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Moving Units – Bally's Art Revolution

Silverball Chronicles·podcast_episode·2h 2m·analyzed·Sep 5, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Bally's art revolution: Dave Christensen and the in-house art team that made pinball machines sell.

Summary

Silver Ball Chronicles episode examines Bally's art revolution from 1975-1983, focusing on how in-house artist Dave Christensen transformed pinball machine visual design. The hosts discuss Christensen's background, his signature style featuring women and belt buckles, and how Bally's investment in art differentiation from competitors (Gottlieb, Williams) contributed to machines that now command premium resale prices. The episode contextualizes Bally's tumultuous corporate period including organized crime connections before going public.

Key Claims

  • Bally machines from 1975-1983 now sell for more than brand new Stern premium machines

    medium confidence · David Dennis: 'today, some of these artistic masterpieces, the pinball machines themselves, sell for more than brand new Stern premium machines'

  • Christopher Franchi was the reason Stern sold as many Munsters as it did

    medium confidence · David Dennis: 'many would say that Christopher Franchi was the reason Stern sold as many Munsters as it did'

  • Dave Christensen was the first in-house artist brought to Bally to do their art

    high confidence · David Dennis: 'Dave Christensen is the first person that Bally brought in-house to do their art'

  • Wizard pinball sold 10,005 units

    high confidence · David Dennis: 'sold 10,005 units, designed by Greg Kemmick'

  • William T. O'Donnell (Bally head) was forced to resign due to links to organized crime

    high confidence · David Dennis: 'the head of the company, William T. O'Donnell, was forced to resign because he apparently had links to organized crime'

  • The Genovese mafia family once owned shares in Bally

    high confidence · David Dennis: 'a mafia boss, Genovese... Gerardo Catina once owned shares in Bali. And O'Donnell, when was confronted with this, basically said, oh, I bought him out'

  • Dave Christensen's signature art style used hand-drawn images with 12 color screens

    high confidence · David Dennis: 'Twelve screens with a rule of thumb of colors... He was really big on lines and line colors'

  • The Tommy film (1975) grossed $34.3 million at the box office on a $3 million budget

    high confidence · David Dennis: 'It was a $3 million budget, which grossed $34.3 million at the box office'

Notable Quotes

  • “Art sells pinball machines. Art has always sold pinball machines. Art will always sell pinball machines.”

    David Dennis @ ~10:00 — Core thesis of the episode establishing why art is critical to pinball's commercial success

  • “The masters of pinball art today, like Christopher Franchi, Zombie Eddie, John Yausey, and Kevin O'Connor, add as much to a pinball machine as the designer themselves.”

    David Dennis @ ~10:20 — Establishes contemporary artists' importance relative to mechanical designers; credits Franchi with Munsters' sales success

  • “There was no better team in pinball than the art team at Bally. From 1975 until Bally was sold to Midway in 1983, the eclectic, creative, and dedicated team of artists made some of the best art on pinball that we have ever seen.”

    David Dennis @ ~10:50 — Establishes the historical significance and praise for Bally's art department during this specific 8-year window

  • “As a pinball artist your job is to make a first impression is to get someone to walk across the bar and put money in that machine you're creating that first impression”

    Greg Ferris (quoted) @ ~15:30 — Articulates the commercial purpose of pinball art—attracting players through visual appeal alone

  • “Dave Christensen was the most amazing ink artist ever. He always had a whimsical way of drawing.”

    Paul Ferris (quoted) @ ~35:00 — Key artist Paul Ferris praising Christensen's technical skill and artistic approach

  • “It's like, oh, look at this. I can't believe this Bali pinball machine brought in $100,000 last week. Huh, I'll just launder that through the rest of my business.”

    Ron Howell (hypothetical mob motivation) @ ~28:00 — Illustrates why organized crime was attracted to pinball machines as money laundering vehicles

  • “Will O'Donnell would put a couple hundred on the bar and say, drinks for everyone, my hero. There's Christmas parties, all-you-can-drink, unbelievable food.”

    Dave Christensen (quoted by David Dennis) — Shows the loose corporate culture at Bally under O'Donnell before going public

Entities

Dave ChristensenpersonPaul FerrispersonGreg FerrispersonWilliam T. O'DonnellpersonGreg KemmickpersonTom NeimanpersonBallycompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Bally leadership underwent significant change following organized crime exposure; transition from loose, entertainment-focused culture (O'Donnell era) to corporate public company structure affected employee dynamics

    high · David Dennis: 'When they went public, things changed... Christensen really enjoyed... the shenanigans' and later 'now people get so upset when you spend $100 at the bar'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Contemporary artist Christopher Franchi receives significant credit for Munsters' visual appeal and commercial success; reflects modern pinball appreciation for artist-driven design

    medium · David Dennis: 'many would say that Christopher Franchi was the reason Stern sold as many Munsters as it did'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Tommy film's casting (Anne Margaret as Roger Daltrey's mother despite age proximity) created awkward imagery replicated in Wizard pinball back glass; pointed out by hosts but not deeply analyzed

    medium · David Dennis: 'she was supposed to be his mom when she was, like, close to his age... She's got her leg chained to a Tommy Pinball-looking thing'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Dave Christensen's signature visual approach emphasized objectified women, belt buckles, powerful male characters, and whimsical ink artistry; reflected 1970s aesthetic and entertainment values of the era

    high · David Dennis: 'his use of women... the women were hanging off of a very powerful man... often objectified... cone boobs... belt buckles... He was a big fan of the belt buckles'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Wizard (1975) was first licensed pinball with involvement of film stars (Roger Daltrey, Ann Margaret); established precedent for celebrity/IP-driven pinball themes; Tom Neiman instrumental in developing licensing concept

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.369

0:00
Shipping, billing, admin, payroll, marketing. You're managing all the things. So why waste time sending important documents the old-fashioned way? Mail and ship when you want, how you want with Stamps.com. Print postage on demand 24-7 and schedule pickups from your office or home. Save up to 90% with automated rate shopping. That's why over 1 million small businesses trust Stamps.com. Go to Stamps.com and use code PODCAST to try Stamps.com risk-free for 60 days. The Pinball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles.
0:45
Hello, everyone. I'm David Dennis, and this is Silver Ball Chronicles. My Bob Ross voice. We're going to paint a wonderful back glass. Yeah, we're going to put some reds on here, and those are going to crack because it's too hot. We're going to put boobs on this because boobs sell.
1:28
Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles. With me this month, my co-host, Mr. Muscles, Ron Howell. What's up, fella? Well, I do have muscles. I don't know if I'm Mr. Muscles. Yeah, what did you think of our new intro music here? We're metal now. Yes, we're a little bit harder because we wanted to drive home the fact that history can be rock and roll. So we're the rock stars of history? Ooh, that's even better. Very good. So, well, we've taken over the Pinball Network again this month, and we asked Josh Jacobs from Silver Ball Stories, who's a bit of an audiophile, to help us out with new music, so we've added that, and I think it turned out fairly well. Well, it's a bit different than our other one, but this one is license-free. So when we sell out, we don't have to worry about anybody coming after us. Sounds good to me. Yeah, exactly. So what have you been doing the last little while? Social distancing and more social distancing. Streaming. We've been streaming. Yeah, you've had a lot of really good streams with Stu. You had to throw him out of your house there on the last one. He was not helping you out. No, me and Zach from Slamtilt, we tried to get to Reactor 9 in co-op, and we actually got 9 started on the keypad. Well, actually got it lit, and it drained immediately. Well, that is the masterpiece that is Scott DeCini's total nuclear annihilation. You mean Scott DeNisi? Yeah, the same guy. No, it's not. Us Italians got to stick together, you know, with the name, you know. Well, speaking of streaming, I did my first ever stream with Orbital Albert from the Pinball Nerds podcast. Go ahead and check him out. We streamed one of the greatest games of all time, Tron, as well as the Simpsons Pinball Party. So you were one for two. It was a lot of fun streaming those. And I can understand, you know, we like to engage with the chat, a couple of great clips of me making massive saves. But it's really fun. I can really see why you do it. Now, we didn't have the advanced streaming rig that you have, but we had something, you know, fairly adequate, I would say, and it turned out well. You know, we were pretty happy. You know, if you were to combine the rule-based depth of Simpsons Spinball Party with the actual good playing game that is Tron, that would be a great game. Oh, would it ever. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the problem with Simpsons is it's so clunky. Yep. Brutal. Yep. Link it to Joe Balzer to make an orbit clunky. But these are opinions. These are not history. History says that the Simpsons pinball party had like seven or eight runs and was one of the Stern's most successful games. So what do I know? That means I'm wrong. Nice little social media update here. If you want to join us over on Facebook.com slash Silverball Chronicles, we'd love to chit-chat with you. One thing that we always enjoy is the banter we get back and forth with a few people. So you're wondering kind of what's up and when we're posting our next episode or what we're working on. We will, from time to time, post up some information up on there. Silverball Chronicles now has its own dedicated podcast channel. So if you want us to pop up in your podcast feed with none of the other TPN content, I'm not sure why you'd want to do that. No, no, no, not at all. I would never want to do that. TPN stuff is very, very good. But if you would like a dedicated Silverball Chronicles channel and we pop up when we're done, you can swing over to your podcast app and search for Silverball Chronicles. Or if you jump into our Facebook page, we've added a link to the direct RSS feed, and I've attached that to the top of the page with a pin. And as that was one of the main complaints when TPN first started, you should all be happy now. Every show on TPN has their own channel now if you just go searching on the pin side thread for it. but we wanted to make it a little bit easier for you. Also, I guess while you're over there looking that up, please leave us a five-star review so you can help others find us, because we tend to float up in the algorithm there. Oh, speaking of selling out earlier, Ron, we have sold out a little bit. This Week in Pinball has a Patreon. 25% of their Patreon profits go to podcasters, Twitch streamers, and YouTubers. And if you'd like to continue to support the hobby, just swing over to patreon.com slash TWIP and subscribe. Now, in the TWIP pinball database, you can leave a review of our show to help others find us, and we've got a couple of those here. Yeah, Grant K. says, an extremely enjoyable and informative podcast, which clearly has many hours of research prior to each episode. And that's all on Dave, by the way. He's the man. This is one of only a few podcasts that I really look forward to and can honestly say I've listened to each episode twice to get a full understanding of how pinball evolved over the years. Love it all, including Stewie's comments. Thank you. Thank you very much. Everyone loves me. I'm very popular. A pinsider, MTN, who I believe is from Norway, left us a great comment. It just said, keep it coming, guys.
@ ~32:00
Wizard
game
Paragongame
Fathomgame
Monte Carlo / Odds and Evensgame
Munstersgame
Christopher Franchiperson
Zombie Eddieperson
John Yauseyperson
Kevin O'Connorperson
Dirty Donnieperson
Tommy (1975 film)product
Genovese crime familyorganization
Ad Posterscompany
Silver Ball Chroniclesorganization
Slam Tilt Podcastorganization

high · David Dennis: 'This was also the first licensed pinball machine to have the involvement of stars... Paul Ferris says, Tom Neiman was very instrumental in developing the whole idea of a license theme into pinball'

  • $

    market_signal: Bally machines from 1975-1983 command premium resale prices exceeding new Stern Premium tier machines, indicating lasting collector value driven by artistic merit

    medium · David Dennis: 'today, some of these artistic masterpieces, the pinball machines themselves, sell for more than brand new Stern premium machines'

  • ?

    community_signal: Dave Christensen as pioneering in-house artist who established Bally's visual differentiation strategy; hand-drawn techniques and 12-color screening process represented significant technical investment

    high · David Dennis: 'It was all hand-drawn. He'd draw everything, then separate the color individually himself to screen. Twelve screens with a rule of thumb of colors.'

    • 6:43
    You know, this is a great opportunity to sort of plug the T-shirts that we have over at silverballswag.com. We have a couple of different design choices and some hoodies and mugs and stickers. So if you'd like to support this show, please swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick those up. recently we actually had sold a few shirts which is great because after all of the research that and and and show notes that i put together here for today's episode i really needed a quick pick me up and edward partridge from down under thank you so much for purchasing some shirts if anybody else has purchased some shirts please let us know on our facebook page we'd love to give you a shout out here on silver ball chronicles to say thank you for that so last month you can remember ron that we had a secret contest that we usually have. Yes, of course, the secret contest. And that secret contest was, we couldn't remember which was Steve Ritchie's first widebody at Williams. And I think you said something like, if you can remember what that is, you can send us an email at silverballchronicles at gmail.com for your chance to win a prize. And only one person emailed us. Oh. And I think they emailed us just to mock us or to call our bluff or to just be an all-around douche. Well, the person who called it in is the person who has been on record on how much they hate wide bodies. Ooh, exciting. So, Dennis Creasel, you win a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt, a premium one, not one of those crappy ones like your GP shirts. Just let us know your mailing address, and I'll send you that over and maybe a sticker from Silver Ball Swag. That's what you get for calling her bluff. He literally was the only person. He really was. And I'll actually post up on our Facebook page the image of the email that he sent, just to prove that this is legit, and he called out our bluff. Any corrections or comments from our previous episode that you've heard? I haven't heard anything. No? We still haven't got that letter from Bruce on the last episode. Yeah, so for those out there who, it is very possible we may have some mistakes. There's a lot of history out there, and believe it or not, we're not always right. So if you would like a correction or like to make a correction, just please email us at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. Don't tell me in private messages how inaccurate we were, and then you never send anything in on what we were wrong with. That's right. So if you want to get your typewriter out and clickety-clack us the message over, you can do that. Anything else you want to add there? Yes. I have been scolded by my podcast mate, Bruce, that I do not plug our own show often enough on this show. That's right. Yeah, he did. So I'm on another podcast. It's called the Slam Tilt Podcast. It's somewhat juvenile, I would say, compared to this one. It's not nearly as classy, but if that's what you go for, it's the podcast for you. Again, Slam Tilt Podcast. You can check it out. It's just SlamTiltPodcast.com. Everything's there. When I started in the hobby, I was looking up podcasts. Slam Tilt kind of came to the top. I listened to the first episode that sort of filled into my feed. I think it was probably a week after I had subscribed. I thought it was so bad, I deleted it and didn't listen to it. And then a couple of months later, I went back and I listened to the next episode. And from then on, I've been a religious listener. So when Dennis had suggested, hey, why don't you ask Ron from Slam Tilt to join? And I'm like, yeah, Ron's not going to want to do a podcast with, like, a guy he's never met from Canada. And here we are now. Yeah, and I basically was just two conditions. Like, okay, I don't have to edit. And, like, who's this David Dennis guy? So I listened to you on, might have been the Twit Podcast back when they were doing guest hosting. And it's like, this seems like a goofy Canadian guy. I could deal with that. I could deal with it. And that was it. That literally was the only two conditions. And, like, I'm on. I'll do it. Yeah. So check out Slam Tilt Podcast. It's well worth your time if you want to have a couple of hours. I was thinking about this. You know one thing we have in common? Neither of our podcasts have pinball in the title. Oh, good point. Yeah. There's not too many of those. Usually it's always the So-and-So Pinball Podcast or the So-and-So Pinball Podcast. Yeah, good point. Good point. We like to be different and classy here, I think. Well, we don't, but we do. Or me and Bruce don't, but me and you do, yes. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, Bruce is, you know, Bruce. This feels like one of those Twitch streams where the intro goes on for like 40 minutes before the content starts. That's right, that's right. So, as you can tell, I'm sure that somebody like Cary Hardy has already flipped through most of this. So, let's dive into the actual content today, shall we? Mm-hmm. Ron, as you know, Art sells pinball machines. Art has always sold pinball machines. Art will always sell pinball machines. The masters of pinball art today, like Christopher Franchi, Zombie Eddie, John Yausey, and Kevin O'Connor, add as much to a pinball machine as the designer themselves. In fact, many would say that Christopher Franchi was the reason Stern sold as many Munsters as it did. And don't forget Dirty Donnie. Ooh, exactly. I would argue that he kind of started the new trend of actual good artwork on the Stern games, but with Metallica. There was no better team in pinball than the art team at Bally. From 1975 until Bally was sold to Midway in 1983, the eclectic, creative, and dedicated team of artists made some of the best art on pinball that we have ever seen. Paul Ferris, a central figure in today's podcast, was tasked with creating an art department in-house at Bally to differentiate their machines visually from those of Gottlieb and Williams. They achieved that task in spades, and as a testament to their work, today, some of these artistic masterpieces, the pinball machines themselves, sell for more than brand new Stern premium machines. That is correct. This month, we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics, moving units, Bally's art revolution. All right. Ron, this is an audio medium. People are listening to us at work. They're in a car. They're ignoring their family in the kitchen making supper. It's going to be a bit tough to take this audio medium and talk about a visual art. This type of episode is probably best where you can kind of reference some of the things that we're talking about. So please use the show notes where I have links to some of the art that we're talking about and some of that information. That's how you're going to get the most out of the podcast. And I got a link for you if you want to, because no one ever links this one. They always go to IPDB. But when it comes to pinball flyers, there's actually a much better site that has like every flyer, and they're all like high-depth, like you can zoom in to ridiculous levels on them. Very cool. And it's a weird name for the site. That's why no one ever, I mean, the site's old. Was it built on GeoCities? This is a great resource. So I have included that in our show notes, everybody. So, Ron, what's your favorite artist of this era? That's a tough one. They're all good. I mean, there's no... They really are all good. Kevin O'Connor has, you know, Kiss is great. You know, Paul Ferris, just Paragon.
    14:10
    I just keep thinking Paragon. That always is the first thing that pops in my head. Greg Ferris, Fathom, possibly the greatest artwork ever on a game. Yeah, I said it. When you think about the resale value, that a lot of these machines in this era are significantly higher priced than almost anything else, even all the way up to the Bally Williams era in the 1990s with D&Ds and code and crazy toys. Do you ever feel bad that you bought all those crappy Sterns instead of the Bally Class of 81? I feel the artwork on a lot of the Sterns is good. It's really out there. so Sean Ledgerwood would say my first pinball machine was a bally strikes and spares with artwork by Kevin O'Connor it seemed to be the perfect fit of nostalgia bowling alleys pretty girls and the back glass art summed up the time period and we'll get into that Sean it's the first thing you see when you I mean it's what you look at it's like it draws you in right like you see cool art, you want to go play it. I'll tell you a story. You want to see how it draws me in? So, when I went to my first pinball event show, which was Allentown, when it was called the Pinball Wizards Convention in 2004,
    15:29
    it was like in a strip mall, but it was still the most games I'd ever seen in one place. And I remember specifically seeing Paragon for the first time and seeing that back glass and just thinking to myself, oh my god that's just like way too good to be on a pinball machine that looks like it should be in a museum or something that kind of artwork it was it was something special and and you know one of the legends that we'll be talking about in this podcast greg freres says as a pinball artist your job is to make a first impression is to get someone to walk across the bar and put money in that machine you're creating that first impression the first impression that i had um with a with a pinball machine quite recently was was in fact the black and white monsters and when i saw one of those i was on a vacation it was like almost two years ago now at modern pinball in new york when i saw that i was just like wow that is that is something else um because it stood out and it was it was interesting, and I played a bunch of it. Now, you know, a lot of people aren't fans of the Munsters, but I'll tell you, it was a fun player, and the art was strong. Strong art package, and totally different. So it drew me in. It might not keep you there, it might be the gameplay that keeps you there, but one of the other bits was these older machines of the 1960s. So before we get into kind of our topic of the, you know, the bally 80s time slots, This 60s era of pinball was really weird. Some of the art, especially the Williams art, was really weird in the 60s. Oh, the pointy art? Yeah. It was very simplistic and primary colors and weird geometry and these interesting characters. Loads of the games being made at that time, there were so many machines that they were just cranking out art left and right. and you could tell that they were just throwing out almost the same characters in different positions.
    17:37
    Very strange. Do you have any, like, machines that you can remember in that 60s era? I'm not very good with 60s, I have to say. But, I mean, a lot of them have the pointy art, very simplistic pointy art.
    17:53
    I remember, well, there's Beat Time, which is a Beatles game, but it's not called The Beatles. Yeah. Isn't it called the Boodles or something like that? But it's obviously the Beatles. Odd design and the geometry of a point. And I guess that was sort of kind of the cool style of, like, the early 60s, maybe late 50s was this odd cartoony thing. One thing that I thought was interesting is I was kind of going through some of those old artists. A lot of the work, if you look at IPDB, a lot of this artist work is often uncredited. And it was sort of like just a job, right? So it was actually in another podcast of David Christensen, where he would actually mention the name of some of these individuals that would work on these projects, guys like Jerry Kelly, Roy Parker. And if you go to their games in IPDB, often they're uncredited as the art. But you can tell that that pointy modern art style was Jerry Keeley. and his art is often uncredited, but you can tell it's him because they all look the same weirdness. And, well, actually the pointy artwork is mostly known as, what's his name?
    19:06
    Yeah, and Christian Marsh, also known primarily for his pointy artwork. Roy Parker is known for mostly all the Gottlieb work he did. Yeah, his is very more cartoony. Yeah, and a lot of the older art, it is good, and if you look at those back glasses, a lot of them will tell some kind of story, some kind of moment in time, and if you look at it, there'll be all this little stuff going on that you didn't notice the first time. Even though it is cartoony, it does usually have, it's usually like a humorous story going on. People are having fun. They're enjoying themselves, right? It was all about like, oh, look at those people on the back glass having fun. I bet you I would have fun as well if I played that machine, right? It's creating that first impression. So ad posters did most of the art at that time. So ad posters was like a third-party company, and all of the major companies would use them to do their art. So their art wasn't actually in-house, right? And they didn't just have artists on staff that maybe worked at a different location. They had ad posters, and that's where Marsh, Parker, Keeley, that's where they all kind of worked was ad posters. Yeah, and if you remember our Stern episode, that's where their artwork was done primarily. Yeah. Now, Stern let them just go nuts, and I guess probably by that time they also had a turnover in the sort of older artists kind of phasing their way out. Pinball companies were often manufacturer companies first, and they weren't art houses. So what they did is they just got a guy to do the art for them, and it was probably better that way because you don't want a bunch of engineers making your art. So Dave Christensen, who we'll be talking about him a lot, would say about ad posters, they didn't want anything to do with me. I'd go to ad posters to see how the work was going on, some silk screening or something. I'd have to sit in the lobby, and the guy would come and talk to me like I was his worst enemy, like I was taking work away from him. And I basically was.
    21:06
    That's the candor of Dave Christensen. We'll get into him in a few moments. When Bally started having their own art people, you could see that there's some tension building there. And Dave Christensen is the first person that Bally brought in-house to do their art.
    21:23
    Often, ad posters would sort of do a project, and the executives would then take a look at it, and they'd get Dave Christensen to polish it or to redo the back glass. A great example of that is a pinball machine called Bon Voyage, where the executives didn't really like the way the back glass was. It wasn't kind of trendy or cool enough. So then they gave Dave Christensen to do that. So we've mentioned Dave Christensen a few times now. So let's go into, like, who he was, Ron. Well, Dave Christensen, or as he was known, Dave Mad Dog Christensen, he got the nickname when he was in the Army. mostly as he described it as drawing exploits. One would assume he was drawing some shenanigans and maybe got that nickname. He also rolled a Mercedes down a hill in Germany in 1953, or as he described it, a mountain. You know, well, Dave Christensen is an interesting character, and the end of his career is even more interesting maybe than sort of the beginning, but he's an odd fellow. After World War II, he did freelance technical drawings with Rockwell Industries. Remember them from our Gottlieb System 1? Oh, yeah, they're the guys that did the really crappy job on the MPU board. Oh, yeah, but he did artwork for their manuals for the tanks. So somewhere there's a manual, it was a tank manual with art by Dave Christensen in it. In 1960, he did freelance for Bally and a cubicle they gave him in the factory doing service manuals for the slot machines. He kind of moves into Bally doing slot machines. One thing, and the timelines here are a bit fuzzy, so I'm going to sort of, as best I can, piece it together, because there's a lot of things happening at the same time, but I'm going to try to put it in an order that's sort of easier to understand. But around the time in the early 70s, Bally entered more or less into the casino business when New Jersey legalized gambling in Atlantic City. During this time of turmoil, kind of in that early mid-70s, the head of the company, William T. O'Donnell, was forced to resign because he apparently had links to organized crime. Yes, and if you listen to some other podcasts, the ones that Roger Sharp did for his book, Pinball, where when he was talking to the head of Williams, the head of Gottlieb, you definitely got the sense that they were not liking Bally for this reason, because they were trying to get away from the whole gambling and all that, and then you have Bally that not only is associated with casinos, but the mob, not stuff they really wanted pinball to be associated with. Yeah, so in fact, during an investigation into organized crime in Australia, and it was basically on U.S.-Australia criminal activity, O'Donnell had admitted that a mafia boss, Genovese... It's the Genovese. It's a crime family. The Genovese mafia boss, yeah. Gerardo Catina once owned shares in Bali. And O'Donnell, when was confronted with this, basically said, oh, I bought him out. So at one time, this mafia family had an ownership stake in Bali. William T. O'Donnell also declined knowing a man named Joseph Dentesta, who was a Chicago mobster who had apparently traveled to Australia as a representative of Bali. So there's some sketchiness going on there at the upper levels of Bali in this time. So why do you think the mob liked pinball so much? Gambling?
    25:09
    Cash, right? It's easy to hide it. Oh, what, they put it in the pinball machines? Yeah, that's right, yeah. It's like, oh, look at this. I can't believe this Bali pinball machine brought in $100,000 last week. Huh, I'll just launder that through the rest of my business. Like, it's a bit weird. And William O'Donnell himself was a bit of a character. Well, Dave Christensen would say it had ballet at great parties. Any excuse for a party, Will O'Donnell would put a couple hundred on the bar and say, drinks for everyone, my hero. There's Christmas parties, all-you-can-drink, unbelievable food. When they went public, things changed. So it sounds like Dave Christensen preferred the mob years. Yeah, Christensen really enjoyed, I would say, the shenanigans. So you can listen to his TopCast interview, which I've included in the show notes, and that's where he sort of gets into the time when, you know, Will O'Donnell would throw parties with, like, oysters and things would be crazy and they'd have drinks all the time. And really this casual world, which sort of doesn't exist nowadays, right, where now people get so upset when you spend $100 at the bar and you've got to fill out your TPS reports, expense reports. Well, during this time, money was flowing at Bally, and they were just trying to have as much fun as they could while they could. So Dave Christensen was really the first piece in that puzzle to bring the art department into Bally. And his first machine was Monte Carlo, or the other version of that is Odds and Evens. And AdPosters, as mentioned before, did the playfield art, but Dave Christensen did the back glass. Monte Carlo is where you can really see that Dave Christensen created his signature art style. It was all hand-drawn. He'd draw everything, then separate the color individually himself to screen. Twelve screens with a rule of thumb of colors. And he introduced mirroring. You start with a mirror and wash off the air with acid where the color would go. He was really big on lines and line colors. And we'll go into sort of the technologies of colors, etc. in a little while. But one thing that really stands out about Dave Christensen, especially in his earlier art, is his use of women. And often the women were hanging off of a very powerful man. It was like a man gambling or a gangster or a fighter or an entertainer. And they were like the object. They were the powerful man. and it was always the woman that was, like, hanging off. They were often objectified. They had those weird 60s, 70s-style cone boobs. And belt buckles. Don't forget those. That was another one of his things. He loved belt buckles. Belt buckles. He was a big fan of the belt buckles. Paul Ferris would say that Dave Christensen was the most amazing ink artist ever. He always had a whimsical way of drawing. That's an interesting way of saying it. Yes, whimsical indeed. So his first massive project, Dave Christensen's first massive project at Bally was Wizard. And we'll go into Wizard in great, great detail some other time when we talk about licensing. Today we're going to focus mostly on the art. But that's a rock theme from May 1975. It was an electromechanical, so this is before Bally had switched over to the solid-state system. sold 10,005 units, designed by Greg Kemmick, who did Xenon, Powerplay, and his last game, Capcom's... Greg Kemmick. Kemmick? That's how you say it. Greg Kemmick, who did Xenon, Powerplay, Capcom's Breakshot, and, of course, artwork by Dave Christensen. And Wizard is based on the 1975 film Tommy, which is based on the Who's Rock Opera? Tommy. The weird thing about the movie is in the movie, Roger Daltrey plays Tommy, and Anne Margaret is his mom in the movie. Now, these are the two characters that are on the back glass of Wizard. You have Roger Daltrey as Tommy and Anne Margaret, who definitely is not holding him in a way you would think mom would hold him. That's a whole thing. He was probably closer, they were probably closer to age. Like, she was probably, I don't know, five, maybe ten years older than him, if that. So, in the movie, it was kind of weird that she was supposed to be his mom when she was, like, close to his age. Yeah, and she was sitting on his lap. Well, a pop-up her cap, but basically his lap, I guess. She's got the legs, she's got her leg chained to a Tommy Pinball-looking thing. And then you have the two other women, both with the belt buckles. Both with the belt buckles, yeah. It's funny, I didn't really notice that when I was going through all this stuff. But, you know, Tommy was a psychosomatically deaf, mute, and blind boy who became a pinball champion. So don't worry, Ron, there's still hope for you. I don't know if I have as supple a wrist as Tommy had. This rock opera gave us all the song we friggin' hate. And we hear it all the time. and it coined the phrase Pinball Wizard, which I'm sure we all just love. I do. I don't have any problem with that. I pictured you as more of like a pinball hobbit. No, no. There could be a lot worse songs associated with pinball than Pinball Wizard. It was actually a huge hit song, a huge groundbreaking rock opera album. I 100 on board Do they play it too much Yes 100 It just drives me mad It just drives me nuts The funny thing is that that a ballet game based on the movie In the movie, they use all Gottlieb machines for the pinball scenes. Really? Yeah. So when he says, I am the ballet table king, I know he's actually playing a Gottlieb. Oh, my goodness. One thing that I really enjoy is the context of the time, right?
    31:08
    What's going on at the time. And this film was a huge pop culture phenomenon. It was a $3 million budget, which grossed $34.3 million at the box office. Now, if you extrapolate that into today's dollars, that's $163.4 million today. And, you know, that's a big deal for a musical about pinball. This was also the first licensed pinball machine to have the involvement of stars. Yeah, Paul Ferris says, Tom Neiman was very instrumental in developing the whole idea of a license theme into pinball. The first one we did was Wizard, which is based on the movie Tommy. Dave Christensen used Ann Margaret and Roger Daltrey. Yeah, so we'll get into Tom Neiman in the future. We'll get into licensing in the future because he did a whole TopCast podcast back in the day on licensing in general. And we'll get into that. We'll also bring in maybe some Roger Sharp, and we'll talk a little bit about that stuff. Bally were definitely the leaders there. They took the lead on that. Did they ever? Holy. And you'll see as we go through today, all of the names. Well, for the art, Dave Christensen said that Ann Margaret had some comments on the first draft. She didn't like her hair up, which is how Dave originally drew it. So she wasn't into that, so she requested it be changed. Yeah, he was very traditionalist with that hair up kind of 1960s beehive style, which had very much become not cool. She requested that change And Dave Christensen was really Greg Ferreres' inspiration Greg Ferreres today being the art director at Stern And Greg Ferreres says that Wizard was the real impression of what pinball was all about The feeling, the excitement, and the pop culture of the who Yeah, without someone like Dave Christensen There might not have been a Greg Ferreres, which is really weird so in 1975 Paul Ferris joins Bally and I'm not sure in the exact timing of like beginning of the year end of the year etc um because who really keeps track of that stuff but when they're talking they kind of meld all of this together across a couple of podcasts so I'm going to put it in here because I feel like this is an appropriate place to put it who was Paul Ferris well Paul was an art major in college and became a high school art teacher in suburban Chicago high school for seven years. In the summers, Paul would sell art as his summer job. Yeah, pinball at the time was illegal in Illinois, and of course he didn't play very much. But Paul's brother, he knew Bill from Bali, and they spoke about the art that Paul had done. And of course, at the time, Bill was interested in creating his own in-house art department. Oh, this is the Bill we don't know the last name of? Yeah, so I'm just going to call him Bill. If you know Bill's last name, please send us an email at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. Yeah, Paul said Billy had this vision of bringing the art department in-house. This would give Valley a unique style versus the same artist pool as all the other companies who are using ad posters. Billy knew the artists could be free spirits and was looking for someone to add structure and stability to create an art department. A teacher? What would a perfect person to be able to corral a bunch of children and strong personalities, right? So Paul was a teacher. He loved wrestling and he loved coaching and he was a leader. and, of course, the carrot to get him to leave teaching, which he was very reluctant to do, was to become the art director for Bally. And he was a wrestling coach, and he was a bigger guy. He's actually the inspiration for a lot of his own art. When you see the big dude with the beard and all that on his art, that's him. He's all shoulders. All shoulders, Paul Ferris, that's what we'll call him. So at this time, where do you kind of research art for pinball, right? Like, I guess you look at old pinball machines, but you don't have an IPDB or you don't have books or encyclopedias or whatever. So he really started sort of studying trendy arts like vinyl record art and heavy metal magazine and all these all really cool, where all the crazy artists hang out. And that's kind of where he started looking for some inspiration. So where do you kind of start, right? Like, you come out of teaching, you come out of kind of fine art school. Like, how do you even start in pinball? It seems like such a crazy time. Well, Paul started by working on his first machine, Quarterback. It wasn't released for some time after it was completed. So Paul says, I was a fine painter. With pinball, you had to do work with ink, and then you had to cut the separations for the screen stencils. Cut every color. It was a hand-done process. You didn't do it as a painting. You did it as ink. And you'd have to do what they call a ruby lift with each color. That was new to me. Yeah, Paul was held in quite high regard amongst the Valley team at the time. mostly, and we'll talk about, of course, a little bit more of that in a minute, but Margaret Hudson would say that Paul was great. He took me under his wing and made sure all of us got everything we needed to do our best. The best tools, techniques, going on seminars to learn things, Paul was wonderful. So Paul comes aboard. Around the same time, Dave Christensen is moving into a game called Old Chicago, which is a gangster theme from 1976. We're still in the electromechanical time, 7,155 units. Greg is, of course, on that design again. Greg Kamek. Greg Kamek, of course. That's twice if you're following along. Of course, this is a gangster theme, and this was kind of really before those gambling controversies, gangsterism kind of got really deep into Bally, but it's around the same time. And this one is really unique, because this game is the one with the pop bumper down on the bottom and the flippers up a little bit higher. Very cool. Very cool game. Totally different. It's a great game. Little do people know that John Yowsey did the original art for this machine because he was doing freelance at the time, and he was working at a place called Album Graphics Inc. After the executives had sort of reviewed it, they got Dave to redo a bunch of the art. And, of course, you'll remember John Yowsey from our Python Angelo episode where he was working at Williams in the mid to late 80s. And, of course, now he's working with J.J.P. and Pat Waller on a lot of their games, his latest one being Willy Wonka. I would say he worked at Williams from, like, the mid-80s to the mid-90s, actually. Because he did Whitewater, he did, like, Yellow Tread and all that. He was there to probably close to the end. I saved us a correction there. There you go. There you go. John Yowsey would say, I think Dave spent most of his time on the two main figures. The male figure was a generic gangster, but Dave had John Dillinger in mind when he redid the art, which added a lot of character. He also reworked the female figures, of course, right? Because that's Dave Christensen's thing is female characters. My background design elements remained intact, but re-inked, which meant color changes, including the jazz band at the bottom, the city, the spotlights, the airships, and borders.
    38:13
    So John Dillinger, he was actually a real-life gangster. He was gunned down by federal agents in front of Chicago's Biograph Theater in 1934. He was betrayed by a brothel madam, Anna Sage, real name Anna Campanus? Sure. That's it. The legendary woman in red. So you can see on the back glass the female characters there. So Sage is actually depicted in that back glass as the woman in red. So when you're looking at the back glass, it's, again, it's this sort of powerful male character. These female characters in a very cold Chicago from the 1930s.
    38:59
    Very, very cool, if you ask me. Both in temperature and in style. And so Sage is depicted in the back glass wearing the red dress, looking youthful, although at the time, apparently, she was in her mid-40s. And during the shooting, she was wearing a bright orange skirt and a white blouse. So she wasn't in red. She was not in red, but she was known as the woman in red. And Dillinger was, of course, the fellow in the middle, the gangster. and on the right side his girlfriend Polly Hamilton, who exited the theater into the FBI ambush. Dave Christensen actually said at Pinball Expo 2004 that he intended the woman in red to be Sage and nobody else. A reference to the SMC Cartridge Company garage at 2122 North Clark Street where the St. Valentine's Day Massacre occurred in 1929. When the garage was torn down in 1967, Christensen took some bricks from the site to display in his fireplace. dismantle. Christian Sin likes a lot of illegal stuff. He's very risque, both in his art, his life choices, and he's a, hmm, what's a way to put this? He puts a lot of negative folk almost up on a pedestal. He's an odd fella. One thing that I found super cool is that John Yossi actually did the art for some album covers, including the early Almond Brothers album and an Almond Joy from 1973, which I thought was super cool. And a lot of those Art Deco images from those album covers are on this play field, which is super, super cool. I guess we could jump into the next one, which is also somewhat controversial, which is Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy from 1976. How many people know that that's the full title of the machine? Everyone just calls it Captain Fantastic. They almost never call the full name the Brown Dirt Cowboy. It's a rock star theme. This one also electromechanical. 6,155 units. Dave Christensen and Greg Kemmick again teaming up. And the celebrity this time is Elton John. The celebrity is that Elton John is front and center based again on the musical Tommy where Elton John played the main character who was on the back last playing that. Yeah, in the movie Tommy, Elton John's character, he's actually the pinball wizard that Tommy defeats. Oh yes, that's right. Of course, of course, of course. He's the one singing the song Pinball Wizard. How do you think he does this? I don't know what makes him so good. Now, Christopher Franchi would say that this is the biggest dumpster fire of anger and hate you could possibly have for pinball. He hates this machine. He owns this machine. He loves playing this machine, but he hates this machine. There is a flyer for this game. The flyer is very much, of course, one of those promotional flyers that we were talking about. And you can see this flyer in high res in the extra link that Ron has provided for us here. It's also on IPDB. It is kind of weird. Yeah, Elton John is standing next to the machine, but he's wearing like a hockey jersey. He's wearing a 1974 Team Canada hockey jersey, just hanging out in a hotel. Now, this was shot in a hotel in Toronto. I believe it is the Royal York from downtown Toronto. So here's a little bit of trivia for you. I had my bachelor party in that very hotel, and I don't remember the end of the night. So you could have been in the same room where that picture was taken. I probably was a few floors down, but it was a nice hotel room. The cool bit is that the reason he's wearing that hockey jersey is because he's just hanging out at the hotel doing a show, and they brought in this machine to do the photos, and that was what he was wearing. He didn't change anything. He just, there he is. done.
    43:19
    Man, rock stars. Live in the dream. Now the back glass included in the song lyrics of the words, from the end of the world to your town, which appear at the very top center of the back glass.
    43:31
    Oh, and Dave Christensen, he puts some interesting things in that back glass. Yeah, there's some shenanigans going on here. Dave Christensen would say, a few people went out for drinks at lunch. It was a joke. Hilton John in the movie was playing in a crowd and I wanted to make it interesting. So some of the art on this back glass was caught by management and thought to be a bit risque. They would then take some of the original art that they had done. A few back glasses were already there. Yeah, what they did is they had a first run, and they got out there with all these shenanigans in place. And on the back glass, there are these little stars that are all throughout the back glass. So they just, when they redid the back glass, then strategically moved the stars to cover up some of the offending areas, should I say. Yeah, very, very well said. Yes. In the Museum of Pinball, I think that's what they call themselves, in Banning, California, they have a Captain Fantastic there that has the uncensored back glass. So you get to see things like a woman grabbing a guy's, well... His man bits. Yes, a woman giving you the finger. I'm not sure the star really covers that up. A woman holding her boobs is in there. It's very cold in that crowd, which is interesting. It's very cold in Dave Christensen's world, pretty much always. One thing's for sure, if you needed to cut glass, Dave Christensen was your guy. And, you know, all those things we mentioned might not even be the most offensive thing in there. That brings us to our next bit of controversy around Mr. Christensen. And that's that some people say that he is a closeted Nazi sympathizer. Some of his work often has Nazi or German iconography. Yeah, if you look at the Captain Fantastic back glass, I think it's all the way to the right. You see, kind of hanging out in the background is Hitler. Just hanging out. Just chilling. Just chilling, listening to the, yeah. You can mostly see kind of his hat and his eyes and, of course, the mustache that he's ruined for all of us forever. Now, on TopCast, which is linked in the show notes, they said, you know, flat out, they're just like, so why Hitler on the back glass? It took them like a little bit of stumbling to actually kind of answer the question. So go back and listen to this yourself if you want to hear it. It's not, I don't know if it's because he's older, he's trying to remember, or if he's trying to come up with, like, he didn't expect the question, which I find weird. So he said, yeah, well, you can't come up with a logical answer for this. It's just goofy stuff. And then what I find really weird is that then the hosts move on, and they were on the next topic. I think they were talking about another pinball machine. And then Dave goes back. It's only been like a couple of minutes. Dave then revisits his answer because he must have come up with a better excuse. And then he says, maybe it was the movie took place during the Blitz in London, and there was no real logical reason, and it wasn't meant to offend anybody. I'm sure he's been asked that question a lot over the years. Why is Hitler in the back glass? You'd think he'd kind of have a better answer ready to go for that, wouldn't you? Well, to be fair, Hitler was originally supposed to be in the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Yes, of course. And, of course, Hitler has been on countless episodes of Family Guy. It's a pattern of strangeness with Dave Christensen that sort of brings up that sort of commentary that he's a bit of a sympathizer or maybe is a bit too nonchalant with that use. So, for example, and we skipped over these games, but there's Rogo and Air Aces that were done by Christensen. and he did the back glasses. There are sideways-looking eagles, which is sort of Nazi-ish back in the day, and that, again, we've got more controversy, and that will come up here in the next little while. Now we're on to Orbit Spinners. Yeah! That's a game? Oh, Knight Rider, with David Asselhoff? That's right, it's Trucker CB Radio Theme. Oh, okay, that and Knight Rider. So not David Asselhoff. Yeah, not the good Knight Rider. 1976 from November it sold both EM and solid state so it was a transition over the two it was the first production machine with the Valley 17 MPU 11,155 units if you add the EM and solid state numbers together designed again by Greg Kemmick and Paul Harris doing the artwork this time so this is kind of like his first real big deep dive into doing his own art package now that he's kind of learned how to do it. And did you know Paul's assistant wrestling coach from teaching was a truck driver?
    48:28
    So the waitress on the back glass was a former student. He put some of his friends on the play field. The people in the artwork are actually people that they knew they used for inspiration. And the truck driver on the back glass kind of over there by the ball and play window, that was the assistant wrestling coach. And one of Paul's former students on the was the waitress with the coffee. How cool can you make, you know, a Peterbilt truck and whatever? But I think they did a fairly darn good job of making it kind of cool. It's the Bally Express truck being chased by the police. Yeah, it's kind of based on Smokey and the Bandit. And of course, Smokey and the Bandit was 1977, so fairly close here in timeline. And Smokey and the Bandit was awesome. It was a great movie. Where's my Smokey and the Bandit machine there, Stern? Come on. I don't think that's happening.
    49:22
    Yeah, CB radios, they were a big thing at the time. Paul Ferris would put it, this was a minor license for CB radios. There was a CB radio company out there, and we used their particular CB radio as part of the art package. So it was a minor license project. The game might get you $3,000 in sales, but a theme and a license might get you the next $6,000 from there. The next big project was done by a guy named Jim Patla, who is now the COO over at Jersey Jack Pinball. You'll know him from Santar and Elvira the Party Monster and Viking. It's Mata Hari. It's a historical figure theme, April 1978. Solid state machine, standard body. It's 16,260 units. And Dave Christensen on art. Dave Christensen says this is one of his favorite back glasses, and in fact, also Paul Ferris says this is the favorite this is his favorite work done by Christensen. My friend Dylan has one of these Mata Haris. I play it at least once a week. It's a great game, great package, all around. Who was Mata Hari? Clue me in here, because I'm not 70 years old. So Mata Hari, this was actually Marguerite MacLeod. She was a Dutch exotic dancer and escort slash prostitute and was convicted of being a spy for the German army during World War I. The French army caught her. She was interrogated and executed by firing squad. Some people actually say that she, through interrogation, actually admitted taking money from Germany to be a spy, although she was in fact innocent. Dave Richardson would say a bunch of historical work went into the game. The map that she has that she's showing to the German double agent was actually the Battle of Temporo where the German army broke through the Italian lines in World War II. Even though he did a bunch of... He says he did a bunch of historical work. Yeah, wait a minute. It's World War II. If she's World War I, I'm confused. Right, so I don't know if he's trying to say that he did a bunch of research when he didn't, or maybe he did some research and he couldn't... He just was like, oh, that seems like a good map or a war or whatever. Like, I don't know why he'd say he did a bunch of research and then immediately, you know, prove himself being wrong. Don't forget the dagger. Yes. The dagger controversy. We had mentioned kind of a couple of minutes ago about how there's more controversies that kind of come up around German iconography and Mr. Christensen. Well, on the back last, you've got Mata Hari, you've got this lady, and she's laying down kind of on a, I don't know, like a chaise with a tiger, which is really cool, and she's very beautiful. She's passing this map to a German double agent. Now, she's holding a dagger in her, like, right hand, and it's kind of going by, like, the player three window. Originally, that dagger had an inscription on it, And that's where the controversy begins. Yeah, the inscription was in German. It says, my honor is my loyalty. Yeah, so written in German. So it wasn't in English, a translation. It was written in the German language. That's the thing. Since the engraving on the dress daggers that the German SS officers would wear during World War II was the same thing. Like, the worst of the worst soldiers in the German army at that time, the SS, had these knives with, my honor is my loyalty. And Dave Christensen thought it was a great idea to put that on the back glass. Well, the German distributors did not like it. Yeah, obviously nobody in North America kind of would notice, right? Because we speak English in North America. Well, the German distros did notice. And again, it's really weird because he's using a Second World War theme or saying in a First World War character. And a lot more of those got out than the Captain Fantastic. There's a lot. I'd say almost half of the ones I see, Mata Hari's have the inscription. So, like, why the hell would he add that? Like, really? That's a legitimate question. Like, why would he add that? You'd have to ask him. What does that add to the backlash? he doesn't say I guess he wasn't asked in any of the things that I've seen so if you can find out his explanation as to why he thought that was a great idea please email that to us at silverballchronicles at gmail.com but you know nowadays if you wanted to look up like all that iconography you just sort of throw it into Google and it'll come up in Wikipedia or historical websites or whatever you know back in the day you would either like have to know that just kind of just knowing it Right. Or you'd have to go to like a library and do the specific research and all of that stuff. So I don't understand how that would accidentally sort of pop up if you were doing research. You know, First World War character.
    54:28
    Anyway, was he actually a closeted fascist or Nazi sympathizer? Maybe not. Probably not. But he certainly made a lot of very poor choices around that kind of stuff through his art tenure at Bally. The thing is, though, I guarantee you, if you had either Mata Hari or Captain Fantastic and you had the earlier run art, you would be using that to try to get more money for it. Guaranteed. Yeah, absolutely. Most people would be like, this is the original, the uncensored, that's the way they'd say it, uncensored back glass. or they'd say, you know, Mata Hari, the original uncensored backless. So do you like Mata Hari? Have you played a lot of Mata Hari? I have played a lot of Mata Hari. It's a tournament game. It's in a lot of tournaments, I know. Yeah, but it's... It's the original flow monster. Flow? You basically, you go for the hole, and then you go for the right orbit thing, and that's it. Giver. So not a huge fan. But again, it sold how many units? So my opinion means nothing. My opinion was not shared. 16,000. So my opinion was not shared by too many people. That one machine in like two months sold more than the entire industry in 2020. Mm-hmm. This is where we get into sort of a little less serious and a lot more fun, I think. You think? Evil can evil. So I'm going to call him like a historical figure, theme, like daredevil maybe. Celebrity. Celebrity, yeah, celebrity. June of 77, standard body, solid state, 14,000 units, designed by Gary Gaten and artwork by Paul Ferris.
    56:11
    So Paul did the sketches and he did the final glass while Evel Knievel, the famous stunt fellow, was in Chicago to do a stunt. So kind of like who was like Evel Knievel, right? Yeah, he would jump over things and fail a lot. That's kind of what he was known for. But I mean, he was definitely... He was mocked on The Simpsons, right? He was like the guy that would jump over the tank of sharks, over a flaming bus, and then land on the other side. That was his thing. He would jump things on motorcycles, and things were on fire, and he was like Mr. America, right? Like, he was like that crazy thing back in the day. He had a jumpsuit and a whole, like, he had his own brand. Yeah. I don't know if I'd really trust 1970s medical science, you know? like if I were jumping things on motorcycles, but this guy, he was pretty fearless. Well, he also got popular because he was on the, I think it was Wild World of Sports, would have him on all the time when he would do his jumps. So you get national audience there, so everyone knew who he was. So Paul was commissioned to do all the artwork for this machine, and he did the sketches and the final backlash. Now, Evil Knievel was in Chicago around this time to do a stunt, and he came in to do a review of the machine and of the art. In a nutshell, Evil was happy with the machine, but he had one thing that he didn't particularly like. He was jumping a motorcycle on the back glass. That was kind of the idea. He liked the art. He liked the colors. But his critique was on the physics. The rear wheel was not high enough, in his opinion. And the perspective wasn't quite correct. He was concerned about the realism of the picture. that if he were to actually jump in the way that was on the back glass, he would crash because his tire was too low. And he told Paul to change the perspective. So the final perspective on the back glass was the one that Evil had requested. And what's interesting about that, Ron? Well, the following day, Evil Knievel was practicing the jump for the Chicago show, and he crashed and ended up in the hospital. There you go. So, so. And the thing to explain about that, on that back glass, It's not like a static. It's a series of, I think, four or five pictures of him in midair that the lights go through on the back glass. So it's like him in motion. So he was saying that some of the pictures, just the angle was wrong. And if he was actually jumping like that, he would crash. You know, you've got to come in and you've got to critique something, right? Like, you know, oh, my muscles aren't big enough. We'll get to that when we get to Kiss. around this time really after all of that whole uh gangster controversy and stuff bally you might not know it when you look at their art but they were really trying to avoid controversy they were really trying to avoid anything offensive nothing bad they just kind of wanted to cruise yeah and around the time of the release of the evil kenevil pin evil was healing from the stunt that had gone bad in Chicago when he had a highly publicized fight with a man named Shelly Saltzman, who was a major sports promoter. Saltzman was quoted in a book that was written about Evil that apparently he had a drug problem and that he abused his wife and kids. Yeah, Saltzman wrote this book about him. So Evil, Knievel flies out to California, and since he had both of his arms in a cast, He brought his buddy with him. They found Saltzman, and basically his buddy held him down while Evel Knievel whacked him with a baseball bat. Yeah, so Buddy's like a VP of 20th Century Fox in California.
    59:49
    Knievel is actually given a bunch of assault charges. Bally was, again, super conscious about having a positive image in pinball after all of this whole gambling, you know, mobster thing that was going on. The change in CEOs, they didn't want this to be a part of their image, and they were not happy at all. So much, in fact, they stopped production of the machine, which is why it ends on a very perfect 14,000 units. Yeah, the interesting thing is the guy he hit with the baseball bat, Shelley, he had actually sent a copy of his book in to be approved by Evel Knievel's people, and they approved it before this happened. Yeah, he should have hit his proofreader with a proofreader. So obviously, Evil Knievel didn't approve it personally, but someone in his crew did. And around this time on this machine, they hired Margaret Hudson as an art support person. She learned how to ink and cut screen on Evil Knievel. So she's kind of doing the same thing that Paul had done previously. She's kind of learning the ropes. She had to be taught the process, and she had no experience. She did all the key line and all the color separations. So how do you, we've mentioned this a couple times, like inking, color separation, all of that stuff. So how does that kind of work, Ron? You lay down a mylar material, a mylar-like material, a layer for each color, and the tight penciling would be colored in, then the layers peeled off, and the next color was done. It was a film that you would cut with an X-Acto blade and peel off what you didn't want to print and leave what you did want to print. Then it would be converted into a film positive, and it would be burned into a silk screen to be printed. Yeah it like a real real labor labor thing You actually have to slave over a light table So like a light table is like something the size of like I don know like a ping table maybe two buffet tables. Like, it's a really, really big table, and under it is light, and you've got all these layers of mylar, and you're putting in the ink, and you're cutting it with an X-Acto knife, and you're peeling off what you want and what you don't want. Like, this isn't like today with LEDs, where it's all kind of, like, cool to touch. Like, these things were, like, archaic, these light tables. They literally had hot light lamps underneath them. So this table is super hot. I mean, in the 1970s, they were, like, what, 20 years out of just burning wood for fire and light? You know, and they've moved on to, like, light bulbs? This guy, you know, it's rough. It's not easy work. So let's move on to probably one of the most fun bits here at the time, and that's 8-Ball. that's a pool theme or billiards theme April of 1978 standard body solid state machine 20,230 units designed by George Christian artwork by Paul Ferris now this was up until the Adams family the highest selling pin of all time and that's a long time until the 1990s. Have you ever heard of Happy Days? Yeah, I've heard of it. Yeah, the back glass here on 8 Ball.
    63:05
    You mean the Fonz? Well, it kind of looks like the Fonz. Yeah, it definitely looks like the Fonz. I mean, it kind of looks like him, right? By kind of, you mean exactly like him, yes. As Margaret Hudson would say, the Fonz back glass? Oh, oh, we're not supposed to say that because it wasn't Fonzie. It kind of looked like him. That were the days before licensing and all that. No, actually, they were licensing at the time. They just obviously didn't want to pay Henry Winkler for his likeness. Yeah. Well, Paul Ferris said they decided on a pool theme. Pool theme sold well. And we wanted a happy days kind of theme with a cool leather jacket guy. It wasn't supposed to be the Fonz, but looked like him. Like Travolta, a caricature of a 50s guy. If I wanted it to look like him, I would have made it look exactly like him. I would argue to Paul that it does look exactly like him. That looks pretty darn close. That looks pretty darn close to Henry Winkler as the Fonz. That's pretty good. It's pretty, pretty, pretty good. So, you know, marketing and executives always have to review art, always have to review the art and all that stuff, right? So obviously they didn't see him looking pretty darn close to the Fonz. And, you know, it certainly wasn't an issue for them. Well, according to Paul Ferris, once Henry Winkler was at a party with a ballet executive, and he said, you know, you've really arrived when you see yourself on a pinball machine. So he thought it was him. Yeah, so the guy who it was, allegedly, thought it was him. So, I mean, a celebrity on pinball was fairly new at the time, right? We're a couple of years in since Wizard, since that kind of thing. And not every machine is a license at the time, but it's much more commonplace than it was. And, I mean, celebrities wanted to be on pinball machines. So since it was the infancy of licensing, I mean, probably not a big deal if you sort of snag somebody's face. There was no legal action taken for the machine. So it's not like Winkler or any of the Fonz, you know, IP holders or, you know, happy days folk had any issues whatsoever with the art. But that kind of looks like the Fonz. Yes, listeners, we're looking at it, and I'll tell you, it's the Fonz. I don't know. If he wanted it to look like the Fonz, he would have made it look like the Fonz. Well, according to Williams, Indiana Jones, the pinball adventures, the backlash, that's not Harrison Ford. That's Indiana Jones.
    65:39
    Of course. Okay. They just, Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford looks similar, but they're not the same person. Yeah, yeah, okay. At the time, right, Paul was told, hey, you know, we've got to have a soda shop. It can't be a bar. It can't be anything sleazy because pinball was being legalized in a lot of these places, and they wanted it to appeal to families. But there's some serious boobs in this backlash. I would say not appeal to families, but appeal to teenage boys. Yeah. That's what they're really going for. So this is where a lot of Dave Christensen, Paul Ferris horn locking sort of begins, which I found fairly interesting. Yeah, Paul says Dave's issue was time. It took him a long time to do the art. There were issues between Dave and I. Dave just wasn't a 9-to-5 guy. Dave saw Paul as an adversary at the time when he came into Valley. And according to Paul, they got along after a while, but there was a certain level of conflict between the two. You've got Paul Ferris coming in, the new sort of young guy, a bunch of new ideas. Licensing is coming in with a lot of the Valley guys. Things are sort of changing. And, I mean, nobody likes the new kid coming in and telling you how to change your job and what to do and when to do it by. Of course, Paul was probably much more political at his time at Bally and often would tread lightly when talking about Dave during his podcast interviews. He was very nice. He never said anything bad about Dave. He just said he was, you know, he was difficult or they would eventually work it out. Dave, though, in his TopCast interviews, didn't actually ever say Paul's name. Dave Christensen says, when 8-Ball came out, the person that did that machine, notice he didn't use his name, was in the cubicle right next to me. It was a lot of unhappy situations, political situations. It was really a bummer. Everything went to hell. I just wanted to go back to the SWAT machine department. There was a lot of jealousy in the ARC department. Paul brought structure to the art team, which is what he was supposed to do. He brought new ideas. He brought new processes. He started to level up the art at Bally. And Dave was a lone wolf. He was old school. Yeah, Dave said once they brought in a new art director, again, he didn't use his name, that was it for me. He didn't like me, and I didn't like him. He brought in corporate. It was all corporate from then on. It was like all of a sudden the ability to come up with your own ideas was gone. I didn't last there much longer. So when we go back to this eight ball back glass and you look at all of the fun that everybody's having there playing pool with a guy that sort of looks like the Fonz and playing pinball in the background, there's a woman with a bracelet in the back. She has Margaret Hudson's initials on it, which is super, super nice. So often, the designers and the people would throw in these silly little homages to somebody who helped. And Margaret Hudson, of course, did a lot of the key line and the color separations for the production of this game. After that, Dave Christensen would do Bobby Orr. I don't want to jump into Bobby Orr today in this podcast because this pinball machine is a whole thing up here. So we're going to go into that in some other podcast. Do you like Bobby Orr? Uh, I never saw him play. You better say yes. I never saw him play. I don't know. He played for the Bruins, right? Um, yes.
    69:17
    Strikes and Spares was a bowling theme. June of 1978, it sold 12,820 units and Gary Gaten again, this time artwork by a Mr. Kevin O'Connor. Ron, why don't you tell us a little bit about the Kevin O'Connor? Well, he started his art career as a point-of-purchase designer, you know, like beer signs, countertop displays, that kind of stuff. And he answered an ad in the paper. His father pointed it out, and they assumed it was going to be a coin vending machine, like Coke machines. So he met with Paul Ferris for an interview. What caught Paul's eye was a painting of a dragon and fire that he did. Paul was working on Lost World at the time, and he liked that style. Yeah, so Kevin, he would say, I was told I basically had the job. I didn't know I would have such a career. I met rock stars, celebrities. I went to rock concerts and even the Playboy Mansion. So he worked very much on a technique with magic markers. It would make his paintings with magic markers have these sweeping lines and these thick tones. It was very, very different, that style of art, compared to, again, the standard at ad posters, which was that kind of old symmetrical lines and cartoony characters compared to the very straight classical version of Dave Christensen. This is a whole other thing. Greg Ferris says, magic markers were made out of a glass tube. We learned from Paul Ferris that if you get mad enough at your work and throw the magic marker against the wall, it would break and leave a large color mark on the wall. So we came into the office one morning and asked Paul, did you have a bad night last night? And he said, yeah. Awesome. Sounds like art is passion. It's all about passion. Kevin, on his first pin, was given a bowling theme. And he drew it with silkscreen with ten layers, those peeling off layers. It had no halftones. So what he did is he blended the colors together. So rather than the straight lines of Christensen, he would dimple the colors to blend them in together. So if you look at Strikes and Spares, specifically that backlash, you can see that it is different than kind of all of those other games at the time. And a lot of that has to do with that sort of blending.
    71:37
    Kevin would actually say that I had very little input. I drew what I was told. This pin is really where Kevin developed his first style, really what he was all about. he's very especially at this time women sexuality teen boys were really the market when it came to pinball i'm gonna say that it was sexually empowering let's call it that the woman was the focal point often in his art the woman is empowered she's she's not a slave girl which we'll get into in a little while he uses a lot of yellows a lot of oranges it's fairly cartoony and lighthearted, which I think probably comes from that magic marker background, that it's a lot harder to draw very serious, I think, in that style. The main character, the woman on the back last specifically in Strikes and Spares, was not an individual, was not a person, wasn't a person at Bally. It was just a fantasy girl that Kevin had created. Now, have you played Strikes and Spares? Oh, yeah. I haven't played Strikes and Spares. I hear it's kind of good. It's all right. Designed by Gary Gaten, right? So kind of his standard style of kind of orbit spinners and whatever. Just like how the guy's wearing a ballet t-shirt. Yeah, in the background, there's a fellow that's looking at the main character with his bowling ball in a bag, and his girlfriend or wife is dragging him off because he's staring at the sort of the beautiful woman, the character in the middle.
    73:07
    There's another fellow on the back glass. He's trying to pour a drink, and he's staring at the lady, He's pouring the drink on the table, which is then being poured on his girlfriend. Also, by the way, these girlfriends or wives in the photos, not bad looking themselves. So not really sure what their attention is diverted for. Again, really, really cold at Bali. Really cold. This brings us to kind of a watershed moment at Bally with The Lost World, which was a medieval fantasy theme. February 1978, solid-state standard body machine with 10,330 units. Gary Gaten again, artwork by Paul Ferris. So that watershed moment, Ron, was Bally's what they called four-layer screen process. Yeah, with artists like Kevin experimenting with different techniques and methods of making art, they needed a new way of printing the art. So if you look at Bally's Lost World and after, you just go, I mean, look at Paragon. Like, wow, it's like incredible. And this was when they started using the four-color printing process. And Paul Ferris had a lot riding on the four-color process. But it enabled them to do airbrush and oil painting, basically beyond the basic line work. massive time and cost savings on the artist, transfer that painted artwork to the glass. So now you can just paint something and put it on the glass. Yeah, so as we had mentioned before, you're doing all the key line and separations, right? You're cutting things, you're peeling things off, and you're on this light table and all that stuff. Itself, a very cool process. And when you've got somebody like a Dave Christensen, he's the master of that.
    74:57
    Well, when you've got new fellows coming in and they've got these new styles. Kevin O'Connor actually talks in some of his, if you go to YouTube, a lot of his seminars, he talks about how he did lacquer on the airbrush, and he's like, oh, it's bad for you, and we couldn't do that for very long. But you can see that they're experimenting with new ways of doing things, and they had to come up with a new way to make a painting, and then put that painting and reproduce that painting. Very, very, very cool. So originally you had like 14 colors, and those 14 colors would have 14 sort of separate colors on a template for the printers?
    75:35
    Well, with a four-layer process, you stack the four colors on, like, negatives. Like, back in the day, when you would do pictures, you would have negatives as opposed to a digital picture nowadays. But you would layer those colors, and then you print those four colors, and then some of the colors would overlap and create another color, right? There are four-color play fields. I mean, AdPosters was still doing the regular screening of the playfields at the time. Bally was worried that if they changed both the back glass and the playfield, there was too much that could go wrong in messing up the process. Do you know what the first four-color playfield was, Ron? I do not. This is actually really, really cool. It was Sega's Goldeneye. Really? They didn't do a four-color playfield all the way until Goldeneye. Do you know who did the art on Goldeneye? Who did the art on Goldeneye? Paul Ferris. Wow.
    76:30
    That's such a good presentation. But, I mean, if you've ever seen any of these ballet backglasses, people notice the difference. Paul Ferris once said he overheard two people talking to each other at a pinball industry event, and they said, no wonder ballet's first. Look at their art. And you can. If you, like, people know it, right? When they go to it, they're like, oh, wow, these are nice. Like, they know there's something different, but they don't know what it is. And it's that switch from that sort of old school methodology into four color. I bet you a bunch of people sitting in their cars right now or on their can at work avoiding doing actually anything. They're going, oh, yeah, wow, I have noticed that. And that's why, because of this four color process. I would argue that's why Lost World sold so well, because the game's not good. Yeah. But they sold 10,000 units. So, again, what do I know? Paul Ferris would say they likely didn't know anything was different in the printing process. of that machine, but they knew the art was a much higher standard than any of the other manufacturers, and they were doing exactly what Bally wanted to do. They wanted to be different than every other manufacturer, and this is a prime example of being different. This machine has a slave girl, which was one of Paul Ferris's sort of go-to's when it came to art styles. So on the back last, it's very medieval fantasy theme. There's like a winged man who is crazy ripped, kind of like Ron. And then there's this beautiful, best description is Slave Leia from Star Wars. She's like chained to a dragon.
    78:21
    There's like water in the front. In the background, there's like these moons and stars. It's got this awesome art around the edges, like this medieval Baroque style. Very cool. It's something else. Even the playfield art is very cool. It's still being done in the standard methodology. It's not four color, but it's super cool, too.
    78:50
    It's got the dude. He's punching a dragon. And it's basically Paul Ferris and his wife. Yes. So the art here, of course, being a male-focused industry, Paul said the figures were based on himself and his wife. Good for you, Paul Ferris. This game would get a sequel. Ooh, we'll get into that in a minute. One of my favorites. So it's time to bring Dave Christensen back, right? Six million dollar man. Licensed, uh, like, hero? Is he like a superhero? You've never seen Six Million Dollar Man? He's the bionic man. Yeah, he's the bionic man, but he's not just like robot dude. Like, would you say that's a superhero?
    79:30
    I mean, he is. I guess Cyborg is a superhero. I'm trying to remember. He's an astronaut. He gets in an accident. So I think it's both his legs, his right arm, and one of his eyes are bionic. And late 70s bionic, by the way. And the cost of everything was $6 million to do that. You ever see the family guy where they're like, we can rebuild him. Yes, we can. On a budget. Yeah, that's where that line comes from. Like a garbage can? Oh, my God. We can rebuild him. He'll be faster, stronger. This is where the line comes from, this show. Yeah. October 1978, they sold 10,230 units. Greg Kemmick, artwork Dave Christensen. Greg Kemmick told IPDB, I did use the name City Slicker on the 1978 Whitewood. I was rolling out hit games back then. Tom Neiman obtained the license for Six Million Dollar Man, And then City Slickers, the Whitewood, played so well that they chose it for the next licensed game and assigned Dave Christensen.
    80:30
    I mean, I have played Six Million Dollar Man. It's shoot it up the orbit into the saucer at the top, just like Mata Hari and every other game back then. Every other ballet game, yes. I don't know why Greg would say that he was rolling out hit games back then. I mean, I guess they sold, but they were all way too similar. That's your opinion.
    80:58
    But, yeah, you're probably right. But most of it, you know, they had that saucer in the middle and usually a spinner orbit way to get up there. Drop targets at the bottom. And they had drop targets, and they reused that a lot. Early play fields they did with this, they were actually more green than blue, which is interesting. Can you imagine that? printing errors on a pinball play field. That is unheard of. They never made errors back then, right? Unheard of. Remember, you ooze, you lose. If you know what that reference is, send us an email. Silverballchronicles at gmail.com. This is a good one. Okay, I'm ready for the next game. Are you ready for the next game? I'm ready for the next game. Are you sitting down? I'm sitting down. Do you have pants on? Uh, yes. The next game, Playboy. It's a pop culture adult magazine theme.
    81:53
    December of 1978. Sells 18,250 units. Jim Patla does the play field design and the artwork by Paul Ferris. So I've included some information that we're going to talk about in the show notes if you'd like to follow along. Playboy was an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine founded by Hugh Hefner. Its first issue was done in Chicago in 1953, and the brand was first financed by a $1,000 loan from Hugh Hefner's mother. Playboy was known for its nude or semi-nude centerfolds, Playmates, or their models, Playboy Bunnies, and published many short stories from novelists, such as Ian Fleming, who's known for James Bond, Margaret Atwood, who is a famous Canadian writer who you may know from The Handmaid's Tale, and Roald Dahl, who did Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So Playboy actually played a very important role in Western sexual revolution and, let's say, the upbringing of many adolescent boys through that time. You only read it for the articles, though. I don't know how to read. Okay. So this pinball machine, I haven't seen one, but when I look at the art, I did the research and we did all the stuff, It's a cool machine.
    83:16
    Now, it's got the four-color process, but it was made to look like it was the old line style, which is kind of neat. This was one of the first four or five pinball machines I ever saw. The guidance given by Playboy and Hugh Hefner to Bally was that they wanted it to have a positive image of Playboy. The lifestyle, parties, resorts, having fun. They didn't want it to be sleazy. and you know what? I agree. This machine looks super classy and super cool. I mean, it's not. It's a porno magazine, but that was not what they wanted it to be. They wanted it to be this sort of classy lifestyle magazine, right?
    84:02
    What do you think? Does it accomplish that? I don't know. That side art is pretty interesting. I mean, she's pulling a plunger rod. Oh, I see what you did there. Basically, it's the Playboy trademark woman there. That's their trademark. I don't know if she has a name or not.
    84:22
    And basically, it's Hugh Hefner on the back glass with Patty McGuire and Sandra Theodore, who were two playmates. Patty McGuire will later go on to, she married Jimmy Connors, the famous tennis player. More unnecessary trivia there. Hef was very excited, and he was mostly involved with designing the idea of the pin and the feeling of the pin. Now, at the same time, they were building a big hotel in Atlantic City, and he spent more time trying to be involved in the pinball machine than he was in the actual building of the hotel in Atlantic City. He, again, wanted it to be more of the lifestyle. He wanted to be in the middle of the pinball machine. He wanted to be the Playboy icon, which inevitably he was. Patty McGuire was like the Playmate of the Year. Sandra Theodore was a Playmate, but she was the current girlfriend of Hugh. That's how she got in there. And also, if you look at the back, actually, if you look at the play field, and I don't know if you can see this in IPDB, in the pop-up area where the two women are, like right in the center, above like the bottom pop-up, where the Playboy mansion is, That's a window. If you look in there, you can see Hugh Hefner with his, with a. Oh, my God, I can't see it. I never noticed this until CPR did their repros. Yeah, you looked at that like, oh, my God. Oh, it's there. You never get a chance. Check that out. It's just like, wow, how did that ever get in there? But they put it where the pop-up bazaars, so you can't really notice it. I mean, you'll never see it unless the playfield's unpopulated. Yeah, so if you look, you can see it's very clear, too, when you look at it. He's got the jacket on, and the woman's like, dude, standing in front of him. Oh, my. Now, there's another thing on this machine is that there is, on the back last, there's this old lady in the pool just, quote, unquote, hanging out. She's in the grotto. Granny in the grotto. Yes. So this character was created by Robert Buck Brown, and the character is called Naughty Granny as she relentlessly attempts to seduce men. She was designed by Brown to upend social norms in the Playboy magazine comics. It was his take on the dirty old man stereotype. His goal was to flip it on its head and satirize it. Brown is one of Playboy's African-American contributors. At the time, he took that opportunity to be a real trailblazer who often would take off-limits targets like race, sex, and civil rights and make them funny. Playboy's audience at the time, mind you, was predominantly white and male. Very interesting. So Paul Ferris, he took a trip out to California to the Playboy Mansion.
    87:12
    James Caan was there. If anyone's familiar who James Caan is. Yeah, that's cool. If they've ever seen The Godfather. Or that terrible Arnold Schwarzenegger movie he was in. Eraser. Oh, that's a bad movie. Bad movie. They ever thought you'd hear about a racer during a ballet art thing, did you? No. Paul Ferris has the original oil painting signed by Uefner himself.
    87:34
    Because remember, they take the painting at this point and then use the four-color process to slap it on the backless. And Paul actually tells this whole story on Topcast, so you should listen to that. After sort of the initial approval, they went out a second time to unveil the Playboy machine at the Playboy Towers in a, of course, extravagant playboy-style party. It was a last-minute project because they had to get the back glass printed locally, and with 15 minutes left before the reveal, Paul runs up in the backstage area, throws the glass into the machine, and they raise the curtains. The women on the back glass were extremely focused on their bodies, and they were very pleased with how it turned out. Of course, Hef himself wanted to look youthful and refined. Bally, of course, at the time, we've mentioned this a few times, was very worried about its wholesome image. 18,000 units is 18,000 units, right? Yeah, that's not very wholesome.
    88:31
    And Tom Neiman, the VP of Marketing for Bally Pinball, he told IPDB his name or initials appeared on most back glasses of this time period for which he obtained the license. On this game, his name is on the champagne bottle. Yeah, so if you look on the champagne bottle by the pool there, that's his name. The startup tune, the grotto tune, and bonus score countdown tune resemble portions of Cy Coleman's Playboy theme from the 1969 TV show Playboy After Dark. Yes, folks, there was a Playboy show. And that's that music.
    89:02
    And then the bonus countdown that just goes forever. Yeah, forever. It's like Mata Hari. It's like, oh, okay, I'm just going to go have a beer while we wait here. The next game that was of note was Supersonic. Don't want to go into a whole lot of detail here. So Supersonic was done by Greg Kamek. Kevin O'Connor was given a blank white wood and said, give her. At the time, Concord Jets were a big deal, so they decided to make Supersonic as the theme. Now, this is a notable machine because it used an experimental lacquer paint, which was used to do the painting on the back glass. That method, of course, very bad for your health. And Kevin O'Connor has a YouTube video where he sort of touches on that a little bit, on how they were experimenting with all these different methods. And lacquer paint in an airbrush was something that did not last because of health reasons. And if you have a supersonic, you can just remove the right flipper because you never use it. Star Trek, here we go. Now we're getting into the real stuff here. Sci-fi space theme, April 1976, sells 16,842 units. Gary Gaten, artwork by Kevin O'Connor. Make it Star No. 1. Kevin O'Connor. Correct. Star Trek began as an American science fiction TV series, which ran from 1966 to 1969. It was canceled due to low ratings, but in syndication, the series' episodes were enjoyed countless times by people and created almost a cult following. After the success of Star Wars, production companies raced to find what sci-fi properties that they had the rights to, which led to 1979's Star Trek, the first of six movies using the same actors from the original TV show. Star Trek the Motion Picture, the worst Star Trek movie? Five is pretty bad. I don't know. Five's got some fun to it. What about, what was that, what was that, Nemesis? That was bad. You're talking about, that's next gen. Yeah, but still, that's a bad movie. I'm not including that. I'm putting the original. So the original cast? Yeah. No, I don't know. Motion picture is horrible. In my opinion, it doesn't start until Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan. Well, that's true. It just started with Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan. Interesting thing about the art for this game is when they started working on the art, they went about it like it was the TV show. So the original Backglass had your typical blue, yellow, and the red, that you don't want to be wearing, uniforms. and then the movie, it almost like they didn't have a copy of the script or know what the movie was going to be about or anything because they made last minute art changes in the art to accommodate the movie. Kevin O'Connor said it was quite a chore at the time to make that change. It was a big effort in whiting out the colors and changing the colors and fabric flows. Oh, could you imagine that they're like, oh no, no, they're supposed to have these horrible, gray, crappy uniforms instead of these iconic colored ones. Yeah, what they ended up doing is, on the back glass, there's a guy shooting like an orb. Originally, it was actually going to be an actual character, but they changed it to orb to get it through licensing, because the Star Trek people said no can be shooting like a creature It Star Trek We don do that Star Trek in general around sort of the motion picture was really strange right Like, it, that whole movie, if you watch the whole movie, it's like nothing happens. The whole movie, nothing. They changed, so they had to change all the uniforms on the back glass, and I think they made a couple changes on the play field with plastics. They added, they changed one of the. They added the bald girl. Persis Kambada was her name, yes. Yeah. From the movie. They added, yeah, they changed it out to be her. So they had to make some artwork changes. I would have preferred it to be like the original show. That would have been. Yeah. If you swing over to CPR, you could pick up an original series back glass and plastics. So that's the way to go, in my opinion. If you're rebuilding one or you need one that needs plastics or your back glass is shot, buy the motion picture one. Let us never speak of the motion picture ever again. Not buy the motion picture one. Buy the TV one. Yeah. Ugh. It wasn't that bad. It had good special effects because they had the whole industrial light magic from Star Wars come in and do the special effects for it. It's like three hours and nothing. We get to see Klingons. It's like the Sound of Music guy did that movie, I think. It was kind of boring. See, I was going to do a whole thing and, oh, here is the director and stuff like we've done for, like, T2 and all that stuff. But this movie is so bad. I don't even want to waste anything.
    93:40
    Kith is a rock star fantasy theme from June of 1979. It's a standard body, sells 17,000 units. Jim Patla with artwork by Kevin O'Connor. You want the best? You got the best. The greatest fan in the world? Kith. This, the art on this machine is amazing. It is. I don't like Kith. I've never liked Kith. I'll never like Kith. I don't like the band but man it's cool the art on this thing is astounding and the only thing better is the new kiss also done by Kevin O'Connor yeah well they sent Kevin to a concert to research the game and he said the first show is the first show of pyro he had ever seen he said the fire was hot you could feel the heat and they were so loud at the time my pants were flapping oh my yeah at the time the love gun album huge right kiss was kiss was massive they were like this was before they got into that weird disco-y stuff this is before they were too it was it really sort of had melded sort of glam rock very well with whatever the heck they were doing and the stage presence and excitement that they brought to their shows astounding.
    95:05
    So like all KISS merchandise, they have had various controversies because they have these lightning bolt S's, which accidentally look like the German SS insignia. So in Germany, they had to make a different back glass for this machine with different style S's. One interesting thing about this machine in comparison to most of the machines was that it had a prototype with speech. Yeah, Alan Reisman, engineering lab supervisor at Bally from 1977 to 1983. He says the talking kiss prototype did make it out of the lab at least once and was displayed at the 1979 AMOA show in Chicago. He believes it said things like, shoot the K and kiss when you completed a kiss row. It also groaned too much rock and roll when you tilted it. It was only done as a one-time concept. So there's like a whole legend around the magic marker sketch that was the original inspiration for that back glass. Yeah, basically, Kevin O'Connor did the back glass and presented it to Kiss. And remember, this is Kiss. So they had issues with it. Specifically, number one, they did not look ripped enough. Which, I mean, if you've seen Kiss, they weren't really ripped, but they wanted to be ripped. They wanted to be like superheroes. And they also wanted bigger packages.
    96:22
    You know what I mean. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, yes. Oh, that didn't come up? Okay, well, if you look at the original Kevin O'Connor picture, then you look at the production back glass,
    96:33
    cast your eyes downward, you will see the difference. And that's what Gene Simmons did. Because we are the greatest band in the world. We are gifts. Poor Paul Stanley.
    96:43
    Just didn't have the package to carry that band. Oh, my. Where is that sketch now? Kevin O'Connor would say that it was eventually traded to John Papaduke for a guitar. And later, John Papaduke sold it to a collector, probably to fund a pinball company. And then it was sold to another collector, and apparently it still resides somewhere in Florida. Now, you can go on and see this picture in various places. They look like normal Kiss. They look like they would actually look. And then when you look at the production back last, yeah. So there's a very cool picture of Kiss and Paul Stanley holding the original magic marker sketch with some of the Bally folk. Very, very, very cool.
    97:32
    Paragon. Fantasy theme, June 1979. Now, this is a wide body. Sells 9,120 units. Greg Kemmick, artwork, Paul Ferris. We've mentioned this a few times because we've sort of been floating around in this 70s, 80s world of pinball for quite a few of our podcasts.
    97:56
    Widebodies were a thing because Atari entered the market and they created widebodies. Everybody else freaked out because they thought, oh my goodness, what if we miss out on the newest, best invention ever? Well, turns out it wasn't. It was a stupid invention. But at the time, they didn't want to take that risk. So they needed to do something different. So production was cut short on The Lost World because of the timeline required for Playboy, but Paul had suggested to do a sequel of The Lost World because fantasy was quite popular at the time. Comics like Conan, with rich, exciting action and scantily clad slave women, were a big deal. So this, of course, became Paul's favorite original painting to today, and his wife once again modeled for the female character. And again, good job, sir. Good job.
    98:50
    So Paragon's design elements were very similar to a few other games that were being manufactured by Bally at the time, weren't they, Ron? Yeah, Bally had a lot of things that were kind of their thing. Scissor flippers, inline drop targets, which I think they had a patent for. They loved saucers. You can never have enough saucers, so Paragon has two saucers. New saucers. Yeah. They love the pop-upper that causes havoc. So they put one in the beast slayer on the left to kill you. And they also have the really cool, like, wiggly channel on the right side, which is like a waterfall thing.
    99:29
    Yeah, they really, if you want to pull out another cliche here, they tried to create a world under glass. Oh, you can't get through an episode without that line. Awesome. But it is one of the greatest art packages. I mean, the back glass is a literal masterpiece.
    99:46
    I was at one year at Expo. Paul Ferris brought the said painting in, the original painting, which is actually even larger than the back glass. It is quite large, the actual painting. And he brought that in. He had it sitting behind him at the autograph table. It's like, damn, that thing is unbelievable. So if we talk about the back glass, the inspiration for that is somewhat of the lost world. You have a tiger with wings. Not a tiger. It's a lion. With wings. This back glass confused me for years because I was trying to think what's happening in the picture. Because there's a picture of a lion. It's a part lion, part bird, part lizard with Paul Ferris riding on top of it with his sword up in the air. And the lion looks like he's going after the woman, his wife. She's chained to the ground in a small bikini. And I think at this point I've determined he's saving her because he has wings. So why would he need this lion, lizard, bird creature? So I think he's saving her from this thing. Right. He's like pulling its hair and he's going to like stab it or something. Signed by him down on the bottom right corner. It's got skulls on the left. It's very cool. It's a very cool back glass. But what I think is cooler than the back glass, it being awesome, is the play field itself. Oh, the play field is no slouch either. And the plastic. I think the play field is awesome. It's got, like, golden cliffs on the left side. So it's got cliffs that build a bonus and a saucer. And then on the right side, it's got, like, a massive tower. And then below that, it has, like, a fountain going down, like, from the gods up above in the hills down into the common folk at the bottom. And the water runs down that wiggly thing we were talking about a moment. similar to Knockout from Valley, down into the outlanes, and then you've got the two characters, the female and the male, kind of on the top and the middle, inline drop targets on the left into another saucer where you get into the treasure area.
    101:54
    It's awesome. You have got to look this up. Just look at our show notes, take a look at it, and flip around, because it is something else. It's pretty nerdy. We're doing a pinball podcast. That's pretty nerdy. Yeah, that's true. So the Golden Cliffs tune, when you throw it into the Golden Cliffs, each time you put it in, it adds a new note. And that note eventually will all add up, and it will play the Ohio Players song once it's completed. I have no idea what that is. Really? Okay. Not a clue. I've heard of Ohio Players, but Ohio Players were an actual pop band. Oh.
    102:31
    Huh. So one thing that's also really cool about this is they had some issues in Europe around that flipper arrangement at the bottom. And this is where the term Italian bottom is coined. So Greg Kamek says, if my memory serves me correctly, I seem to recall that the Italian, French, and German markets were quite strong for Bally during this period. And Bally was often visited by various foreign distributors. I recall that they relayed the fact that their players liked to hold the pinball by the flippers. Their players liked to hold the pinball on the flipper, take a drink of beer, and brag to other players about the skill shot they were about to shoot. That couldn't be done with the original Paragon design. I tried something different with Paragon since it was Bally's first wide-body game. Foreign players preferred one return lane on each side at the bottom of the game that returned the pinball to the flippers for a playfield skill shot. This type of design became known within the industry as the Italian bottom. It was used extensively then throughout the industry and is still in use today. So nowadays, that is the standard. You're in lane, out lane, return to the flipper. Right? That is all through. And that came from the fact that the Europeans, you know, didn't like, you know, on-the-fly play. And they actually had the European version of Paragon with one of the flippers removed. So you could not scissor yourself. You know, I think that would probably be a better game, in my opinion. No, no, no. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. They also had issues with the inline drop targets on the left. When you got them all down and you would hit it into the saucer, they would reject a lot. I think they actually had a bulletin about removing a plastic piece that was there that was supposed to direct it. Because if you look at the play field, we're actually looking at it right now, the saucer that is on the left side was supposed to be in a different location. And the art still, if I remember, reflects where it was supposed to be. So they had a plastic piece there to help it on its way. but then they moved the saucer, but they kept the plastic piece. The hole was actually supposed to be in a different location. Well, once you print the play field. Yeah, more useless facts. So they moved the hole, but they kept the plastic piece, but I think they had a bulletin to ask people to remove it or do something with it because you would get rejects, and I have played Paragons that do that. Yeah, what you want to do is most of the games on the IPDB are a lot less, they have a lot less photos. There are a lot of photos for this Paragon machine. And I think a lot of that has to do with, because it's such an artistic masterpiece, the pictures of the detail, the level of detail are so, so plentiful on IPDB. pause the pod, take a look at it. It's worth it. The funny thing about Paragon, the artistic masterpiece it is, it's two shots. Maybe three that you'll ever shoot. You're going to shoot the inline targets, you're going to shoot it back up top on the right, maybe the spinner. I guess we'll move on. Do you want anything else on that one? I think I Paragoned it to death. Harlem Globetrotters on tour. Basketball theme, September 1979. Standard body, so this one did not go wide-body, 14,550 units. Greg Kemmick, artwork Greg Ferris. Oh, Greg Ferris, my goodness. Who is Greg Ferris? Greg Ferris is a pinball artist, of course, who had his first impressions of pinball from a pitch-and-bath machine while on vacation in Wisconsin because pinball was illegal in Illinois.
    106:05
    Greg loved to entertain, play drums, loves the Three Stooges, and, of course, Mad Magazine. All of those influenced him in art style, as well as Greg's mother, who was also an artist. He studied biology in college, just like Zach Manning, and eventually dropped biology after a bull semen incident and moved to a major in fine art. His first job was point-of-purchase advertising, doing things like beer signs. This is where he met Kevin O'Connor. Kevin O'Connor left to go to Bali. Six months later, Kevin gives Greg a call and says, they're hiring. Get your portfolio together. He interviewed with Paul Ferris. Paul gave him a small test. Unlike Kevin O'Connor, who he hired right on the spot, he wanted to run him through a test.
    106:58
    And Greg would say, I had one week to come up with something that was like a pinball back glass. And if you go on YouTube and you type in Greg Ferreris Pinball, you can bring up some of his seminars from Chicago Expo, and he will show you the summertime back glass, which would eventually inspire Skateball, which would be Greg's first back glass. He basically lifted the van and the woman's chest from summertime for Skateball. So in 1978, he started working for Bally. And, of course, he, like everybody else, had to learn the process. On Harlem Globetrotters, the name Hudson appears on the playfield below the right flipper, or as Greg would say... I did the art. Margaret Hudson may have cut some screens for me in the production effort, and I may have given her credit. There you go. So you've had a Harlem. I have a Harlem. Currently have a Harlem. I would say Greg Ferris is probably one of the... What's the term? Like, he can do the most different types of art. He's the most flexible in style? Flexible. He's done stuff like Fathom, but then he's done stuff like Dr. Dude. It's completely different styles, and they've both been awesome. The thing about Harlem Globetrotters, if you actually look at the back list, it's very realistic. All the players actually have hair on their shoulders and stuff, and it's very, very detailed. The only real bummer with this is the most famous Globetrotter of all time was Metal R. Clemon, and he had just left the Globetrotters, like right before this game was made, so he is not on it. He is not. Everyone thinks he's the one in the center. He's not. The guy in the center was his replacement. Now, is this game awesome because it has three spinners? That's one of the reasons. And it has more shots than Paragon. Huh. Because it has, let's see, one, two, three, four shots you would actually actively shoot for, as opposed to two. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's got the scissor flipper on the left side. No traditional Italian bottom. It is not as brutal as Paragon, but it is somewhat brutal. In-line drop targets leading to a scoop. Yep, which also sometimes rejects. I've never played Harlem's. There was one at Cabin Fever in Toronto when I was there one time, and I played Congo instead of it. I feel like I should have split my time, maybe. Yes, you should have played both. Yeah. You failed. At all. So that's when we move on to another licensed theme. So you can see here, we've got rock stars, we've got movies, we've got series, we've got branding, we've got lifestyle brands. basketball, brands. Now we're moving on back again to music. November of 1979, we're talking about Dolly Parton. 7,350 units. George Christian was the designer and artwork by Dave Christensen. He's still there. He's still there, but you can see that he is slow. He is not doing a lot of machines. Like Kevin O'Connor just did like three machines in a row. Dolly Parton is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, recording producer, actress, author, and businesswoman. I've left a link for Dolly Parton in the show notes, if you care. An early cabinet of this machine had her in a bouffant hairstyle while playing guitar. The rest of the production, that was changed because Dolly wanted it changed. Paul Ferris would say, We did change the backlash artwork from a country theme to a more crossover mainstream. Since the play field was completed, she agreed to let it stay country in her denim outfit. Yeah, so there was a lot of back and forth on the art direction of the machine between Bally, Dave Christensen, Dolly Parton's team. There was a lot of, like, I'm not a big Dolly Parton fan. It's not my style of music. But at this time, she was trying to kind of broaden her reach, right? She kind of wanted to move out of the country, wholesome thing and move into more acting. She had 9 to 5 she was in. It was a hit movie. So, yeah, she's trying to go a little more mainstream. She wanted to spread that net. You could read Dave Christensen's quote, if you want. Dave Christensen said, Dolly Parton's team wanted to have her less country style. She wanted to look less Western and more cosmopolitan. She didn't want blue jeans, so they went with her dress. The manager was tough to work with, but he made her rich, so you can't say he was wrong. They steered her in the right direction. Yeah. So, I mean, you could tell that this one had a rougher developmental cycle than maybe more of the licenses. And I think this is where you can start to see the realization that not all licenses and licensors are easy to deal with. Right? They're not all hands-on and easy-going like the Playboy folk. Sometimes they can be a little more difficult. And here's a prime example. But I think it probably turned out for the better. What do you think? Game's all right. You play Dolly? I play lots of Dolly. It's another more inline drop target fun.
    111:52
    And a spinner. Or a bit spinner. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't play any Dolly Parton songs. I just put, like, islands in the stream in my headphones when I play it. Makes me play better. So we're going back to the wide bodies here. We're going to Future Spa. This one, much like Paragon, gets a lot of really high reviews among folk. It's a Future Health Club theme, because why not? December 1979, it is 6,400 units. My goodness, that's not a lot of units. George Christensen doing the play field. Dave Christensen and Paul Ferris doing the artwork together. Two fellows that don't work well together have split a project. And why is that? Bally needed a second widebody. The first widebody, of course, was Paragon. They needed to then again stick in another one along the way. and this is what came about. Interesting fact, this is Bally's first machine with continuous background sound, of course, flash, at Williams being the first machine ever. And this machine was the first to patent inline drop targets, filed in June 4th of 1979, but it was actually granted in 1981,
    113:07
    to Bally engineers Erwin J. Gaberle and Glenn R. Anderson. So they did the inline drop targets and all those other games before they decided to patent it? That's what it sounds like on IPDB, yeah. Weird. So either that or IPDB is wrong. The interesting thing is it does have a continuous background sound, but I've almost never played one that has that setting on. It's that good, is it? Well, I'm thinking when they did it, they might have had the – I'd be curious if anyone knows, if they can email us at silverballchronicles at gmail.com, Like, what were the default settings on these games, new and box? Like, if you got a Future Spa, brand new, took it out of the box, where were the diff switches on it? Was the background sound on by default or off by default? Because it is the setting, but I've never played one with it on. Weird. It's like Jax to open. It was so good, everybody turned it off. The art. So this is cool. in an interview Paul Ferris more or less talks about kind of what you want to do for themes at the time, he says that you take a look at pop culture and what's hot and what's current and what the public is doing then you make a theme around that now that's a double edged sword because sometimes if you pick something that's too hot maybe something like a roller disco it might flame out really quickly and the machine will be dated too fast, at the time in Chicago there was a big health club craze.
    114:36
    And it was a big deal to go to a health club and Chicago health clubs were the predominant brand on television in the Chicago area. So then, it leads to the question, what would the spa of the future be like? And that's how you get Future Spa. And with the deadline approaching for the game release, Dave Christensen, as stated earlier, was on the slow side, working. He was not going to be able to finish the play field in time to work on the back glass. Because it was a wide body, it took so much longer. But Dave Christensen said, I made up a back glass and he didn't like it. And by he, I assume he means Paul Aiken. As the new art director, he had his own ideas. He was into space exploration, outer space, asteroids, like flash score and stuff. We had a different view of the art. He still doesn't use Paul's name. Now he's he. And the new art director. Like, he wasn't a new art director. He'd been there for like four years.
    115:30
    He's just the art director now. Wow. So when Dave spoke to TopCast in his interview, again, in the show notes, you could tell when he starts talking about this era, he really changes in tone.
    115:48
    And, you know, I guess it is what it is. Paul's brother, contrary to what people believe, the fellow in the back glass is not Ron Jeremy. It's Paul's brother. His sister is the woman, and Paul's secretary is doing weights at the bottom.
    116:08
    So, again, they tie in people they know, which is kind of fun. My favorite part is it says something like, only one repetition or no more than two repetitions or something like that on the machine, where the guy's doing bicep curls. For whatever reason, I always found that hilarious. Yeah, it's also like you can tell that it's a bit of a mess. Different style. Because if you look at the play field itself, it's very traditional Dave Christensen, right? Fairly line-arty, very beautiful women, not futuristic at all, right? It's just a spa. But then when you look at the back glass, they're wearing these weird like outfits and there's like space stuff in the background and there's like a guy in a weird machine working out. Like it's a very big clash of styles. You can see that there was probably a lot of conflict when it came to sort of the design of this machine and sort of the original guidance. On IPDB, it has the original Dave Christensen colored pencil draft and it is very, very, very different.
    117:24
    And I can see why Paul Ferris was not a fan. But the guy still has a mustache in it. Yeah. Mustaches were in. Oh, were they ever. There's no Paragon. That's got more shots than Paragon. Nitro Ground Shaker. So this is a car race, drag racing theme, January 1980, standard body, 7,950 units. George Christian doing the design and Dave Christensen doing the art. This is Dave Christensen's only four-color process pinball machine. And not surprisingly, Dave would say, I like the old way. You have to paint the whole damn thing. The names on the cars.
    118:09
    So if you look at the back glass, it's like this woman with like a, what's that kind of hair? Perm? A perm, yeah, a perm, and then like a dude watching. And she's got the belt buckle. Yeah. Gotta have the belt. Gotta have the belt buckle. And they're having like this crazy drag race, and there's like a skeleton up on top of one of the cars, pointing at the guy, Dr. Doom written on the bumper.
    118:39
    It's cool. This is probably one of Dave's best, I think. Now, written on the cars are various names. If you look at the plastics, if you look at the back glass, all of those names are people from the Bally Art Department. So that's him paying homage to those fellows.
    119:00
    The name and the driver of the car on the back glass, as Christensen would say, is a better looking self-portrait. Yeah, it says Mad Dog Christensen. People in the crowd are some of the people from Valley as well. What's interesting here is that it is a four-color process, but it's very much designed to be exactly the same as the old version, the old line item style. It's like a revolt. So this was actually Dave Christensen's last machine. Paul Ferris says he had personal issues at the time. His house was robbed. He was mugged. His family had issues. He was a cantankerous guy on a good day. They called him Mad Dog for a reason. His art was never an issue. Dave's personal life was in challenging times. All these young artists coming in. He didn't know Star Wars from Adam. He had a European look, a classic feel. Things were always changing. Yeah, Margaret Hudson would say that Dave was quite a character. He was pretty silent, very dedicated. He wasn't used to having all these people around. He wasn't used to having all the new young people coming aboard, introducing new processes and new ways of doing things. He had his way of doing things. Christensen, you know, Ron, he would leave Bally's pinball division and he would go back to doing slots, sort of as he alluded to earlier. He would go on years later to do independent freelancing for things like Harley Davidson in the 1990s. And he also did a very strange re-theme of a pinball machine for a buddy, which he called Big Dick.
    120:42
    You can look that one up on IPTV, but don't have the kids around. So what did you think of Christensen leaving, Ron? It was going to happen sooner than later, especially when he can't call his boss by name. Yeah, you could tell that there was some animosity building there, and things were just ready for a change. The old guard is moving out. The new guard is moving in. And we are moving into the 1980s and some of the most amazing and iconic pinball machines to come from Valley. Is that why that music is playing? Are you playing us out? Oh, my goodness. The music is going. Well, no, we were going to do a whole episode here, man. Really? Oh, my goodness. This is awkward. So what you're saying is this is going to be a two-parter? But we will make sure that the next episode is out much quicker, and you won't have to wait as long. So keep an eye out on your podcatcher. So, Dave, are we doing the outro then? I guess we're going to have to do this just like we always do, with top-notch production quality. Okay. Well, as always, we continue our comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to civilbowchronicles at gmail.com. We look forward to all your messages, and we read every one. Did we read any of the stuff you said? No, nobody sent us anything except for Dennis for his friggin' shirt. Well, please subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcaster. Turn on automatic download so you don't miss a single episode. And remember to leave us a five-star review wherever you find us or on this week in pinballs, promoter database. That way more people can find us.
    122:17
    David, Dennis, do you want to support the podcast? Of course I do. Do you need a new shirt? Absolutely. we'll swing on over to Silver Ball Swag and pick up a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt to help us keep the lights on yeah we're cruising right along here this is going well and we're both eating I don't want to faint halfway through here This is riveting content I also have tea for my voice this time Because my throat was sore after last session Oh my