Kotaku reports: Here’s the deal about pinball: It’s not such an innocent game.

In fact, for more than three decades, it was illegal in much of America. From Los Angeles, to Chicago, to New York City, police “pinball squads” swept through gaming halls and gambling dens, confiscating thousands of machines in a series of Prohibition-style raids. The reason: It was thought to be a mob-run racket that was a game of chance, and not skill, and therefore gambling.

But outlawing pinball didn’t cause it to disappear. Rather, it went underground, surviving behind closed doors in seedy joints in Harlem and the Village, and making regular appearances in movies and TV shows. It is these appearances that cemented its image as the baddest game in town. For decades, pinball served as an efficient way for directors to convey to an audience that a character was a roughneck, an outlaw, and generally up to no good. Confused as to whether the Fonz is really a rebel? That pinball machine he’s playing should clear things up. As Sideshow Bob said in The Simpsons (episode 137: “Sideshow Bob’s Last Gleaming”), referencing the evils of television: “My foolish capering destroyed more young minds then syphilis and pinball combined.”

And once you start looking for pinball machines in movies, you notice them everywhere-spreading their youth-corrupting seeds of outlawerry and rebellion.

Check out which machines Kotaku found in film!

These boots are actually stilts that were worn by Elton John in the 1975 rock opera Tommy.
Modeled on ‘cherry red’ Dr Martens the Tommy Boots were molded in fiberglass by the Northamptonshire chemical firm Scott Bader, and put together by the props department of Columbia Pictures. They stand 4 foot 6.5 inches high.

Elton John kept the boots and sold them in 1988. They were bought by R Griggs, makers of Dr. Martens and are on loan to the Northampton Museum.

Perhaps Hollywood’s first ever rock musical, star-studded and shot in 1974 with a budget of $5mil, based on the Who’s 1969 concept album. Just look at this list of players:

-The four founding members of the Who: Roger Daltrey(vocals) as Tommy, John Entwistle(bass) himself, Keith Moon(drums) as Uncle Ernie, and Pete Townshend(guitar) himself. Townshend not only wrote the story which he and director Ken Russell(Oscar-winning Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971), Altered States (1980)) adapted for the silver screen, but also scored the film and oversaw production of the picture’s soundtrack release. The soundtrack reached as high as #2 on the US Billboard charts and #21 in the UK.

Other notables include:
-5x Golden Globe winner Ann-Margret as Nora Walker-Hobbs
-Elton John as the reigning Champ
-Tina Turner as the Acid Queen
-Eric Clapton as the Preacher
-Jack Nicholson as the Specialist
-Oliver Reed as Frank Hobbs, Robert Powell as Captain Walker, Arthur Brown as the Priest, Ben Aris as Reverend Simpson, and Paul Nicholas as Cousin Kevin

And of course, this classic scene from the movie directly inspired the game which Bally released in September of 1975:

Can anyone identify which machine it is?

Update: The think tank that is rec.games.pinball has identified the game as a 1973 Williams Travel Time

Props to the Internet Pinball Database for the flyer.

Case closed!

Photos taken on the spot by yours truly, background info from Wikipedia:

The Scopitone is a type of jukebox featuring a 16 mm film component. It was a forerunner of music video. The Italian Cinebox/Colorama and Color-Sonics were competing, lesser-known technologies of the time.

Based on technology developed during World War II, color 16 mm film clips with a magnetic soundtrack were designed to be shown in a specially designed jukebox. The first Scopitones were made in France, among them Serge Gainsbourg’s Le poinçonneur des Lilas (filmed in 1958 in the Porte des Lilas Métro station), Johnny Hallyday’s “Noir c’est noir” (a cover of Los Bravos’ “Black Is Black”) and the “Hully Gully” showing a dance around the edge of a French swimming pool.

Scopitones spread to West Germany, where the Kessler Sisters burst out of twin steamer trunks to sing “Quando Quando” on the dim screen that surmounted the jukebox. Scopitone went on to appear in bars in England. By 1964, approximately 500 machines were installed in the USA, according to Time magazine.

Several well-known acts of the 1960s appear in Scopitone films, ranging from The Exciters (“Tell Him”) to Procol Harum (“A Whiter Shade of Pale”). In one Scopitone recording, Dionne Warwick lay on a white shag rug with an offstage fan urging her to sing “Walk on By”. Another had Nancy Sinatra and a troupe of go-go girls shimmy to “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”. Inspired by burlesque, blonde bombshell Joi Lansing performed “Web of Love” and “The Silencer”, and Julie London sang “Daddy” against a backdrop of strippers. The artifice of such scenes led Susan Sontag to identify Scopitone films as “part of the canon of Camp” in her 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’”.

By the end of the 1960s, the popularity of the Scopitone had faded. The last film for a Scopitone was made at the end of 1978. However, in 2006 the French singer Mareva Galanter released several videos which mimic the Scopitone style. Galenta’s album Ukuyéyé features several songs in the Frecch Yé-yé style. She also recently hosted a weekly French television program called “Do you do you Scopitone” on the Paris Première channel.