Although pinball was quickly vilified in many parts of America, the poster child for the vilification was none other than ‘the little flower’ himself: the pugnacious, all-powerful Fiorello H La Guardia, mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1945. La Guardia argued that pinball was a ‘racket dominated by interests heavily tainted with criminality’, which took money from the ‘pockets of school children’. In one rant, he fumed:
The main [pinball] distributors and wholesale manufacturers are slimy crews of tinhorns. Well-dressed and living in luxury on penny thievery…I mean the manufacturers in Illinois and Michigan. They are the chief offenders. They are down in the same gutter level of the tinhorn.
Although to our eyes these allegations seem hysterical, there is some proof to back up La Guardia’s beliefs. After an intense crackdown on slot machines in 1932, there is no doubt that some gamblers turned to pinball to satisfy their wagering itch, which some manufacturers, particularly the Bally Company, facilitated and supported. According to Trapunski, the name ‘pinball’ itself was coined by reporters in Louisville, Kentucky, when they were covering a gambling case centred on the games. And, most damning of all, early pinball games did not have flippers. You simply pulled the plunger and the ball went where it wanted to go.
There is also the fact that with the repeal of prohibition in 1933, some organised crime groups did turn to ‘games of chance’ like pinball to shake down small business owners. Local officials purportedly accepted bribes to license the games. Ninety per cent of pinball machines were manufactured in mob-tainted Chicago. Many machines were owned by Jewish and Italian businessmen, who were unfairly branded as crooks. And, of course, pinball was a game loved by the young. All these things contributed to the public’s negative perception of pinball.
La Guardia and other leaders took these facts and ran with them all the way to the political bank. In 1941, La Guardia and the NYPD set up a much publicised ‘pinball squad’ of eight patrolmen to investigate the so-called pinball ‘racket’. In January 1942, New York Judge Ambrose J Haddock ruled that all pinball machines were gambling devices, and therefore illegal. Before the ruling could be overturned or stayed, La Guardia and the NYPD sprang into action. Within days, it was reported that ‘pinball machines throughout the city clacked and jangled merrily…but only on the backs of policemen ordered to confiscate them’. By October 1942, 4,999 pinball machines in New York City had been destroyed, and over a thousand summonses had been issued. The industry was further decimated that year when the American government ordered all manufacturing in the amusement industry shut down in order to aid the war effort.