Vintage Slots in Films and Newsreels

[special when lit]

Ro-land!

[13rebel]

A number of slots shown on 'Heartbeat' series 11 episode 2, 'She's leaving home' shown 4th November 2001. Slot interest at roughly 4/10/15/20/36/43 minutes.

[pennymachines]

£160 for 20 machines! Ah, those were the days.

[treefrog]

£160 for 20 machines! Ah, those were the days.

I see most were the wrong coinage. I wonder whose collection these were unless they are from a prop warehouse. The Jennings were nice and shiny

[pennymachines]

Lots of classic machines, including an Ahrens Pile Driver and AMECO Vulcan the Robot in a British arcade scene from Storm in a Teacup, 1937 with Vivien Leigh and Rex Harrison.
(Thanks to Joe Pettit via Clive Baker for finding this)

[chapsneck]

Topic merged & video embed fixed - Site Admin.

Some machines in a snooker hall in the opening credits:

[treefrog]

I wonder how many machines are sitting in the props company portfolios, as there are loads of these companies serving the film and tv industry, especially in West London.....Not long ago one of them had a sale clearance and included a load of machines...Of course you can register yourselves to earn some money by offering your machines for rental through these companies as well...

[pennymachines]

From Bell-Fruit Games.co.uk

A brief history of the Bell Fruit Manufacturing Co., of Nottingham.




Explaining the 1960s Bell Fruit bandit mechanism.

[gameswat]

Just stumbled onto a great scene in the 1947 film "Hue and Cry" with a 1930's Ahrens Talkie Scale. Shown in close up and different angles for at least a minute. Eventually gets knocked over but didn't seem to damage the exterior, bet it killed the record though. Can't find a link on the web.

[rippyspennyarcade]

I've just checked my dvd copy of the film Hue and Cry and the clip gameswat refers to appears 35 minutes into the film.

[pennymachines]

From Hue and Cry

[chico]

nice collection of slot machines on heartbeat itv3 tonight

[livinginthepast]

Topic merged - Site Admin.

Bally Daily Dozen being played towards the end of this short clip http://www.britishpathe.com/video/good- ... or-drivers

[treefrog]

Great film..... made me think of that great late '50s film that launched many a great British actor, "Hell Drivers".
Seen a few documentaries about lorry driving of the time and it was a tough old game then and rarely a heated cab.

[chris rideout]

I saw the film "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955). The time was set in 1946, so one arm bandits were a fairly common sight. The machine in the cafe/bar looked like a Mills Poinsettia introduced in 1929. The coin entry at the top right hand side and the square jackpot window suggest this. Lee Marvin played the machine and fed a considerable amount of cash into it for several minutes. It was a pity that the camera didn't show a close up of the reels.

In January 1951, the Johnson Act was signed by President Harold Truman and I am reasonably certain that Nevada was the only state to allow one arm bandits after that date. In other places, the machines were smashed up for scrap or thrown into the ocean. Some were stored and exported to Great Britain in the early 1960s when the gaming laws were relaxed and the British government issued licences for the machines.

[coppinpr]

The Johnson act (1951) in no way bans slot machines. What it does do is ban the movement of slot machines to a state where machines are banned by state law. This law is still in force but has been modified many times since 1951. There has, I think, never been a law totally banning machines in the USA, although it's come pretty close. There was a major ban in the late '40s and one as late as the '60s which led to the demise of Mills. Laws like the Johnston act have made it hard to use machines in the States and has encouraged states to ban the use of machines as the act makes it much easier to enforce a ban (i.e. any machine in a banned state shouldn't be there in the first place).

[chris rideout]

The Johnson act (1951) in no way bans slot machines. What it does do is ban the movement of slot machines to a state where machines are banned by state law. This law is still in force but has been modified many times since 1951. There has, I think, never been a law totally banning machines in the USA, although it's come pretty close.

Thanks for the clarification. I took my (rather vague) information about the American gaming scene from a book about coin-op games. In Great Britain, we have had gaming laws relaxed since 1961 and when the National Lottery arrived in 1994, we seemed to become a nation of gamblers.

[coppinpr]

We have been a nation of gamblers long before the national lottery, although before the betting shops were legalised in, I think, 1962 (?) it was mostly "on course" in clubs or behind closed doors. The local back street bookie in Tooting, where I work and my family comes from, was turning over more than £10,000 per week in 1956 (I know this for a fact). A large part of that went back out as payouts as bookies worked to a strict "Tissue" in those days so profits were pretty much at a fixed %. My Grandfather was a keen and successful horse race better and William Hill's would send a man from central London to collect his bets and pay out on a daily basis. It's in our nature to bet I think. At the first greyhound race meeting at Haringey stadium. As early as 1929 there were a staggering 700 bookmakers dealing with a crowd of over 15000.

[aristomatic]

It's not often you see an Aristocrat rotary Nevada in an old film. This clip gives you two for the money, TicTacToe and a Goldstar. The film is 'Life at the Top', forerunner of 'Man at the Top', I believe.

The casino shot is at 07.59. If you get bored and do not view if you are easily offended by any 1960s inappropriate language.......



I wonder if they:
were just lucky it paid out when they took the shot 1st time
[ii] they did the shot numerous times til the machine paid out..
[iii] or just added a sound of a win in the editing room afterwards

You get a big bonus point if you can recognize the "casino" building.

[badpenny]

I was watching some crappy tv drama last night and one of the lead characters was called Lydia. My dim hazy memory kept going to "Lydia The Tattooed Lady" much to the frustration of everyone else in the room.

So I looked it up on You Tube and found this,