Youth Gone Wild: The History and Art of Pinball$7. Through September 18. Tues.- Thurs. & Sat., 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Thurs., 5-8 p.m.; Fri. 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; and Sun.1–5 p.m.Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, 600 E. Klosterman Rd., Tarpon Springs. 727-712-LRMA. leeparattner.com.
I am a pinball wizard.
Actually, I'm not. I do love the game, though: As a kid, we went to this restaurant in Mamaroneck called Cook's, and they had a game room which, in the 1970s, consisted of — you guessed it — many pinball machines (they also had Skee-Ball and other pre-16-bit processor games). Pinball in the 1970s, though, didn't have all the bells and whistles pinball machines do today.
Literally. The bells and whistles on early pinball machines — actual bells — gave way to more digital mechanisms. Pinball machine technology evolved as did other technologies, but at its core, pinball remains a game of skill in a Candy Crush world. No unlimited lives, no haptic feedback — it's you against the ball.
The newest exhibit at Tarpon's Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art glories in pinball, from its earliest iteration as a game called bagatelle, to one of the best-selling pinball games of all time, The Addams Family. The exhibit delves into backglass art — the board that shows the score — as well as the game's controversial history.
Let's start with the backglass, something I never thought about too much until I saw this exhibit. I paid more attention to the playfield, the area where the ball goes. Game companies like Bally and the now-defunct D. Gottlieb & Co. knew this, and hired playfield designers to create enticing playfields. The Addams Family's playfield includes clever effects, such as Thing appearing to grab the ball if you hit the right spot. Discovering these secret parts of the playfield contribute to pinball's allure.
Game companies hired playfield designers first, then backglass artists. Often, these artists didn't see the actual games; instead of hiring them for a certain type of game, companies sought artists for their style. Roy Parker, who worked for Gottlieb & Co., had a reputation for his "Parker blonde" and adding incredible detail into his art.
Dave Christensen, the backglass artist for the Tommy-inspired Captain Fantastic, put a touch too much detail into the backglass. The initial version featured (for the time) X-rated art, precursors to today's Easter eggs, including a woman with her hand down the front of a man's powder-blue leisure suit. A small number of "naughty" backglasses made it through production before anyone noticed and changed the artwork.
Even without the sexual innuendo, pinball's had a hard history.
While a far cry from Grand Theft Auto, these games apparently led the nation's youth to a life of crime — or so law enforcement said.
“Under the masquerade of a seemingly childish amusement, the pinball machine encourages wide-scale criminal activities involving intimidation of storekeepers and pay-offs to hoodlums and racketeers,” New York Police Commissioner Arthur W. Wallander said in the May 7, 1948 New York Times. Better Homes and Gardens, too, took issue with the game in 1957.
"Under the guise of 'Amusement Only,' this vicious racket bleeds millions of dollars each year from our youngsters. Act now to keep your child from being victimized,” the magazine implored its readers.
Cities across the country banned pinball, citing it a gateway activity to a life of gambling, corruption and crime. In New York, officials took sledgehammers to the games and went so far as to load machines onto a ship and dump them in the East River, because of course they'd pick the East River.
By the mid-1970s — right about the time I started playing — pinball gained ground and cities stopped banning the game, perhaps in part to profit off the newly-imposed licensing fees for the games, ushering in the golden age of pinball.
Except for poor Cook's in Mamaroneck. In the early 1980s, the town attempted to pass a law to severely limit how Cook's operated its game room, suggesting the games led to truancy and accidents. Cook's sued; they lost. Today, the beloved game room is a bank, and everyone knows banks never do anything risky with money.
Fortunately, pinball remains. The exhibit has three games you can play for free, and the machines come on loan from Replay Amusement Museum in Tarpon, where $13 lets you play pinball and other arcade games all day.
This article appears in Jun 23-30, 2016.