exploring the penny arcade of The Band Wagon (1953)

I love the big MGM Musicals, and The Band Wagon from 1953 is up there.  It's no Singing In The Rain, but it's silly and irreverent and filled with fabulous numbers too, so well worth the watch.

Early on in the film, Fred Astaire's character is alone on the street and enters a Penny Arcade, and performs his song "Shine on Your Shoes".  Let's take a look at how they designed the arcade for this scene.

shall we enter?

first up on the right we have a classic Mutoscope machine

This is meant to be a coin-op automaton referencing King Kong, but I don't think they ever made automaton machines at this scale.  For the movie the contents are just static models anyway.

Some early electricity machines actually delivered voltage through your body!  Low amperage though.  This is an Electricity Is Life machine by Mills Novelty Co.  In the movie the gimmick is that the floor also vibrates, which is a reference to how some "electricity" machines produced intensity by just delivering intense vibration, as last seen in 1999 by the Addams Family Generator arcade machine.

On the left we have a boxing bag machine, a love tester, and then an automaton fortune teller machine (expertly acted, presumably)

A pokerino machine!  Roll them balls, make the best hand.  What appears to be a grip strength tester is on the left of it.

from this angle you can see the holes the balls roll into.  And  NO YOU CAN'T SHOVE IT WHAT ARE YOU DOING STOP THAT

A love tester obviously made for the movie camera

Fun house mirrors?  Sure why not

OMG I WANT THAT "THE GAYEST MUSIC BOX" NEON SIGN

Real shooting galleries were in so many arcades in the 50s and 60s

A coin-op photo booth!

a classic carnival game and... hey why is that guy in 1953 on his cell phone????

More odd carnival flair with a hammer-activated strength tester on the left.  Ignore that giant grey box, it's just a dumb box of lights used in the dance number.

On the left we can see a swanky player-piano and then a row of Mutoscopes

An electro-mechanical Love Tester at the back, and an EM gun game on the right!  Unsure what one that could be since gun games of that type didn't really come out until later in the 1950s.  Clay has identified the gun game as a 1940 International Mutoscope Sky Fighter!

Here is the show-stopper scene from the musical.  If this doesn't excite you, you might be dead already: