, and um, it's it's
it's quite a large place. It's it's really cool. If
you haven't been there, I recommend checking it out. There's
another great win in Chicago I went to a number
(39:49):
of years ago. There's one I didn't go to in Portland.
I'm not going to name names. I didn't go because
when I was in Portland, I was looking for a
place to go and I saw this and I thought, oh,
you know, a barcade and uh. I started reading the
reviews and they were like, watch out. This is a
hub of white supremacists, which I was not expecting from
(40:09):
a pinball place. But you know, you never know. Uh.
If you are a pinball fan, if you are a
pinball player and you want to relive those glory days
of winning cash and prizes in the world of pinball,
then why not consider joining forces with what's called the
(40:31):
International Flipper Pinball Association. They're the ones who run the
World Pinball Player Ranking, which is a thing, and there's
serious money here. There are almost two thousand pinball tournaments
every year across the US, and they offer more than
one million dollars in cash and prizes, as as noted
(40:52):
by by this great article in History dot com Boy
Mayor La Guardia would be steamed about that. Yeah, absolutely,
rolling grave And if you know, for whatever reason you
you would like to do a little pinball ask gambling.
Uh Pachinko in Japan and elsewhere in the world still
very very popular, and games like Plinko that you do
(41:13):
you shoot the ball up and and it shoots up
into this it's upright. Actually, I don't know if that's
what the I think probably the original pinball machines that
we're talking about, we're still like laying out like a table,
but these are upright and you shoot the ball and
then it or maybe you push a button and it
drops down and then it like ping bing ming mingming,
makes a little sounds and it goes down and then
you know, it lands in a certain little slot at
the bottom, and that's how you you make your your money.
(41:35):
Um Nicolas Cage actually has done a fantastic series of
television commercials exclusively in Japan for this uh pachinko company
called Sanchio, I believe. So if you want a real treat,
check out Nicolas Cages Pachinko commercials. You can watch them
all in like a super cut on YouTube and they're delightful.
(41:56):
And if you are in Oakland now in good news
as you can play pinball. The weird news is pinball
was banned in Oakland up until like one of those
dusty on the book's laws that getting on the sidewalk
or whatever, it was like owning your spouse's hair or something.
I don't think anybody ever seriously enforced it. Somebody discovered
(42:18):
it and they were like, oh ha ha, here's our
story for a slow news day, and so there you
have it, folks. Uh, pinball used to be maybe not
public enemy number one, but definitely like the rogues gallery
of public enemies in the in the moral panic fiber
of the US. That's right, how far we've come, how
(42:41):
far we've come? Um. I really enjoyed digging into this story.
I didn't know any of this stuff. I always, you know,
thought about the classic kind of greaser image and and
the you know, but I just thought that was just
because like arcades were places that, like all ages, kids
could hang out and skip school at or whatever. I
didn't associate much differently from like the Putt putt of
(43:01):
our youth, et cetera. But very interesting to know. And
and another reason why the Pinball Museum in Vegas it's
probably a fascinating place because this is a game with
a history, um that you can really track this attitude
and the changing technology, but also the changing way that
pinball was perceived. Agreed, Agreed, This is this is a
(43:23):
fascinating look into a uh somewhat overlooked part of American history.
We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please tune in for
our upcoming episode, by the way, where we do something
completely different. Uh. No spoilers, well, no serious spoilers, but uh,
(43:43):
spaghetti not in the way you think. Definitely spaghetti, definitely
not in the way you think. Uh. Thanks as always
to our superproducer Casey pegram thinks, of course, as always
to Alex Williams, who composed that that slam and jam
you hear at the beginning are very pinball theme music,
exactly huge thanks to Christophrosciota is here in spirit, Gabe Lousier,
(44:06):
Research Associate Extraordinaire, Jonathan Strickland, the notorious quister. I wonder
if he's any good at pinball. He seems like you
think he's got a collection in his like villainous lair.
I would like to think that. I'm sure he I'm
sure he's played people. If I would bet all the
nickels in my house that he's done an episode on
(44:27):
pinball for tech stuff, I also would bet that all
the pinball machines in his collection are Shakespeare themed. Oh boy,
that's that's a lot the Taming of the Shrew the
pinball machine, right, Oh Hamlet. To tilt or not to tilt?
That is the question. Uh. We also want to direct
(44:49):
you to uh Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, where you can find
our show. Honestly, there's not a lot of gas in
the Instagram and Twitter feeds of the official Ridiculous Historians,
so we like to recommend the Facebook page Ridiculous Historians. Uh.
If you want to meet our favorite part of the show,
which is you and your fellow listeners, you can also
(45:09):
find us as individuals. That's right. I am at how
Now Noel Brown exclusively on Instagram, and I am at
Ben Bolan on Instagram at Ben Bowling hs W on Twitter.
I know we gotta wrap up. But this is this
is something I wanted to ask you guys about. Like,
I always thought it was so unfair that pinball tables were,
(45:30):
you know, big and clunky and expensive. It reminded me
of growing up when I have friends who have pool
tables and it would be like, wow, you're terrible at pool.
I'm like, yeah, dude, I'm eight. I don't have one
of these at my house. Do you ever feel that
way about stuff? We had a we had a pool
table at in my basement at my parents house, and
I was still pretty bad at pool. I just didn't
(45:51):
take to the game very much. What about bumper pool?
Do you guys even know what that is? I don't
understand now, I don't think so. I think it's it's
it's pool with uh with a little class tick obstacles, right.
I think that might be right. But there's a reason
you gotta hit the It's almost like pool and pinball
combined because I think you have to hit the little
bumper things or something. I don't know. Let us know,
a bumper pool is? Um? Is it snooker? Snooker is just,
(46:14):
I believe, just what the Brits called pool. But I
don't know. There may be maybe it's a different style
of the game, but um, I don't know. Let us know, folks.
What is snooker? What is bumper pool? What kind of
pinball machines do you like? What's your favorite game? We'll
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my
(46:37):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Uh, this is this is
a fun one. This is a neat one. My name
is Ben. My name is Noel Ben. You know we
only trade in fun. We don't do it well, that's
not sure. There there there have been the the odd
Nazi related ones or horrible sterilization. Yea, somehow they're still managed.
(00:49):
I mean they are ridiculous that that maybe they go
against the spirit of the show. But today's episode is
squarely within the spirit of the show because it's a
really innocuous thing that we all know. Some of us
may be better ahead it than others. But I don't
think anyone has ever thought of a pinball machine as
being like a tool of the devil. Not not in
(01:11):
our modern day. No, that's that's true. Uh, most of
us these days associate pinball with kind of like a
a retro vibe, you know what I mean, the days
of arcades, And I've always been fascinated by them. I
love them. Uh. Growing up a very eccentric neighbor, family
friends collected pinball machines for some reason. That's a cool
(01:34):
flexi collector item there. Yeah he had a barn like Pa,
you had a pinball barn. Yeah, he had a pinball
barn and he had you know, fixed it so that
you didn't have to use quarters. So to me, this
this guy was kind of a demi god. It did
not take much to impress me. But did you did
(01:54):
you get regular entry into the pinball barn then? Uh?
Huh Yeah? Yeah, like a child's dream come true? Dude,
What a cool neighbor. It was a cool guy, it was.
It was cool, very very strange dude. But I guess
that's a prerequisite for getting a pinball barn in the
first place. Secret murderer perhaps or their body is buried
beneath the pinball barn, you know. I I don't know,
(02:16):
but I thought the guy was so cool that if
I had found that out in my head being a
very creepy kid, it would have just made him cooler.
But still not as cool as our superproducer Casey Pegram,
who is here in a digital personhood. Before we hopped
on this show, Casey Casey said, look, I'm gonna hang
(02:38):
back for a while because I I just got lunch
so I mean so one. You know, number one favorite
thing people love to hear on a podcast is somebody
chewing into the mic mouth sound pegram we have. There
was a podcast that came out Canton, which one it was,
but one of the features, one of the things they
talked about was leaving those sounds in. I don't know
(03:00):
about you all, but I have a little bit of
miss aphony. I think we all do with certain sounds.
But in Casey, I didn't mean to blow up your spot.
I just love the idea, the fact that Noel and
I are the lunchtime entertainment. So we're gonna do our best.
We're gonna do our best to regale you. You guys
are very synackable. Yeah, try the veal we're here all
(03:21):
week or at least for the next couple hours. Um.
You know, I really last thing on the mouth sounds,
you guys. UM, there's this filter that we use, or
the suite of of plug ins for audio clean up
UM that has a mouth sound remover setting and it
has this like hell raiser puzzle box button that no
(03:42):
one should ever venture near, where it filters out everything
but the mouth sounds where you can hear just the
mouth sounds that it filters out and it is nightmare fuel,
my friends. Let me tell you that is terrifying. I
think I just had a spontaneous waking nightmare about that.
What's it to nightmare when you're awake? Is it a day? Maare?
(04:02):
It's just life, It's just life. There we go that. Well,
today we're going to talk about something, uh hopefully a
little less dark, but but we'll see where it goes.
So pinball. Um, none of the three of us are
pinball prodigies, but I think we all enjoy the game
and we all, you know, being roughly the same age,
(04:23):
we have a similar kind of idea of what pinball is.
But it might surprise you to know that once upon
a time here in the good old US of a
pinball was an enormously controversial thing. Yeah that's right, um,
just just really quickly. Uh. The the origins of pinball
(04:45):
come from a French table game called bagatelle, and the
first ever pinball machine was patent in eight seventy one.
But it's not the ones we think of today with
the little flippers and the little Yeah, there's a there's
a number of ways you can kind of make pinball
game more elaborate with targets that you hit and little
ways to sink the ball and double balls and all
(05:05):
that stuff to blow up your score. Honestly, I never
understand how to play a pinball game, like it's always
just a mystery to me. I'm just kind of like
shooting it at whatever seems cool. But there are definitely
people that very much know exactly how to get the
perfect score on some of these specific pinball michiganes, which
we'll get into it bit, but those have things like
flippers where you hit the buttons and you launch the
ball with a plunger and shoots the ball up into
(05:27):
this kind of rampi encased in glass, you know, table,
And then in this early version it was more like
what we think of today is maybe pachinko, where you're
shooting the ball and then it's popping around on these
little little pins hence pinball, I guess, and then it
just falls into whatever hole, sort of like ski ball
or something, but it goes up to the top and
(05:48):
then it bounces down. And that's still very much a
thing with pachinko. Not sure if it's exactly one to one,
but it's very similar, but in n that's when you
started to see the advent of the modern ball machine,
where you have those flippers that we're talking about, so
you could actually kind of control where the ball went
when it rolled back down that hill. If it didn't
go right down the middle, which is like the bane
(06:09):
of any pinball players existence, it goes to either left
of the right side, you have the opportunity to keep
the ball in play and flip it around the table
with those little flippy boys and that pinball machine. While
we would consider it, you know, quote unquote the modern
pinball game, it was still very different from what you
would see in your average retro arcade today. You could
(06:33):
try to tip or tilt the machine in your favor,
but you were very much at the mercy of the
random movements bounds of the ball. And because of that
element of chance, people started gambling on pinball games. So
of course, anybody has been to Vegas or Macau or
something can assure you that some people will gamble on
(06:56):
virtually anything, but gambling on pinball was a cool like
it was a cool happening thing to do. People would
get prizes all the way from like free games or
you know, the kind of stuff you would win at
ski ball play chuck e cheese, all the way up
to pretty expensive stuff like fine china or jewelry. And
(07:17):
soon this affected the reputation of pinball. What we think
of is like a fun neat arcade game was seen
as this uh machine built for iniquity that catered to
like Slee's bags, uh low lives and ne'er do wells. Yeah,
(07:39):
And if I'm not mistaken, the reason it's just in
the same way like maybe video poker machines, you know,
sort of skirt the law in some parts of the
country where they can get away with it not being
considered illegal gambling by like just handing out tickets or
making things like an equivalent of like you know, goods
and services, I guess, but they don't actually give you cash, right, Um.
(07:59):
And I think that was the deal with early pinball,
because you know, gambling was outlawed in in in many places,
and um, this was sort of a way around that.
But like you said, ben Um, in Chicago in particular,
pinball machine started getting associated with organized crime because Chicago,
as we know, was a massive, you know, sort of
(08:21):
hub of mob um and gangster activity, and these machines
were cash based, and it became kind of like a
way to make a quick buck by criminals, maybe in
these back rooms and these kind of illegal gambling parlors,
and it was easy to make a lot of money
(08:42):
at scale, like if you were organized uh an organized
crime ring and he wanted that income stream, pinball would
be a great thing to hop onto. I mean, think
about it. So gambling, we would ordinarily think of things
like card games, but with these gaming machines or coin
opera rated the players did not have to know the
(09:03):
rules like a lot of us don't for pinball, and
the you know, full disclosure, I have no idea what's
going on when I when I pulled that plunger, I'm
just holding on. And the unlike a card game, like
a mid to high stakes poker game or something, you
didn't have to have much money at all to play pinball.
And now we see pinball as entertainment, but back then
(09:28):
it was just seen as almost like another kind of
slot machine. Right, yeah, that's right, and um, it's pretty cool.
In the research for this game, our research associate extraordinaire
stumbled upon a fantastic article from the Portland Mercury that
quotes a girl friend of the show and the network
(09:48):
a guy that I've worked with on the podcast called
Murder and Oregon, a gentleman by the name of Phil
Stanford who wrote a book called Portland Confidential, and it
was all about just kind of how Portland's has this
reputation of being this sort of shining liberal bastion on
a hill, but it actually has has been a a
place rife with corruption for a very long time. And
(10:08):
that's what Murdering organs about. But he specifically talks about
um in an interview he did with the Portland Mercury
about how pinball machines were kind of seen as a gateway,
uh to gambling, to like more heavy gambling, the way
marijuana is today. And he says, quote, the people who
wanted to get rid of slot machines went after pinball
machines too much in the same way that law enforcement
(10:29):
goes after marijuana. UM, So it was kind of perceived
as being a gateway into more heavy vices and types
of gambling. It reminds me of that uh oh, where
is that song from the musical Trouble. It's all about
playing pool? Oh, that's the music man music man, where
were the Knickerbocker's trouble. Yeah, with a capital T that
(10:53):
rhymes with P that stands for pool. I love that.
Seth McFarland from Family Guy is a great cover of
that was weird, but but you're you're absolutely right it was.
It was seen kind of as a gateway to gambling
into wickedness and sin. And part of this public perception
I think came about because people were teetotalers during the
(11:16):
age of Prohibition needed something else to focus on. So
we know that, we know that law enforcement in Portland's,
Chicago other places had always kind of given pinball the
side eye because they knew it was connected to gambling. Uh.
Churches school boards also said, you know, this is making
your kids bad. It seems like fun, but little Johnny
(11:38):
is gonna steal a nickel. The next thing you know,
he's gonna hold up a bank. They're skipping school. Uh,
they're gonna go hungry. These kids are starving to death
because they keep putting their money into the devil's balls.
I'm just making things up. I like it. I like it. No,
it's true. Um and this Alice Obscure as a great
(12:00):
article about this called the war on pinball, and they
categorized these folks, um, these anti fund types as crusading
do gooders, which I love because you're right. Then they
needed something else to spoil people's good times with and
and this was what it was. Uh. And so it
did leave this outcry and this you know, this rallying
around pinball being sort of like you know, doorway to
(12:24):
iniquity led to pinball being banned a lot of cities,
especially New York. And that specifically because New York had
this mayor you've probably heard of. Uh, it's got a
pretty big airport named after him, Mayor fear Ello LaGuardia. Um.
He was a massive anti pinball guy. He hated the game.
(12:45):
And in nine three he came into office with this
anti crime, anti mob kind of you know platform, and
he has this great quote where he he self proclaimedly
wanted to quote drive the bums out of town. Yeah.
He got rid of the illegal slot machines, had quite
a few of them dumped into the Hudson River in
(13:07):
nineteen thirty five, just after he's elected to let the
public and the mafia know that he meant business. And
so mobsters replaced the slot machines with pinball machines, and
he was like, you're not getting past me. As a
matter of fact. In Free for All News, we have
a great quote from LaGuardia where he says the pinball
(13:27):
machine racket is a direct out growth of the slot
machine racket. And as was the case, whether it's evil
parents is dominated by interest heavily tainted with criminality. There
was no difference between the two rackets other than the
more subtle and furtive methods of robbing the public. It's
twenty million dollar profits taken from the pockets of school
children in the form of nickels and dimes given to
(13:50):
them as lunch money. Like this was his passion project.
Almost yeah, and it's because, like we were saying earlier,
I mean, gambling was illegal. These slot machines were a
lead goal. And because pinball machines sort of occupied this
gray area. Um, but kids were allowed to play them.
But they had like a payout. You could win um
by you know, dumping all your nickels in, you know,
(14:11):
your lunch money or whatever. Um. God forbid the bullies
that like, you know, beat up other kids to steal
their nickels and dimes, you know, that. You know, that image,
classic image of like the bully kid holding the kid
up by his ankles and shaking him until all his
nickels fell out, That's what I'm picturing. And then just
scooping all that up and going right to the arcade. Um.
You know, and those kids are already on a on
(14:33):
a very dire path to criminality. So this is just
enforcing that. Um. And and La Guardia wasn't standing for it. Um,
You're right, Ben, he had already had the slot machines
dumped in the river, and next he had his sight
set on the sort of de facto gambling machines. And
as if that moral panic angle wasn't enough to get
(14:55):
people on his side, just in case they also start,
Lombardy and his team also started rolling out anti pinball statements. Uh,
in a very weird flex. When the Japanese military at
the time bombed Pearl Harbor in one December seven, Mayor
LaGuardia went patriotic with it. It was like, not only
(15:18):
is pinball morally terrible and the cause of starving children
and criminals, but uh, but also it's a waste of
America's valuable resources. We're wasting copper, aluminum and nickel making
these devil ball machines, when when we could be sending
that to our our boys on the front lines, right
(15:40):
to make guns and bullets and weapons of war, which
is so much better for the world. I do love
too that he referred to the pinball machines as insidious
nickel steelers. I think that should be the name of
a sports team. I don't know, maybe a band, or
maybe a comedy troupe, who knows. H So LaGuardia had
(16:06):
the city council on his side, he had public opinion
on his side because he's done such a good job
at making the case for this and tying it to
our precious resources. And as we know, during this time
like it was important to be able to you know,
fund the war effort. And it was easy because patriot
patriotism was rampant. After an event like the bombing of
Pearl Harbor, an attack on you know, American soil, we
(16:27):
have to do everything we can, you know, pull in
together to defeat this enemy, this common enemy. And so
he got the city council to approve a ban on
pinball machines in public places, um even ones that didn't
use the payout system or any kind of you know,
even like with of gambling. That just the machines themselves
were enough because they were a waste of time. Uh,
(16:50):
they were breeding this idea of criminality. They were a
gateway into more serious gambling. And they were a waste
of materials. Yeah. Absolutely. And when LaGuardia and the various
police chiefs got together with the press and smashed pinball
machines with sledgehammers, they put their money where their mouth was.
(17:12):
You know. They dumped this stuff into barges bound for
Long Island Sound. And just like that Mental Floss article
we referenced earlier mentions. Uh, the New York Times got
ahold of this headline and they noted that cutting down
pinball manufacturing at least was making a meaningful contribution to
(17:33):
the war effort. The military got ten thousand pounds of
scrap metal courtesy of pinball machines, and that was enough
if you did the math to make four two thousand
pound bombs. It's very it's the opposite of swords to plowshares. Really,
it's super is And I love this little little nugget
here from Mental Floss and how Pearl Harbor led to
(17:56):
the War on pinball. You know how pinball machines have
those like legs, it's like a a table, and then
they have these legs and you could presumably they're probably
not welded on, they're probably screwed on in some way.
And you know, there's four of them. And they used
each of those four legs for pinball machines, uh, to
make them into billy clubs, uh for police. So it's yeah,
(18:17):
it's very interesting, uh dynamic here Seligarty is leading this,
you know, war on pinball single handedly. You know, it's
like the War on Christmas, only it's no, it's not
a good comparison at all. Forget I said anything, but
it's true. He essentially had successfully had pinball band It
was really portrayed as being this menace. And then places
(18:40):
soon followed suit, like major cities around the country like California, Chicago,
which is actually where a lot of the pinball machines
were manufactured. I didn't realize that, uh, And laws went
on the books that either outright banned or limited the
use of pinball machines to certain places. Yeah, they were
really they were really cracking down. Let's see what was
(19:03):
it Los Angeles, New Orleans, Chicago, Milwaukee. They followed New
York's leading banning pinball as much as possible. Some other
cities started to heavily regulate it, like if you are
a kid and you're uh supposed to be in school,
you can't be found playing pinball during school hours. And
that's why, all of a sudden, like the counter culture
(19:27):
embraces pinball, the rebels without a cause. You know, they've
got the leather jackets, the cigarettes rolled up in the
short sleeve T shirt, grease r pompadours, and and they've
got the pinball fever. There's a bunch of low life
layabouts if you ask me, no, but that's certainly the
(19:47):
way they were seeing by the folks that were against this,
this whole thing. I do want to point out something
that I think is interesting. It's always interesting to hear
how Washington, d C. Throughout history has maintained sort of
like a pretty progress of approach, you know, being one
of the first places to legalize marijuana. When you think
of it as being like the seat of government, but
it always has been super progressive. And Washington, C. Was
(20:10):
one of the places that didn't outright ban pinball playing. Um,
But they just did what you said, Ben, They limited
it and made sure that kids couldn't be found playing
them school. But I also think that's sort of like
aren't isn't Aren't kids not supposed to be caught out
of school? Period? Does that is like add to the
badness of the of the behavior, Let's give them like
another strike. I don't know how that works, yea, is
(20:30):
it one of those tricky things? Like uh, in areas
where marijuana is decriminalized, is getting a ticket for it
up to the discretion of the officer? What happens when
they're out for summer? Because I mean, uh, I always
said mean, But could like a crotchety uh law enforcement
agent have prosecuted a kid anyway because they would have
been in school if school was happening. I don't know. Yeah,
(20:53):
like Officer Krupkey, you know, like it wasn't he from Greece?
Doesn't they say Officer Krupkey krup you because the research boys, No,
it is the whole song and he's he's like the
kind of like you know, old school square beat cop
that doesn't understand the these crazy kids and they're greaser
ways and their pinball playing. There's something weird here, though
(21:15):
I don't know. This is one thing that fascinates me
about history, because we'll will never know the thoughts of
the anti pinball crowd on this, but it seems like
all the restrictions that they put into place in cities
across the US played a big role in at least
temporarily turning pinball into exactly what they were afraid it
(21:40):
would be. You know what I mean? Because now now
that the game is moving increasingly off of main Street,
it's starting to pop up in seed to your places,
and you're finding it insect shops. Uh and and Hollywood
picks this up and it puts it in the zeitgeist
mass media. If you saw a rebellious character in a film,
(22:04):
and you know, the forties or fifties or something, then
the quick way to establish them as a as a seedy,
uh untrustworthy person was to just have a scene in
there where they're hanging out around a pinball machine, they're
playing a pinball machine, and then they're like, all right,
you're ready for the murder exactly. That's that's a very
(22:25):
short walk from pinball to to murder to to homicide.
I love that, and then you know, it's sort of
like reefer madness. You know, it's this idea of creating
this narrative around a thing that in and of itself
is pretty innocuous. But when you start to like connect
it to all these other elements and behaviors, people focus
in on the thing, you know, as being like, oh,
(22:47):
it's like it's it's like heavy metal music, like with
Tipper Gore and all that stuff, you know, blaming Marilyn
Manson for kids being basically just like moody brooding kids. Yeah,
this reputation continued for decades through the fifties and the sixties. Again,
the I really feel like the anti pinball crowd shot
(23:10):
themselves in the foot, or they've they tilted their own machine,
I should say, because they created a self fulfilling prophecy.
They turned pinball into the thing they feared it always was.
So the flipper comes out. We talked about that in
the invention of pinball. The flipper comes out. And now
the game is no longer just to pull the plunger.
(23:32):
Game of chance nowadays a test of reflexes and if
you practice, you can become better. So pinball becomes a skill.
Even though people I think grew a little less hot
headed about the connection to gambling in the nineteen fifties,
and a lot of that having to do with the
flipper turning pinball into a game of skill nationwide. If
(23:56):
you asked the average US resident at the time time,
they would still be kind of like, pinball's naughty. What
do you know, pinball's naughty. You definitely don't want your
daughter in a pinball hall, which is a phrase I
made up, may as well have been an opium den,
you know, for all intents and purposes. Ben really quickly,
when did the flipper come out again? And this, I know,
(24:18):
this like sort of like made it harder to gamble
with because it then became more of a game of skill.
What year was that? Okay, so this really is like
right on the cusp of the greaser culture, like right
in that kind of like pocket of history. That's really interesting.
So they weren't so much worried about robbing the children
of their nickels. Well, they still could have been, because
(24:39):
it was a time suck. You know, it's sort of
like a frivolous waste of money, but with the gambling
part removed at least it was a little more accepted legally,
but it still had kind of a bad rap, right,
Is that about where we're at? Yeah, yeah, I mean
history doesn't always repeat, but it certainly has a rhyming
structure to it. Right. So, so lot of the arguments,
(25:01):
especially the more sensationalistic ones against pinball and against children
playing pinball, I feel like they're exactly the same as
other later arguments about video games, like yeah, I get it,
I have a PlayStation. I know it's a time vampire.
I I understand that. But there were there were being
alarm as there was still this kind of moral panic.
(25:23):
And uh, in fact, this became part of a political
strategy used against John F. Kennedy himself during the nineteen
sixty presidential election. Kennedy was a Democrat and Republican operatives.
His opponents leaked a group photograph of Kennedy and some
friends and uh, he is at a he is with
(25:48):
someone who's the silent partner in an Indiana pinball business. Gasp, horror, Oh,
the horror. Yeah, And and this was used, like, you know,
as as a compromise against him, essentially right, as though
they had like a sex taper. Think about what goes
(26:09):
down as like, you know, smear campaign stuff. Today, this
is so tame it makes me laugh. I yearned for
the years when a picture with a pinball machine was
enough to get you out of a race. Yeah. Yeah,
I could see that. I could hear the conversation in
households across America where they're like, well, you know, Kennedy's
(26:29):
Kennedy comes from a bootlegging family and he's a papist
and a pinballer. I hear the pinballer God forbid, Yeah,
and and tangentially, this is just interesting. Um. There was
a guy named Jim Garrison who was a distrie attorney
of Orleans Parish who was like a kind of Kennedy
conspiracy truther. And he actually was indicted in nineteen seventy one.
(26:53):
UM suspected and convicted of accepting bribes to protect illegal
pinball gaming in New Orleans. But he was he was
found not guilty. Yeah, what were saying is pinball was
a big deal. It's tough to part this because the
truth of the matter is, yes, pinball was part of
(27:13):
the world of gambling, in the world of organized crime
for a time. It itself was just not an inherently
uh sinful, wicked thing. It wasn't a vice. But wait,
you're saying, how on earth did pinball go from being
like visual shorthand of a of a bad character and
film too, something that's seen as like cute even someone
(27:37):
kitchen today that that switch occurs in the nineteen seventies. Uh,
for a couple of reasons. I believe it was seventy
For the Supreme Court in California apparently was having a
slow day. Uh. They ruled that pinball was officially more
(27:58):
a game of skill and chance, and therefore it did
not qualify as a gambling device. So this overturned the
prohibition of pinball in Los Angeles. Very cool, big win
for pinball there, and then perfect timing. About five years later,
the zeitgeist really caught up with pinball um in a
(28:20):
big way. Everyone knows the Who's rock opera Tommy about
a pinball Wizard, the titular character of the famous Who
song Pinball Wizard Um, and I love it. There's a
there's a line in the movie or in the song.
Maybe I've never fully known all the lyrics of the song,
but apparently he's described as having crazy flipper fingers and
(28:40):
in the film. He's played by Elton John. He's wearing
these amazing platform shoes, super glam and it takes Pinball
out of the realm of like, you know, No Good
Nicks and into the realm of like glam rock, you know, superstardom.
Um and kids ate it up. Yeah, I was gonna
ask you about that too. Do you think that there's
(29:00):
a little bit of a little bit of extra legitimacy
because this was coming from the UK? You know what
I mean? Baby, Yeah, that's certainly a good point. I mean,
there was a certain mysticism applied to like, you know,
British rock and and and bands like the Who and
led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and all that stuff. Uh,
(29:22):
there were obviously American equivalent sort of but not not
quite as as mystical and like you know, um looming
large and the zeitgeis to some of these British bands. Uh,
that's very obviously kicked off with the Beatles in the
British invasion and all of that. So it's a really
good point. So yeah, I'm wondering if part of that
goes back to the uh, the longstanding American inferiority complex
(29:47):
about British things like our story about the actors and
the Shakespeare riots. You know, so maybe that played some
small role. But either way, putting the providence of Tommy
a saw Hide, we know that it did exactly what
you described, nol. It put pinball a little bit further
away from its seedy reputation of the past and at
(30:09):
bit closer to mainstream because Tommy was successful and people
love the musical. Who doesn't love a good musical? And
then New York is in the midst of a bankruptcy
crisis yet again, that's one year later, that's ninety six. Uh,
the city council said, hey, maybe we should get rid
of that pinball band because movie theaters, bars, hotels, they
(30:35):
can all be making some serious coins, some literal serious coin,
and uh not everybody was on board. There was one
councilman from Queens who said, look, it appears the pinball
is innocent, but it will bring rampant vice and gambling
back to the city. So they had to they had
to try to prove to everyone, to the pinball skeptics,
(30:57):
that this was definitely no fooling, a real game of skill.
So enter Roger Sharpe. Um. This kid who well, I say, kid,
but he was an adult at this point. But he
had learned to play pinball very skillfully while he was
(31:21):
in college. Um on like black market pinball machines in
New York, you know, because they were they were against
the law, so he had to hone his skills and
like these secret back room pinball parlors or whatever. Um.
And there's actually a book from nineteen seventy seven that
he wrote called Pinball Exclavation Mark um and uh. He
(31:45):
was a magazine editor by you know, by day and
a pinball wizard by by nine, because that's when you
play pinball is at night. It's definitely a nighttime game.
And on April two of nineteen seventy six, he stood
in front of a pinball machine in the New York
City Council Chambers and essentially demonstrated his skill in in
(32:08):
on the machine and showing how he could win. He could,
you know, play better than other people, as simple as that.
And he talked about some of his little tactics. And
I don't understand this fully, I guess he says, if
I pull the plunger back just right, the ball will
go down the center lane. So he's explaining to like
pinball nubes, to just trying to demystify the thing and
show that, like we were talking about the beginning of
(32:30):
the show, you have to bounce the ball around using
those flippers, and it's about aim, and it's about trajectory
and how far you pull the plunger back. If you
just pull it back a little bit, it will go
a certain distance, etcetera. Um. And he seems to make
a pretty darn good case for it. Yeah, Yeah, there's
a really important thing that happens here. It's strange how
history hinges on such small moments. The fact that Roger
(32:55):
Sharp was able to in front of people predict where
the ball would go based on his actions. The fact
that he was able to do that was huge and
persuading people that he wasn't just you know, rolling the dice.
We have to wonder what would have happened if he
had whipped it, If they had said, well, this sharp
(33:15):
kid is lying to us, then maybe there wouldn't have
been an overturn of the band. But when Sharp managed
to accurately predict that shot he took, the council was persuaded.
They got rid of that three decade long pinball band
and they were going to issue I think it was
(33:36):
a fifty dollar licensing fee on every pinball machine in
the city, which would bring them an estimated one point
five million dollars. So it also goes a long way
to helping their bankruptcy crisis. It's nuts thinking a single
a single shot. And once New York rolls this out again,
(33:57):
it's kind of like marijuana. Remember once call A Rotto
was selling marijuana. We're making so much money off of it,
and it became easier for other parts of the country
to uh to try to pursue the same thing, just
because they were following the money. And that's what happened
with a lot of other cities. And it's it's not
it's nineteen. It's just like the next year, right, nineteen
(34:19):
seventy seven, Chicago officially legalizes pinball. Imagine. Uh, I'm totally
making this up as unfounded speculation. I don't know if
we have a sound cue for that yet, but I
(34:44):
just loved the idea of like some mafia so sitting
around and their local uh, their local restaurant or front business,
they get the news about the pin ball and they
get up and they started like dancing and they roll
out the machines from the back. Well you have to
remember too, this was like right at the cusp of
like arcade machines coming into into prominence, things like pac
(35:08):
Man and Space Invaders and Paperboy and all of those
games that some of them are still a lot of
fun and do require skill. Some of them have not
aged well, but that was creating a demand for arcades
and with that, um, these kind of gussied up versions
of the old school pinball machines that now had TV
and movie tie ins like the ones we see today
(35:29):
like the Adams Family Pinball Machinery, Indiana Jones or whatever.
Unclear as to how you're playing of the pinball machine
makes you feel participatory in any kind of movie plot line.
They try, they try to force those little bits down
your throat, but again I never know how do I
do the thing? How do I like save the Galaxy
in the Guardians of the Galaxy pinball machine. But there's
(35:49):
still a lot of fun um and there absolutely are competitions,
and I think there's like a pinball museum. Then, didn't
you go I have not been to the museum. I
think it's is it in Vegas. Who went? Was it
you Casey? I think it was Ramsey? Yep, yep, one
of our one of our colleagues. Here a ridiculous history.
(36:10):
Great guy Ramsey went to the Pinball Machine Museum. I
remember that because I was bummed I wasn't able to
make it. But but it's still there. I think you
should be able to visit it there. There's a great
documentary on Netflix about the early days of these arcade
games high score one that um that maybe yet Yeah,
(36:34):
the creation of the early electronic based games, right uh.
And what's fascinating about this is at the same time
pinball was gaining legitimacy, it was running up against these
electronic games, these digital games. And so you would go
into an arcade and you would see this more analog
(36:56):
pinball set up, but then you would also see video
game games. Audiences loved both, by the way, but people
who own the arcades light to the electronics stuff. Because
there were fewer repairs, they didn't take up as much
floor space. You can pack more stuff in. And that's
why you know, in the twenty one century, pinball is
(37:19):
becoming uh, increasingly rare. It's weirder and weirder to find
a machine, but I love a man. It's like high
speed putt putt on LSD. I don't know I'm doing.
You hit the right ball in the right place and
it's like propel. So yeah, but it has become more
niche kind of where there are like you know, in
(37:40):
bigger cities and like I went to one in Brooklyn.
Actually that was was really funny. It's actually a combination
laundromat and pinball emporium. Uh And it's got a little
bar and they just serve like beer and sold you.
Very strange but small place packed full of pinball machine
is very popular, but it has become more of like
a hipster thing or like you out, like what's old
(38:01):
is new again. They're like people that like Vinyl records.
They're like old school stuff. Not not to say that
sound like a grandpa. Vinyl is obviously incredible and going
through huge resurgence and it absolutely, uh objectively sounds great.
But there is that kind of niche like people that
only want to play any s games, or people that
like you know, insist on having a Nintendo sixty four,
(38:22):
all these like old school systems. Pinball kind of occupies
that niche, and I know they still make new ones,
but I have a feeling it's probably much less so
because you're right, then they're very They're like clockwork. You know,
there's all these moving parts and you have to get
them serviced. And you know what a nightmare that must
be when you could just literally have a firmware update
for your arcade machine and then you're done. Have you
(38:44):
ever seen the innerds like the bat? Have you ever
opened the back of a pinball machine? See what looks like?
Oh but it must it must just be incredibly complex.
It's like steampunk man, at least based on my memories.
You're You're right, it is. It has acquired a new
life as a kind of novelty. There was for a
time just this great bar that I miss here in
(39:06):
Atlanta called Joystick. I loved it because it was this
is this very nerdy adult moment for me when I
was like, Wow, how strange life is from the pinball
barn to the pin bar. I guess it's true. And
if any listeners, I'm sure you already know about this place.
(39:27):
But one of the coolest ones I've ever been to
is in Los Angeles. It's called Button Masher and they
have like every cabinet machine you could ever think of,
but also have a really like a whole room. I
think it's nothing but pinball machines, and um, it's it's
it's quite a large place. It's it's really cool. If
you haven't been there, I recommend checking it out. There's
another great win in Chicago I went to a number
(39:49):
of years ago. There's one I didn't go to in Portland.
I'm not going to name names. I didn't go because
when I was in Portland, I was looking for a
place to go and I saw this and I thought, oh,
you know, a barcade and uh. I started reading the
reviews and they were like, watch out. This is a
hub of white supremacists, which I was not expecting from
(40:09):
a pinball place. But you know, you never know. Uh.
If you are a pinball fan, if you are a
pinball player and you want to relive those glory days
of winning cash and prizes in the world of pinball,
then why not consider joining forces with what's called the
(40:31):
International Flipper Pinball Association. They're the ones who run the
World Pinball Player Ranking, which is a thing, and there's
serious money here. There are almost two thousand pinball tournaments
every year across the US, and they offer more than
one million dollars in cash and prizes, as as noted
(40:52):
by by this great article in History dot com Boy
Mayor La Guardia would be steamed about that. Yeah, absolutely,
rolling grave And if you know, for whatever reason you
you would like to do a little pinball ask gambling.
Uh Pachinko in Japan and elsewhere in the world still
very very popular, and games like Plinko that you do
(41:13):
you shoot the ball up and and it shoots up
into this it's upright. Actually, I don't know if that's
what the I think probably the original pinball machines that
we're talking about, we're still like laying out like a table,
but these are upright and you shoot the ball and
then it or maybe you push a button and it
drops down and then it like ping bing ming mingming,
makes a little sounds and it goes down and then
you know, it lands in a certain little slot at
the bottom, and that's how you you make your your money.
(41:35):
Um Nicolas Cage actually has done a fantastic series of
television commercials exclusively in Japan for this uh pachinko company
called Sanchio, I believe. So if you want a real treat,
check out Nicolas Cages Pachinko commercials. You can watch them
all in like a super cut on YouTube and they're delightful.
(41:56):
And if you are in Oakland now in good news
as you can play pinball. The weird news is pinball
was banned in Oakland up until like one of those
dusty on the book's laws that getting on the sidewalk
or whatever, it was like owning your spouse's hair or something.
I don't think anybody ever seriously enforced it. Somebody discovered
(42:18):
it and they were like, oh ha ha, here's our
story for a slow news day, and so there you
have it, folks. Uh, pinball used to be maybe not
public enemy number one, but definitely like the rogues gallery
of public enemies in the in the moral panic fiber
of the US. That's right, how far we've come, how
(42:41):
far we've come? Um. I really enjoyed digging into this story.
I didn't know any of this stuff. I always, you know,
thought about the classic kind of greaser image and and
the you know, but I just thought that was just
because like arcades were places that, like all ages, kids
could hang out and skip school at or whatever. I
didn't associate much differently from like the Putt putt of
(43:01):
our youth, et cetera. But very interesting to know. And
and another reason why the Pinball Museum in Vegas it's
probably a fascinating place because this is a game with
a history, um that you can really track this attitude
and the changing technology, but also the changing way that
pinball was perceived. Agreed, Agreed, This is this is a
(43:23):
fascinating look into a uh somewhat overlooked part of American history.
We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please tune in for
our upcoming episode, by the way, where we do something
completely different. Uh. No spoilers, well, no serious spoilers, but uh,
(43:43):
spaghetti not in the way you think. Definitely spaghetti, definitely
not in the way you think. Uh. Thanks as always
to our superproducer Casey pegram thinks, of course, as always
to Alex Williams, who composed that that slam and jam
you hear at the beginning are very pinball theme music,
exactly huge thanks to Christophrosciota is here in spirit, Gabe Lousier,
(44:06):
Research Associate Extraordinaire, Jonathan Strickland, the notorious quister. I wonder
if he's any good at pinball. He seems like you
think he's got a collection in his like villainous lair.
I would like to think that. I'm sure he I'm
sure he's played people. If I would bet all the
nickels in my house that he's done an episode on
(44:27):
pinball for tech stuff, I also would bet that all
the pinball machines in his collection are Shakespeare themed. Oh boy,
that's that's a lot the Taming of the Shrew the
pinball machine, right, Oh Hamlet. To tilt or not to tilt?
That is the question. Uh. We also want to direct
(44:49):
you to uh Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, where you can find
our show. Honestly, there's not a lot of gas in
the Instagram and Twitter feeds of the official Ridiculous Historians,
so we like to recommend the Facebook page Ridiculous Historians. Uh.
If you want to meet our favorite part of the show,
which is you and your fellow listeners, you can also
(45:09):
find us as individuals. That's right. I am at how
Now Noel Brown exclusively on Instagram, and I am at
Ben Bolan on Instagram at Ben Bowling hs W on Twitter.
I know we gotta wrap up. But this is this
is something I wanted to ask you guys about. Like,
I always thought it was so unfair that pinball tables were,
(45:30):
you know, big and clunky and expensive. It reminded me
of growing up when I have friends who have pool
tables and it would be like, wow, you're terrible at pool.
I'm like, yeah, dude, I'm eight. I don't have one
of these at my house. Do you ever feel that
way about stuff? We had a we had a pool
table at in my basement at my parents house, and
I was still pretty bad at pool. I just didn't
(45:51):
take to the game very much. What about bumper pool?
Do you guys even know what that is? I don't
understand now, I don't think so. I think it's it's
it's pool with uh with a little class tick obstacles, right.
I think that might be right. But there's a reason
you gotta hit the It's almost like pool and pinball
combined because I think you have to hit the little
bumper things or something. I don't know. Let us know,
a bumper pool is? Um? Is it snooker? Snooker is just,
(46:14):
I believe, just what the Brits called pool. But I
don't know. There may be maybe it's a different style
of the game, but um, I don't know. Let us know, folks.
What is snooker? What is bumper pool? What kind of
pinball machines do you like? What's your favorite game? We'll
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for my
(46:37):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Noel Brown
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