The Time Of Your Life with a Show-Boat

Around the beginning of 2004, I watched a long out of print flick recently released on DVD. "The Time Of Your Life" basically is centered around a bar, Nick's Pacific Street Saloon and James Cagney as a very rich guy who likes to help people out. It is unclear if he is in the mafia or just a philanthropist, but in the bar there are various eccentric characters, like an old cowboy, a tap dancer, and more, including most notably, Willie "The Marble Game Maniac" as the pinball addict. Near the end of the flick, Willie beats the pin, flags fly out and fireworks. The movie was eh, "ok" and I soon forgot about it. At the beginning of March, 2004, I get a peculiar email from a Jeanna Crawford-Ellis in Burbank, California telling me about a pin she and her husband bought a Chicago Coin pinball machine from around the 1930's, that appeared to have been used in a film, based on her experience working in the film industry. When she said the pin had flags coming out the sides and top of the pin, I thought, "Could it be, eh, no way. That pin's gotta be long gone." I gave Jeanna noted pinball historian Russ Jensen's site address, which has vintage pin info and Russ' email address and forgot all about the situation. Speaking of Russ' site, for more info about this movie and more pin movie info, read Russ' article, "The Time Of Your Life....And More!"

The plot thickens. I got an email from Jeanna thanking me for referring her to Russ, who it turns out, did verify this pin as the one and only pin in this flick, modified from a '41 Chicago Coin Show Boat pin. She even sent me some pics to prove she wasn't kidding. At this point, I almost fell out of my chair. Jeanna told me in her next email that she was with her family at a local restaurant they frequent, stopped into a brand new antique/junk shop across the street after they saw this pin in the window. They didn't know it had a drop down backglass or the flags until they brought it home. The shop owner said he bought the pin from a couple junk dealers who lived in a trailer, who didn't even have a phone. The pin has no power supply, so there's no way to test it at this time. According to Russ Jensen, the two backglasses were reproduced for the game, and replaced the name, etc in the center of the backglasses with different art, and repainted some minor bits of the playfield. This is why the game was difficult to identify.

Fast forward to Thursday, April 8, 2004. This pin was auctioned on Ebay by the owner, with a $3,000 reserve. I would have never known about the auction, but Jim Schelberg, editor of The Pingame Journal sent me an email about it on Saturday, April 10th. Bidding was originally set at $400 for the opening bid. Thinking the reserve couldn't be too high, I was kicking around the idea of placing a bid, but when I checked the bidding on Sunday, April 11th, the opening bid was now set at $1,300 with no bidders yet. The auction ended that night with just two bids, the final one at $1,550. According to Russ Jensen, a very excited, Dennis Dodel from St. Louis was the winner, and although the bid didn't meet the reserve, he became the proud owner of this once in a lifetime piece of history. On Thursday, March 6, 2014, approximately ten years after this all began, Dennis let me know that he donated this unique bit of history to The Pacific Pinball Museum, in Alameda, California.

Here's the Internet Pinball Database entry on this one of a kind pin, known as "1776." They also have additional pics taken by the owner. Just click on the link.

Now, onto the pics I have.....drool:)

Russ Jensen actually got to visit the Ellis family on Saturday, March 6th and saw this pin in person! He took some pics, seen below, and here's his notes about this historic visit:

Original components removed (except those on underside of
playfield).
Original cables cut
New wiring to both lightboxes--used fine wire with bad insulation and replacement lamps were mounted in aluminum plates with holes drilled in them, and the other lead soldered directly to the bottom contact of the lamps.
New wiring terminated in Cannon connector (probably for hookup to a light control unit fabricated by movie people).
Neither backglass panel used light sockets. Both used drilled aluminum sheets with the wires soldered to the tips of the bulbs.
New rear box for cabinet fabricated which extended to floor (replacing original legs) to allow for front glass (play glass) to be raised in front of jackpot glass (which used lamp sockets from original game).
Motor in bottom of backbox apparently used to move the 3 waving flags ( one on each side of backbox, and one above backbox) using thin pulleys.
Flag sticks still in upper part of backbox with a fragment of one flag still attached to one of them.
4 special bumper caps with explosions on them which apparently replaced the A, B, C, D caps on the original game.
Apparently playfield paint modified somewhat from original game.
Front glass (play glass) lightbox apparently moved up and down in front of rear glass (jackpot glass) by hand.
A few bumper caps slightly warped. Several bumper skirts and bodies also warped.

Russ also added that the jackpot glass was permanently mounted in the rear backbox. The normal glass was manually moved up in front of the jackpot glass when in play (as in most of the movie). Not sure how it was held up, either by hand by a person in back of the cabinet, or possibly suspended by a pully system.