This is Bob Dylem with the Crystal Indoor Spoon, Bonon, and Teggy, Patterson Field, and John your home, This is Tom Cash in your home. Celebrity Voice personated, You're listening to Topcast, This Old Pinballs Online Radio. For more information, visit them anytime, www.marvin3m.com, Flash Topcast. They were going to be talking to a pinball artist that worked for Balli during the 1970s, and certainly made some of the most beautiful glasses and playfield artwork of any game of any era. He did such games as Monte Carlo, Twin' Win, Airaces, Wizard, Captain Fantastic, Matahari, Power Play, $5 million dollar man, Volt-Han, Dolly Parton, Nitro Ground Shaker, and of course Fireball. So we're going to be talking to him right now. Special guest, special guest, special guest, I'd like to welcome Dave Christensen to Topcast, as we're going to talk to him right now, and give him a call, and see how he's doing, and get some of his stories on how he did to the Blackglass and Playfield artwork, for such famous Balli games during the 1970s as Fireball, Monte Carlo, Twin' Win, Nitro Ground Shaper, Old Chicago, Captain Fantastic, and all the great classic Balli E.M. Games. Let's give him a call right now. Hello? Hi, is this Dave? Yes. Okay, so tell me how you got into the pinball art department at Balli. Were you always interested in pinball or was this just a job that you had to take up? How did you get started at Valley? Well, I got there in 1966 and at that time Valley had recently developed a new slot machine for Roller's Vegas. It wasn't good payout a lot more than the old mechanical ones that they were currently using. Right, the Valley slots were like the first electric mechanical ones were... Yeah, they had a bank type hopper that could count out coins. You ever see those hoppers that you put money into it and then they count them out? You ever see that? Right, right. It wasn't the style where they had, could you only pay out five or ten coins or just a jackpot? It actually counted the money out. Yeah, from this like it's utilizing a bank type coin counter. Right. And the... The first one's to develop that technology for a slot machine so it could actually pay out, you know, up to like a thousand coins. So I was hired... I was doing freelance work in the loop in Chicago for a company that was making... doing military work. Like I was doing exploded views and technical drawings for basically an account with the Rockwell Arsenal, you know, Rock Island Illinois, the M60 tanks, stuff like that. They were doing service manuals. And anyway, somehow they blew it. Somehow they had a little thing cooking with Valley but it never materialized and I went over there and I got a job as a freelance artist doing technical manuals for them. Also the Valley technical manuals you were writing or you were illustrating. Writing and illustrating. Now was this in the slot machine department? Yeah, so I was typed at that for a while and then I was working there as a freelancer because of the problems with security. They actually gave me an office to do my work in for the service manuals. So because of the federal rules in Illinois they didn't... You couldn't have fantasies out of the factory because they had to be shipped basically... had to be shipped out of state and they couldn't really have them out in public. So I basically did my work in the factory and because I was right next to the art department or in the engineering department but they were basically just starting pinball at that time. 65, 66 was basically when a lot of states were okay pinballs again because prior to that they were illegal because of the used to payouts but now the newer pinballs didn't pay out and were just for amusement. I submitted a few samples of my artwork and I made up an imaginary pinball machine so basically I got it cut in the door that way. So now you're in the pinball department? Not really. I was doing my work kind of remote from the engineering department so I was basically just doing it on a freelance basis for them. Well were you considered it is still in the slot machine department? Yeah. Did you like working in the slot machines? Well that's what I was hired for was basically doing technical manuals for the slot machine. But it obviously didn't really cater to your artistic side as it may be or your creative side right? I mean doing our... Yeah pinball is just for the fun of it basically. So now what was your first pinball project that you got through that you got...I guess you were freelance the pinball stuff right? Yeah right. I was a freelancer all the way but I basically worked out of the plan itself. It gave me an area to work and I brought in all my own tools equipment and you know and basically I just provided me a room and a desk to work on. So what kind of tools did you need? You mean all your drawing tools and all that kind of stuff. But now what was your first pinball project that you got into? Well I mean I saw it on the... Like it went to the... Well first basically the first one... It looked like it was fireball or something. It was never made it was it but it had a kind of a gangster motif. It was like it but Valley because of because they were making slot machines they didn't want to have a gangster motif. They wanted to have more of a family thing. You didn't have to do with hoodlums. Right. But then the next one was the first one was that I actually did the artwork for it was a gentle odds and evens which had a roulette connotation to it. So it basically showed a Monte Carlo type setting with a big shot of two girls and his arms and he was kind of a roulette wheel and he was pulling in the chips. Right yeah it was a guy like a white texito with a very voluptuous blonde with his arms around his neck. That was the first one was kind of a more of a cartoony one. That was a two player. No one player. Right. And that odds and evens that. But then they just they just sounded they kind of went into this four player business. And so the first big success was Monte Carlo which was basically the odds and evens game a four player. And I did the basically made a just change the back class to more of a realistic thing. Right. You mean less with less of a cartoon? That's a cartoonier. And did you like doing the more realistic art or did you like the more cartoony art? No. Basically being a technical illustrator, not just basically like doing the or doing things that were realistic. Yeah the Monte Carlo art is definitely more I would call it refined than the. Not beneath. Yeah. Yeah you're right and you do another girl and it too you had now I two girls. Yeah. Yeah which is almost a bonus. Yeah. And then the ball is mostly a male dominated type ball. Yeah. A lot of the net. Right. Exactly. And it went into the just like like roulette, you know red and black you know. Now tell me about fireball. Well fireball that was the last game designed by a guy. It was a kind of a legend in the business and old guy from Ted Zaley. Yeah. He came up with this idea of this rotating plate in the middle of a play field and that really went over big and then the whole thing was shooting balls. So I came up with fireball which was kind of a if you remember back there was a cartoon of comic, there were comic books. There was a guy. There was a man of fire and I kind of got the idea from that. Right. And then he was in the Marvel comics or something like that. And the Marvel comics that they had a bunch of crazy characters that were solving crime by, I don't know. They were just running around waping out gangsters. Yeah I remember and yeah I remember that character though I can't put his name in the game on it. Yeah. What now are you a comic strip or you know. No. No. I was never a comic book guy. No. Did you actually come up with the name fireball? Yeah. Basically all of all the games that I did I basically did the whole idea thing. And it was really a loose run organization. They had some of their pinball machines were done by a commercial company called Add Posterz which was done on Holster Street North Avenue and Holsterz. They go all the way down there in the middle of a very horrible area at the time. Yeah they were the company that actually did the Marc Silk screening for the artwork right? Well they also did the artwork too. So they had their own team of artists there and you were almost in competition with them then. Yeah I was basically hurting their business because they had a virtually 100% lack on the industry for a while. You know they did everything for God leave and Williams. Did you ever work for Add Posterz? No. So you were almost strictly purely contract or freelance? I worked from 66 to approximately right a part of 75 as a freelancer for them. And then for freelancers or for add cultures or for valid? For valid. For valid. Okay. They built a small office, a cubicle or an engineering department for me. But then the new president came in. He made one of his college pals as the art director. He brought him and he didn't want any loose ends like freelancers because they said corporate security and all that sort of stuff. So they offered me a position that I would prefer. A ballet and a proper chairing and health insurance and all that stuff. So you were a ballet employee at that point? Then I became a ballet employee until I left. Oh, so you went up to before I came? Before I came along they used to do mostly virtually all the artwork. Gotcha. But then there was another group of guys that were hired just about the time when I showed up and that was the three brothers. They also did artwork for ballet. And so the artwork for all the different games was divided mainly between add posters myself and the white brothers. They also had a kind of a remodeled office too. So they did their work very secretly in an office across the street. And when I worked in the engineering department, they worked in another department that was above the parts room. And they had a poster which did artwork for everybody. Got leave and Williams of that? Yeah, everybody did the artwork for everybody. So that's a way kind of started in 66. When I first started there they only had this artist that did that paper-vill style. That was... Yeah, the Jerry Kelley. The Jerry Kelley stuff. Yeah. The pointy artwork. Right. Now you did one called Twin Wind. Do you remember that class? Oh yeah, Twin Wind. Yeah, it had a real pretty girl in the center of it and two. Yeah, right. Formula cars on it. Yeah, but the guys in the engineering department who basically designed the game, they hit like a little track in the play field. And then they hit different scores, those little lights that were on the track would move forward almost like a pegboard. They just kind of move around like a... What's that card game where you use a board that you move little pins around on it? Right. I know what you mean. Now the girls that you drew in your glasses were these people you knew or... I mean where did you get the individuals that actually ended up in your glasses? Basically, just basically it just hit models out of men's magazines basically. The only girl that I copied from that girlfriend called Jerry, she was on that Mata Henry machine. Oh, right, right, right. That was her face on that one. Okay. But the rest of them were just out of... You know, just out of basically magazines. Now a friend of mine has a game called Valley 4, FORE like is in golf. Oh yeah. Did you have anything to do with that game? Yeah, I did the back class. You did. So you did the back class on that one. Yeah. Because, you know, he was looking at it and he said, man, right there. That was the first game I ever did. Yeah, because the game came in from ad posters and it was so bland and so stupid looking. It asked me to do something to see if I could come up with something. And then there was another one called Bon Voyage that was made about the same time. Right. Right. And that again was made by ad posters, but they put the artwork on the back glass. It was so terrible that they asked me to do it. So... Now did you do the play field on FORE also? Or just the... I can't remember where. It has... I really... I looked at it. I could tell. It usually could tell my artworks. Now, Playboy came out with an article on pinball in like 71 or 72. And the entire ball was the main machine about that article. You know, and that was obviously... You know, your machine. You did the artwork for that game. Right. How did you feel about that? What's the claim? It's just like when you're just working. It's just like a guy who designed the stootabaker, you know. The guy who basically does it really. Very few people get it in recognition. You know, who do you know that design the latest Mustang? You know, that the name system comes out. You know, there's just a few automotive designers that basically ever hit the news. Like Raymond Laurie or something like that or Brooks Stevens. And a few people come to mind. But the artists that work on pinball basically were never recognized. In fact, it didn't even want us to sign our names to the artwork. I usually just knocked my initials in PGC. You're in there in a few games. And that was about it. So the Playboy article was a little bit of recognition for you then. I don't think they even mention my name. Wow, because it was really predominant how much they showed that machine. And you know, and your artwork and it, you know, and they made a big fuss about it. Yeah, right there in the late 60s and early 70s, when pinball was just going crazy, you know. But you have to remember city Chicago. They just, and New York basically, okay, pinballs just about there's time. Right. They were prior to that, they were illegal. They did another glass or another game called the Brogo. Did you name that one? Did you come up with that name? No, Norm Clark did. He was the chief designer for pinballs. He was the man in charge. I don't know, it just came off at times. It said. Okay. Was there anything, you know, you kind of, it's kind of this, I don't know, you know. Yeah, kind of a Viking with a girl in his arms. I mean, when they, when they said we need artwork for a game, would you, would they just, would they give you any theme or any ideas? Or you just basically, they left it all up to you? Yeah, mostly was just lift up to me. I had no idea what Brogo meant. But I was just some, Norm would come up with some name occasionally, the hockey game. With the power of the whole game. Yeah, power of course. No, it's a Bobby Orr. Right, Bobby Orr's power play. The power play I came up with that one because at the time he wanted, he was thinking of slapstick. And I said, well, that's what power play meant to, was a little more heavy, you know, like, wherever. Yeah, it's a better name. It's headed on more impact. Right. So, wouldn't you, when they, would they actually give you a machine that had no artwork on it and say, is somehow implement your theme, your artwork into this play field. And, you know, and make it work and just leave you to do it? I was just given what they called the white wood, which was the engineering, you know, the play field. And then I'd come up with some ideas and it was just kind of, there was a very easy going, friendly place to work for. It was usually went along with ideas, you know. I had, you know, friends that, younger guys at that time were, they'd have ideas. So, you know, the department basically wasn't that huge, you know. It was just like, it's one huge room with salt, with a little bit of, all kinds of cubicles, where everybody just did their own thing. You know, we used to have such terrific parties there, was unbelievable. Any excuse for a party with all myres over, go down the street, there was a big bar, and build a lot of them in, lay a couple hundred on the bar, and say drinks for everybody. You know, it was really fun, and our Christmas parties got in the loop. They were, they had a big old keld on there, and it was just incredible. The Bali Christmas parties were famous. We held at the Palmer House in Chicago. It was really everything. Artinis and hattens, they have food, it was unbelievable. You know, lobster spoon or door, they'd have huge sides, rare roast beef, the dinners and the, you know, just the curks and everything. Back in the 60s and 70s, you couldn't beat Bali, I mean, a good time. Then when it went public, everything kind of changed. Well, they even had a bar in the, right next to the executive dining room. The bar was opened all day long. You could, if you were part of the engineering and the executives, any time of the day, you could just walk in this bar, get a drink. Wow. Unbelievable. Now, the, they ever say to you like, okay, we're still screening this, and we only want you to use eight colors, or we only want you to use, you know, a maximum of 10 colors. Were you ever given any constraints like that during, you know, during the art process? Well, I didn't ask you, like, basically 12 screens. That was kind of the room. Sometimes they went up to 14. That included the, you know, the blocking. Yeah, the black and the white and the mask. But there wasn't really too much of a constraint. I was when I introduced mirroring to the glass. I think I introduced that on the open-john game. Right. The captain fantastic, exactly. Yeah. They kind of cut out mirroring because of the expense and the mess. It was a very messy process to make a mirror glass. So did you have to start with a mirror and then etch away the parts you didn't want? Yeah, but that's where it got messy because you, you, did Marc Silk screen, I resist onto the glass, onto the mirror glass. And in any place where the resist wasn't Marc Silk screen on, that would be washed off with sort of an acid. And that's where the expense and the mess came in. Like when you were doing your artwork though, at, at Valley, did you hand your artwork off to somebody that did all the color separations? Or did you have to do all that too? No, I did my own separations. Okay. Say that we got this game, we need artwork. Here's the white wood. What were the steps that actually make the artwork and what you had to do before it was finalized? Well, I get a full-size paper blueprint of the young game, of the engineering part of the game. You mean like the play field or the plastic? And the background. And then the plan of the scoring, how it was scored. And so I could somehow present the player with some logical way of making it easy to figure out. You know, everything, a lot of things, if you hit one target that would raise the, you know, the line and other targets and stuff like that, it would light up certain features and stuff like that. So these were your first drawing that you had, you know, that you presented to whoever the game designer or management or whoever gave you your approval. Was it all just like a black and white, you know, pencil type drawing? Well, I would take the blueprint, just like paper, and I would kind of lay out on the paper itself my idea in pencil. And then sometimes I would get duplicates of that, and then I would kind of color in the different, indicate the colors. And then the second step after some of my ideas got approved, I would make, I would place a mylar, frosted mylar, you know, that's over my sketches, the final sketch, and then I would ink the black line first. And I would just do the overlays using a ruby left or some of them, some of them were very fine, I'd have to use other frosted mylar, this is a translucent plastic that's frosted on one side. Sure. That would take ink. So most of them had like a set around, anywhere from 12, 12 colors, and then you'd have the white and the mask that would direct the lighting. That would be up to about 14 different steps to so explain it. So each one of these layers of this frosted mylar was basically your color separation then? Yeah. And so you lay them all together? I would use this ruby left stuff too, but to make it they put a red color coating on top of a cellophane and then you'd peel off different parts that you didn't want, Marc Silk screened or something. Okay. And then you would give these layers to whoever was the guy in charge of Marc Silk screen and he would, you know, turn that into the screens? Yeah. It was a very expensive photographic process, you know, getting films that big. At first it was sent to an outside opera, they would do it. But then in the, oh, on 1969 they built their own camera equipment and then they did the digital themselves. Also, Allison included the slot machine glass. So Valley became more or less, they didn't really need ad posters to do anything. Prior to that, the ad posters was... Handle the whole thing, right? They had all equipment, the Marc Silk screening, the making of the Marc Silk screen, the whole cutting of a little, you know, they provided the glass and everything else. How long would it take you to do a game, a pinball game, you know, doing the back glass, the flat plastics in the play field from start to finish? How long would that take you? Well, we're taking you three months. My captain, fantastic. One of your more, certainly one of the more famous games and famous glasses that all the little characters, you know, you know, you got Elton John playing the pinball machine on the front. And then behind them, I mean, you got everybody from, I don't know, probably people that worked there to hit learn, all kinds of different people there. I mean, where did you come up with that idea? And, you know, and the people that were actually, that you drew into there? Well, I always went out for a few drinks at lunch. It was just, it was just a joke. It was just a joke. If you remember the movie, that was Elton John, what was playing on the stage? And he had this kind of an audience there. And I, to join that audience, I just, you know, either going to be kind of cute for you, or they're going to be just kind of just nobody's out there. So I try to make it the audience kind of interesting. Now, why, like, you have like, brudas in it and Hitler and it, why, why those people, I mean, of all people, although kind of strange people, the pick. Yeah. Well, I don't think you can come up with any logical answer for this. It was just how you felt that the client. Right. Great glass. I mean, it's one of my, well, in the other one, of course, that was just a masterpiece, was wizard with Roger Daltry and Anne Margaret on them. And, you know, I mean, that was, that's piece of work. That one, I'm just... Well, if you remember, part of that movie did involve the Blitz and Mondit, you remember that? Sure. And maybe that's for the idea for putting Hitler in there, because it was involved in the... Oh, in the World War II. Right. The Blitz thing. Right. But believe me, there was no real logical. It wasn't meant to offend anybody. Oh, sure. No. It's not like... Did they ever, did the ballet executives ever come up to you and say, they've those, you know, there's something we don't, you know, there's somebody in there we don't like, and the role is to, you know, there's too much nipples showing on the girl or anything like that. Normally, no. They did get a complaint about it and that audience scene and that theater where the girl was grabbed this guy's crotch. It was like he was bothering her, and so she bought back a little bit. And they said, maybe she'd put us like a mirrored star over her hand, you know, so it doesn't look like told if she was really doing it. And that was the starred back-class version. Yeah, and then I'm not a hurry. She was holding a dagger that had been inscriptions in Germany on it that they didn't like. What did the inscriptions say? I was in Germany and said, my, my honors, my loyalty in Germany. And they didn't like that? No, because that was... and great, they've done a dress daggers at the German Army, had 1933 dress daggers that were just for officers. And they felt that would bring back bad memories. Gotcha, so that's why there was two versions of the Mata Hari Glass. Yeah, the only difference was to take that inscription off. Right, right. Now, when you worked with somebody like on the Wizard Glass, when you had Roger Dahltree and Ann Margaret, you know, two of the stars from the movie Tommy. Yeah. On the glass, did they have to give approval of your artwork? Yeah, Ann Margaret did. At first, we made a diversion of her with her hair up. She didn't like it because it looked like a... she said that kind of dated her. It was kind of like a beehive haircut. And by 19, in other words, that 74 of the beehive haircuts kind of repassay. So she wanted a different one. And the same thing went for the Dalai Parting Glass. She reviewed it several times. First, the header and a... we're in just blue jeans and kind of a... being a blouse, she said, because she was at that time kind of crossing over into some kind of like country music into different music. She wanted to appear more cosmopolitan. She didn't want to look like a country girl. And then she also liked butterflies. That was her theme. We added butterflies. And then she, because of the crossover, things she... from strictly country music to the modern music, like the country western singers. Today, they just don't... remember she was singing more of ballads and stuff. She didn't want that e-haw image, you know. So we've changed her hair a couple times. And then she wanted that yellow chiffon dress. That was the one to get out of the blue jeans. So we actually made several versions for Dalai Parting. That could be kind of expensive. So she was the hardest clientele to work with during that era. Well, she wasn't... wasn't her personally. It was her manager, your point of choose. Right. But early he made her rich. So he can't really say it was wrong, because he steered her in the right direction all the time. We'll be back in just a moment with our conversation with Dave Christensen. Top guest is brought to you by Pinball Life. Give your Pinball machine new life with parts from Pinball Life. We ship Pinball Parts worldwide. Pinball Life is located in the great city of Chicago. And their phone number is 773-202-8758. We have an open door Ryan Policky, and you're welcome to call us with your questions and concerns. 80M-5M Central Time, Monday through Friday. Their website is at pinballlife.com. Pinball Life. No hassles, just the parts you need fast. We're back with Dave Christensen of Bally Art on his famous pinball games during the 1970s. So now which did you prefer to do, which was more fun doing the play field or doing the back glass? Well, the back glass, well, first of all, we try to explain the play of the game. And then the back glass somehow, they hit both of the kind of pair each other. You know what I mean? They basically, the theme of the play, at the kind of, you reflected in the theme of the back glass kind of. So was it more of a challenge to do the play field? Because you had to tie in all the scoring type stuff, you mean? Well, it wasn't really that. Of course, today, the playfields are so busy, it's really hard to figure out how to score them. You know what I mean? Right. Now, the one game, the game Future Spot, do you remember that one? Yeah. What was the deal with that? Who came up with that name and that theme and everything? Well, they had a management, came in with what they called it, a new art director who tried to combine all the different art departments that were working on pinball, free trade to consolidate everything. And he had his own ideas about stuff. And so he basically changed everything over to a marble. He was into a base experience, you know, like outer space. If you remember there was an era there where almost all the pinballs had something to do with asteroids and all that kind of stuff, you know? Does that explain the bolt-and glass too a bit? Well, the bolt-and basically they put it out, and the play of the game was so bad that they didn't, they never produced. They just put out a bunch to see how it would go. And the people played it once, and it was just a very boring game to play. You have to realize that sometimes the play of the game certainly over rules the artworks sometimes. Yeah, they didn't make a lot of that game. That's how they just, they had a run of maybe 200. Right, and they, they never had a big run. Right, beautiful glass. I mean, you did great job on the artwork. Well, yeah, it's almost like my job at the time. Once they brought in this new artwork, right? That was about it for me. He didn't like me and I didn't like him. So you mean all of a sudden it went from being a fun job to not being so fun, eh? No, he brought in, well, see, you know, corporate type in the area. It was all corporate from there on. It was like, all of a sudden the ability to, you know, just come up with your own ideas is well, we're out the window. I didn't really last that much longer and on top of that industry was going from, you know, the Pac-Man and all of the other games came out. They, they more or less started, they lifted the, uh, pinballs in there. They were making much more money and there wasn't a commercially known maintenance or damn things. Right. After members, a lot of, uh, maintenance to a pinball. You know, the service guys were on the run all the time trying to keep always games going. And, uh, with the stuff like Pac-Man and all the rest of them, you know, about the everything that go wrong and afford burnout or something. They ever asked you to do artwork for any video games? Um, no. Now, you also did, um, the game, the artwork for the game, $6 million dollar man. Yeah. Were those guys easy to work with? As, you know, as a licensed theme, as it may be? Oh, yeah, I didn't hear anything from them. So you just didn't want them? Wasn't like working with Dally Parton, huh? No, they, uh, that, that wasn't one off. It went off real good. It's, uh, the only thing that interfered with the artwork was, because it was a six, six player. So we had to work around all the, uh, you know, the readouts, you know, toners. Right. Right, the score display. Yeah, the score display. Yeah. Rather than that, uh, then they were also experimenting instead of doing standard silkscreen. They were going with this four color stuff. And they were basically, uh, painting the, uh, the back glasses, you know, they were using a photo technique to print on the glass instead of a silkscreen. Now, would it set and make your job harder or easier to use the four color process? Well, I like the old way, the silkscreen way, but... Now, when you did art where they were using the four color process, how did that, I mean, you weren't doing the frost at my large for that anymore, right? I mean, how did that work? Well, no, no. But I always used, I still used the black silkscreen for the number one, and then they, they would print over my, uh, my black line. But I only did a couple. But what would they do, like, take a picture of it and, or something? Or take a picture? You have to paint, you have to paint the damn thing. So the whole thing would become a painting, almost? Yes. Yeah. And then somehow they would, uh, through photographic process or something, change that into the whole color. It was a very tricky thing on that one game with the dragster. Yeah, I was finishing Nitro Ground Shaker. Well, that, in my only one night, there was a black screen, that was it, and the rest was painted and printed on the black, lined itself with the black screen. So that was a four process color back glass, was the night glass? Yeah, I was, I mean, about the only one I did, I think. And, um, now that one, I really like the artwork on, though. And that's a really well done glass. I mean, it's a beautiful thing in, in like, the control tower. You know, where you got, it's always like sticking up in the tower. I mean, there's just a lot of little subtle pieces to your artwork that, you know, you look at it. You've looked at the glass a hundred times and you look at it again and you say, she, I never seen that before, you know. I never noticed that one little detail. And that night glass really reminds me of that. You know, I remember I see it. I basically got a union growth drag strip. I never go down there. I never went to that one, but when I was a, when I was a kid in the 70s, my dad would take me to, you know, the, the, um, the drag races. It was kind of fine. Back in the old days, that's basically a takeoff of union growth drag strip. So now when, um, there was this one machine or one artwork you did that for a machine that didn't get produced called, let's see if I could say it right. Lovey, Paris, lovey, premium. Right. There you go. Thank you. Yeah. Now what was up with that, with that artwork in that machine? Well, Billy O'Donnell Jr., who was, took over the presidency after his dad left. He, um, he went to school in Paris and he always had a big thing for Paris. And so I made up this game because he wanted to, they had a, they did have a, uh, distribution ship in Paris. And so this was kind of like a, paying homage to his pals in Paris. So that's where it came. But again, um, that's when the whole pinball thing was falling apart. Right. The machine never got made. Yeah. That's just before we had left to them. Now, when, um, there was a machine that, I understand that Herb Silver's actually, um, asked you to do a glass called Big Dick. What, I mean, what, uh, tell me about that one. What, what happened was, uh, I collected a lot of these games myself. I had a, uh, I had a collection of old pinballs and old thing on machines. And, uh, I had a no Williams game called the Big Deal. Right. From like 63 or something like that. And, uh, when I was restoring it and painting it, uh, or I, doing all my touch-ups because I, I'm constantly renovating something. So slot machines and stuff. I got a big collection of those. And so, I was working on the back glass because that, that, that, that, that, I could, back up, back, or the artwork was done by ad poster. And instead of using enamel paint like Valley did, when they, when they developed, when Valley set up their own silkscreen department, they used enamel paints. And, um, you mean, there were a lot of like, tinballs that paint would peel, you know what I mean? Yeah. And old slot machines that had, uh, light bulbs and stuff behind the glass, what would happen, the heat would, uh, like the paint peel. That was because ad poster was using, uh, case scene, water-based case scene paints to silkscreen. And, uh, they were never, uh, very durable. Especially the yellow color would always peel. And so I was wiping the back glass, cleaning off the, uh, the black stuff from the lights and stuff. Cause, uh, the, you know, light bulbs that always, uh, kind of black in the back glass, you know. So, and I didn't realize they had water-based case scene paints on them, glass, and so, when I was washing up with the detergent, all the paint came off. So I had a, I didn't have a glass in it. Right. There's no way to repair it. Because they, one big swish in all of, all of the whole back glass is ruined. So, I decided I would design my own back glass for it. Yeah, a pornographic back glass. I, uh, I did that on my own. Okay, then they, they had a silkscreen, uh, like some friends in the business, and it was kind of like a joke. How many of those did you have made? Well, I had about a dozen glasses made. I still have a couple back glasses in my deep and my bulb, in my basement. That's, um, the one collector, Jean Cunningham. He, he, he was a game that I made it for plus, plus the glass. So, he's got the only machine and, uh, with the glass that I designed in it. So, I want to see it. Most have been Jean Cunningham. Right. You know, he's a collector blooming to Illinois. Yep. Gals depicted in that glass were from, were people that, you know, like, you know, uh, you know, some of the women that worked at Valley. No. No, not at all. Not at all. They were just nonclimbs, they got a hustler magazine. Right. You know, whoever was it, you know, the play man of the world. It was nobody. Yeah. It was, uh, but I didn't find out that somebody got a hold of one of those glasses out in Vegas, and they reprimmed it. And they made a bunch of them. But I really didn't want anything to do with it. To me, it was just a private joke for a few private friends. The guy out in, uh, California or Vegas or whatever that, that redid your, uh, your big dick class. Were you mad about that when, when you found out about that? Well, I just heard of it offhand. I never, I never talked to him. I never, I didn't even know who he was. But I heard, I heard about it. Where would anybody find a, uh, Williams big deal pinball machine? Right. There was probably only maybe half a dozen left in the whole world. Yeah. So, good point. And it wasn't a particularly interesting game as a collector's item anyway. Right. Right. I just happened to get one and it just, it was just kind of, it's a joke. I think I got it for 20 bucks. Right. Yeah. Sure. And it was just fun to repair it. Gene Cunningham. And he did a book on you. Yeah. He's another, uh, fanatic. Kind of hard to gold very. You know, it's hard for me like if you're working in a candy store all the time you get paired with a candy, you know, but it's hard for me to see the absolute almost fanatic interests. Yeah. Do you have a lot of machines now? Well, basically Gene Cunningham bought a bunch for me. I still, you know, our family, uh, I've got slot machines found out to my brothers and people who like them for their rec room, you know, and I still have a bunch in the basement that they've been sitting, they've been sitting for, you know, ever since, like early 80s. And I haven't played them once. And then I look at them and I plug them in and you know that I can work. It's a goofy and I mean. Now when you were making machines at Valley, um, did you have a chance to buy machines at discounted prices? You know, because you worked there at the factory or, you know, well, yes, it gave me a lot of hiring because they, that was, they were changing over from the, you know, for the scoring, they went from the reels to a, you know, the way they do it now. Yeah, they went from a lecture mechanical to solid state with digital scoring. Yeah, that's right. And so I, they gave me the last one with the, the real type, like a mechanical. I also sold that to team Cunningham. So he's got the last of the real machines there. How was that? The change over at the ground 75. 77, the 70s. Yeah. Yeah, they made a lot of that game too. They made like over a thousand of the lecture mechanical ones like you have. And then they made six, over 16,000 of the Monahari's with the solid state. Yeah. You know, so you were up. Yeah, you're up. Yeah, you're up. Yeah, you're up there. I mean, people, a lot of people saw that game. I just was talking to a guy that, you know, he met his wife at an arcade playing Monahari and, you know, his wife to be at the time. And, um, I was a quick game to play too. Yeah, yeah, he, he had to be a great smith. He was the top designers there and he, uh, he designed the play, play that game. That was really a terrific game. Right. Yeah. Yeah, he was just, you know, he bought one on eBay and he was just thrilled to get it. You know, I mean, this was, you know, I pay for it. I, you know, I don't know. I didn't ask him, but, you know, he was just, he was just thrilled. And, and one of the reasons he was thrilled is because of the artwork on the game. I mean, to him, it was a really, you know, the game had to be in good condition because he wanted all the artwork, you know, to be, you know, as perfect as possible. So I did a lot of, there was a little historical research that game. It's a map that she was handing over to this, this, uh, German ambassador or everyone call it, where German double agent or something, you know, he was that map. I actually, uh, that was actually the battle map of the Battle of Caporetto and Italy, where the Austrian Army broke through the, uh, Italian lines. So, so I tried to be authentic. Now, did you come up with that, with that name and that theme from out of hurry? I don't know. I can't remember tell you true. I, uh, but it was the way, the artwork I basically did on my own. So, did you have like almost a stock of artwork, you know, as they, as new machines came, you know, you could apply, you know, or was this done per machine? Yeah, but towards the end, everything went to this space stuff and this guy that was going to be the art director area. I just, everything went down. I just didn't even want to, I wanted to go back to the slot machine department and actually towards the end, that sort of, I was doing mostly anyway with slot machines because there was a lot of jealousy within the art department. A lot of, nobody really got along. And that eight ball came out that was kind of the podsy one. Yeah. Now, you didn't do that one? No. But that one was very similar to your style. Yeah, the person who did that was right next to you know, in a cubicle mix to me. It was pretty competitive then. No, it was just, it was just a lot of very unhappy situation, a political situation. There was really a bummer. Well, I mean, of all the, all the, all the games in the, in the 70s, you know, you were, your artwork definitely stands out above everybody else's. I mean, I don't think there was any argument to that. I mean, I looked at the, you look at the artwork that Williams was doing in that, that kind of pointy style artwork. I just, yeah, that's the way they're, they're called Python Anghelo Python. There was another guy there and they were, again, they, you know, really didn't want anything to do with me. I knew there are stuff. If, anytime, we had to go down to add poster to see how they were doing on Marc Silk screening something on a game that I was working on, they wouldn't even, they wouldn't, I had to, I had to sit in a lobby and the guy would come out and talk to me like I was like, it's worth it. Like I was taking work away from him. And basically I was because they went down the tubes too. Yeah, I mean, your, your artwork was, I mean, unbelievable. I mean, just as far as like the, the women were always the prettiest, always the best looking all was the curviest. And on the Williams games, they were always, you know, that pointy and the godly stuff, they were all real cartoony, you know, that real cartoon look. You know, that was, that was a, that's called George Mullin. He worked on, he was there working for ad posters from, I think, from basically from World War II on. And he just, he just had this idea that didn't fall should be, you know, like thick and plain, you know, a lot of this cartoony, you know, and there was another guy that worked for ad posters. He had everything, the pointy style faces that kind of like, you know, like modern art. I remember, they had one with the Beatles and then they had another one. All right. A hyper spill stuff like that, that style. Yeah, the capersville was real pointy art too. Now, did you ever know Roy Parker by chance? Did you ever know Roy Parker? Yeah, Roy Parker. He was another one from ad poster. He had a, that was a cartoony guy too. He used to like the kind of little sexy too. You know, those had girls in shorts and stuff like that. Now, you're, the guy you were talking about at Williams, did you mean Jerry Kelley? Oh, yeah, Jerry, you know, Jerry Kelley worked for Ballin. Oh, he worked for Ballin? Well, okay. He did a lot of stuff in the, basically, in the 60s. But he just, he just kind of faded away. I don't think he was very interested in it anymore. Yeah, he only did 13 games and, you know, some for Williams and some for Ballin. And that was, that was about all he did. He didn't do a lot. No, he didn't. I'm at a once. He seemed like a nice guy. So, what was it out of all the, all the artwork you did on the pinwall machines? What was the one that you had the most fun with? Probably not a hurry. Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful glass. I, I really, I know you didn't like the four color process so much, but I really liked the Nitro Ground Shaker one. That and Tamsantastic and Wizard. Those ones are like my favorite. I'm one of these people, so all fashion, like, I can't even operate a computer. You know, I just, I was stuck with the old, they tried and proved. And it's right now, the, you know, computer graphics, it's all on the screen. It's an entirely different concept. It's nothing, there is no artwork. It's all, you know, it's the television thing. You don't use the computer at all then in any of your art, right? No, I still do it the way the Egyptians used to do it. Thousands of years. I get old, scribed over my light table. I like that. Doing the separations and all that stuff. Wasn't I hated the four color process? It was just, it was, I was just used to doing it the old way. Now, I once saw a, a twin wind back glass that had, you know, there's a girl in the center, a real pretty girl in the center and she's got kind of like a halter top on it. Yeah, right. It's our, you know, I saw one version of the glass where she's topless. Oh, yeah. Now, did you do that or did somebody else do that? No, I knew the guy designed it, designed the, the play field play. Real nice guy and he was getting married and he was very proud of that game. So we made that up as a joke. I just took a razor blade, scraped off her halter in the back and then I painted this boom and stuff. We gave it to you as a birthday present. Wow, it's pretty good. You just painted that, huh? Yeah. Well, that's why you're the artist and I'm not. That was hand painted. On future spot. He said like you did the, the artwork for the play field and the plastics but not for the back glass. Is that true? Yeah. Well, no, why would that happen? Well, I, like I said, I had an art director who, he had, he was more into outer space stuff. He was like flash Gordon type things and I, we just had a different view of the earth, you know? I made up a back glass and he didn't like it because it, you had just a different idea and so he, he did the back glass. Did you save your artwork? Yeah, I still have that back glass somewhere. It was, it's actually just, it was drawn on, it was just colored pencils on the, on the plan, you know, the back glass plan. So were there any other kind of interesting stories that, you know, while you were doing the, well, you didn't talk about maybe this air aces and bond voyage? Oh, air aces, yeah. We made that up kind of at the height of the Vietnam war. Basically, the, we had an aviator there. He was coming in from his mission and he had the girl, they're kind of welcome. He had back home, he had this red biplane. Basically, it was kind of thought of as kind of like the, it wasn't a World War II. It was basically remember the biplane, it was kind of like a, like a biplane that they had, we're using in the late 20s and early 30s. Yeah, I was going to say it kind of had a 1930s field camera. I mean, basically I had machine guns on the plane and bomb, bomb rack and on the play field, I mean in the back glass, there was a battleship. Like they were all these planes were diving down on a battleship. That was a splatter of little planes in the background. There was, it was like they were flying over an enemy battleship and they were about to peel off and dive on the damn thing. And head of marketing was like a raw shear and he was definitely against the war and then Vietnam and he wanted to eliminate any possible connection to war and it was his personal feeling. So he requested I take out the battleship, this iron replanes and basically it kind of screwed up the whole point of the picture, you know what I mean? Right, right, right. I was seeing. Look, like the thing was, this guy was coming back from a mission of bombing or sinking a battleship and then the back of the, back in the background showed the actual fight where the planes were diving down on this battleship which was, you know, a quarter of a mile down below these planes, you know. And so you saw the battleship kind of with a wig like it was like you used to see the ships when they were trying to avoid a bombing attack and we back and forth and you know they had the trail behind the ship. And so basically I had this battleship kind of running towards life underneath these planes and then I had like puffs of anti-curve aircraft flying around the planes and all that was taken out. And so it just, so basically it was just a bunch of planes sailing through the sky with no mission. But if you remember the guy said the guy in the foreground was with the girl, he was a little blurb there, it says mission accomplished. So the whole connection was lost. Right. And then on the plane it says he's got a skull and crossbones in the word flash. Did that mean anything? No. No. You know what's again lost in translation due to the modifications, right? Like in the racing game, I had a lot of names on the racing cars. I had names of people who worked in the department in the engineer, the Norm Clark and they had William Donnell on there. I was the president of the company and the sponsors, different sponsors, you know, they write on the NASCAR stuff, you know, like that. You mean on the two you're talking about the point now in both the racing games they made? Oh, do you mean they had names on both of them, huh? Like in Ground Shaker there was various names of guys that worked in the department and the other one that Texas twin thing that was there, a lot of names of people that worked in the department. Yeah, like on the car and Nitro Ground Shaker, it said Dr. Doom. I don't know if that means anything. No, I didn't mean anything. I only think why is the not a hurry thing, the Germans got very upset even though they loved the game, they didn't like that inscription on the dagger which they said brought back bad memories, figured they lost the horn. So was that in the Nitro Ground Shaker on the car? It says Mad Dog Christians in which it courses you. Is that you in the car? Well, it's a better looking version of me. Now, how did you get that name Mad Dog? I got David and the Army. They called me Mad Dog because it was, you know, where I just did a lot of nutty stuff when I was in the Army. So they mostly drinking exploits and stuff like that. Got you. So, in the Army you, there's a lot of nicknames for different characters, you know. Right. Like, for instance, one of the guys that was facing there and we could call the jackpot Sullivan because first time we got his paycheck, he walked into the EM club, sat down with the first flat machine and he wouldn't stop playing damn thing until he got a jackpot. And so he was always broke. Right. I guess Mad Dog is probably kept over on Mercedes coming off a mountain one time. And that got everybody very excited. Rolling a Mercedes down a mountain. Was this the Army? You talking about a Mercedes like a passenger car? Yeah. I was in Germany. I had a little Mercedes that I bought for the old one, 1953 Mercedes. It looked like something was made in the 30s. You know, and it had the old type fenders and stuff, you know. It was kind of a cute old car. It was added today. But, you know, I tried not to, you know, you can put little things in these back classes.