Machine gambling used to be quite common in urban America, as this column from the Pasadena Star-News shows:
Pasadena in 1937 was a gambling den of sorts. Slot machines and pinball machines that made cash payoffs were common in the business areas of town.
But change was coming.
The Pasadena Post wrote on March 13, 1937: "The million-dollar-a-week slot and pin-ball racket – which lures the working mans nickels and the school child’s lunch money – appeared doomed, at least for the time being, last night in two important announcements affecting Pasadena, particularly, and Los Angeles County as a whole."
History Column: Pasadena a gambling den – Pasadena Star-News.
This was around the time that the crackdown on California’s offshore gambling boats led Tony Cornero and others to investigate the possibilities in Las Vegas. Just think–if they’d have let the pinball machines keep paying out in Pasadena, things might have turned out differently.