Set 'Em Up (1939) 

I can't imagine how weird it'd be to get out of a time machine in a bowling alley where there's pin boys. It would be so uncanny to see anything but a machine pick them up live in the flesh.

Greg Palmer lmao

It's an oddly dramatic subplot for such a short subject!

😏😂

They had bowling lanes in the 1860's

And up to this standard since 1895.

I'm surprised you never deleted this embarrassing comment.

@@VinylToVideo There's nothing embarrassing about not knowing something. Only losers and children attempt to make people feel bad about things that they don't know. Worse yet, you act like the correct course of action if you don't know something is to erase the evidence once it's found out. That's called cowardice.

"Twinkle Toes Freddie"

Yabba Dabba Doo! 🎳🎳🎳🎳🎳 😁😁😁😁😁

I believe they used a monkey back then to set up the pins.

I worked at a new 48 lane center in January of 1961. Andy Varipapa had me drop the curtain on a machine so he could make a surprise entrance for the crowd.

Luke Hauser Oh yes. I understand that three fingers grips were once like the five finger grips you'll sometimes see in senior leagues.

It was almost 80 years ago. It had only been about two years that Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz came out. They were the first color films and only about ten years since sound was available. It has a right to look old timey, it was.

Everything sadly has to be about competition nowadays. I thought about going to the lanes sometimes. But there are too many of those people who will either come up to chastise or goat you into a game.

Yep, bowling is a clown show today. Technology destroyed the game. I started in leagues in first grade in the mid 70s, then wound up traveling the country as an inter-collegiate bowler on a top 20 ranked team from 87-91. Shortly thereafter, reactive resin hit the scene, and soon that was enough for me. I was in 3 leagues in 95 and just quit mid season in December of 95. Literally gave away the 4 balls I brought with me that final night and never bowled again. Watching today's no-thumb or 2 handed clown show only reaffirms my decision. Also, look at the numbers a decade before and a decade after reactive resin (1994). 1984, 10 million registered bowlers in the US rolled 5,800 perfect games. 2004, 1.8 million registered bowlers in the US rolled 50,000 perfect games. So, less than 1/5 of the participants rolled nearly 10 times the perfect games. Technology changed the sport, into something more like a video game. Heck, I rolled 745 the first night after I drilled my first and only reactive resin ball (turbo x). I legitimately had 8 boards to hit and still strike. Might as well been a remote control ball.

Just use more reverse pitch in the thumbhole.

How are any of these things you described a change for the worse?

@@agoo7581 I guess judging by the comments, technology made the game of bowling too easy. Technology kinda took the challenge and excitement of say, getting a 200 out of the equation. Getting a 200 game is not a big deal as it was back then.

I don't know any stats offhand back then without research. I remember reading in a 1957 book by Junie McMahon that "it has been made", and it was written as some centers still had pinboys. I'd imagine that it was a lot more rare with the very deep (10-12") and rectangular pits back then, as opposed to the slanted and shallower pits (with firmer cushions) with automatic pinsetters.

@@johnseal56 I have heard it being described as "impossible" on old telecasts. I made it twice; once as a kid and later just 2 or 3 years ago. When I was a kid it was on wood lanes, a few years ago it was on absolutely THRASHED wood lanes.

@@VinylToVideo Right, but that could have been hyperbole. It HAD to have happened sometime, but I'm sure it was, like, a few times in those days. On the Internet Archive, there's a bunch of old books about bowling. There's a few from the turn of the century, and even one from right before the ABC was formed to standardize things. Interestingly, many of the standards we know nowadays were intact back then-60 foot lanes, 15 inch pins, and so forth. There's a few spare making diagrams, and one includes the 7-10 as being makeable by just sliding it on over as if it were the 6-7, with antiquated language to the effect. 😆

@@johnseal56 It happened more often than you think. If I did it with an old 1930s Highlander ball if I recall correctly on lanes that hadn't been oiled in years which looked like they could have been installed in the 1930s, then there's no reason it couldn't have happened as often before. In fact it probably happened more often because years ago somebody could probably afford to bowl all day. Now when 3 games can cost $20 outside of cheaper practice times, who the hell could possibly bowl as much as they'd really like to?

I get what you're saying now. Specials are still around at my lanes, but they're a touch more than they were due to things these days.

Trevor Petersen Also.. "Andy is Terrif!"

+bccarl88 The foul wasn't the same and they didn't have oil so it wasn't a big deal back then.

Brandon Carl Nice big Lebowski reference. Smokey was entering a world of pain LOL

mark it 8 dude.

Berry McGregor Kegeler = bowler

I've noticed that the term has dropped off since the 1980s. 😉

@@johnseal56 I been bowling since the 60's never heard the term . I like it 😉

Keggler is bowler in German, and I think bowling started in German taverns.

There are some short subject films of professional golfer Bobby Jones making some golf swings, some of which were filmed in slow motion in the early-1930s. They probably used the same slow motion camera for this short subject film.

Hello comment from 6 years ago o-0 @@LaptopLarry330

You're 64 years old?

Legend has it, that shot is still reverberating.

Well, starch my bib!

But to keep her it's cheaper.

At least back then they didn't have mechanical issues, I actually prefer lanes like that.

But then they'd heckle you if you were taking too long, I read. They were paid by the line, and so dallying around like we do today when bowling with friends didn't fly back then.

@@steveboone1498 There are one Bowling Alley I went that's had one unreliable AMF-8270B that keep shutting off on me and other one with Brunswick GSX which is not any better than the A2 since I had to wait for the full 10 pins to come down and had my turn. Brunswick A2 are probably the best pinsetter because they are last so long.. continued well in the 80s because my third bowling alley place were built in 1980 and had the Brunswick A2. Any other place that's still using a manual pinsetter are in Rwanda but it's homemade and not Brunswick B10

@@Happytylermovieproducction that's the reason I prefer manually setting the pins

Yes. Back in those days, kids could throw smaller balls. It wasn't until the advent of automatic pinsetters (and automatic ball returns) that all bowling balls had to be the same size.

+BrownswickBowling Do you know if the balls were like candlepin/duckpin balls? Or did they have small holes?

+Mestair Meu - Actually, some of the manufacturers back then (and there weren't as many as we have today) actually made bowling balls in a variety of different sizes. Sounds crazy today, as the machines we bowl on today wouldn't know what to do with some of those different size balls. But when the pins were set by pin boys and the balls were returned manually on a ramp that could hold most any size ball (up to a certain size), as long as they weren't bigger than the maximum allowable size, they could be used on any alley...and presumably were allowable within the rules of the game at the time.

BowlingOldies Cool! That answers my first question. My second was if there was holes in the balls?

Yes. Before automatic pinsetters. I used them when I was a kid back in the early 1950's. If you left say a 5, 6 baby split, you could actually throw the ball between the pins and not hit either one of them.

Oh yes. It was applied with a bug sprayer and mopped on, but it was there, and more so to keep the wood from wearing down prematurely than to add levels of difficulty.

The American Bowling Congress was founded in 1895 as the sanctioning body for the sport. Ned Day was evidently the best professional bowler of that era, prior to the founding of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) in 1958. Ned Day was still bowling professionally in the 1950s and early-1960s.

Grandma got a strike, ah the 30s, lol

Then you have a bunch of the two-handers who are nowadays limited to two holes, as they were starting to use the thumb hole as an extra balance hole for that much more action. It came to a head when a layout involving three finger-sized holes was devised, drilled equilaterally around the ball's center of gravity spot, allowing the ball to be used *six* different ways. Then the USBC stepped in and said, "Nuh-uh!". ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

+Paul Rodgers Any Prove Moron.

There's an affidavit at the beginning of the film. Those are attested under penalty of perjury.

No I think Sally is 100% real