Film Cavalcade

The Film Cavalcade pinball machine, produced by Nate Schneller Incorporated (trade name Nasco) in August 1949, occupies an interesting niche in early pinball history: it is a conversion. Nasco took United's flipperless 1948 'Manhattan' and retrofitted it with flippers, rebranding it with a new show-business theme. Conversions like this flourished briefly after flippers debuted in late 1947, as operators and small companies raced to update flipperless inventory for a market that suddenly demanded player control.

The converted game features two flippers, seven passive bumpers, and five kick-out holes - a layout that clearly betrays its flipperless origins, with the bumpers and holes doing most of the scoring work while the new flippers give the player a fighting chance to keep the ball alive.

With its Movie Making - Show Business theme, Film Cavalcade offers collectors a window into a short-lived but revealing chapter of pinball history, when the flipper's arrival was so transformative that even year-old games were worth rebuilding around it. Little is known about who performed the design work on the conversion, but the machine stands as a document of the industry's rapid adaptation in the late 1940s.