Hollywood

Hollywood, manufactured by the Rock-ola Manufacturing Corporation of Chicago in March 1936, is an early electro-mechanical pin game with a Hollywood movies theme, produced during the golden age of the American film industry. Rock-ola, better remembered today for its jukeboxes, was an active pin game manufacturer from 1932 to 1938, and Hollywood dates from the middle of that run.

Hollywood is a one-ball payout machine: the player received a single ball for five cents, and successful shots could trigger an automatic payout. Games of this type sat closer to gambling equipment than to the amusement pinball that would emerge later, and they were a major segment of the coin machine business in the mid-1930s. As a 1936 machine, Hollywood predates flippers, bumpers as we know them, and virtually all of the player-controlled features of modern pinball.

Little information survives about the machine's artwork, designer, or production history, leaving us to appreciate this rare example as a testament to the pioneering, and sometimes gray-market, spirit of early pinball manufacturers.