Bowling in the 50's Part I

Bowling in the Fifties

Going to a bowling alley is a fun experience. It's an auditory experience as the spinning ball hits the wooden floor of the alley and moments later you hear that thunder sound of the pin exploding apart when the ball strikes them.

Or that dead sound of a gutter ball. There are the lights and the cheers when someone gets a strike. It’s about family and it’s about dates and couples, bowling leagues and friends. Today bowling alleys have incorporated more high tech gadgetry to entertain us which reflects our modern world.

Let’s go back to The Fabulous Fifties when bowling really took off as a sport and a place to socialize. A bowling alley or bowling center played a roll whether it was in the city or a rural area or new suburban towns that grew out of the post-World War II housing boom for the returning vets.

The post-World War II housing boom created a new kind of a neighborhood where people could go with shared interests. What grew out of those neighborhoods were bowling leagues and even more casual bowling evenings out with neighbors

It was a gathering place where parents knew there children would be safe.

Neighbors could get together weekly to get a night out and be adults. I think the unions had an influence on the popularity of bowling leagues. It became a place for men to go to have fun together instead of just work together

Bowling alleys were much different prior to the 1951 and the game was revolutionized when the new AMF Pinspotters came out. To a little boy in the early fifties they must have looked like robots from the science fiction magazines of the day.

But to understand the impact of that machine on a little boy of that time let’s go back a bit further to the Fabulous Forties.

If you had been on the north side of Chicago at that time for example, you might have walked into a bowling alley and waited while they woke up the ‘pinboy’ to set the pins up for you to play.

Bowling wasn't as popular and might have had only one pinboy in the place. It would have cost you 25 cents per game and 10 cents for the shoes. The bowling alley might have been a place for men to get together to drink and bet on how many pins might be knocked down. It was a different atmosphere not your family atmosphere as you might think of in the 50’s or even today.

Here’s a little bit of business history. In 1951 AMC introduced a pinsetter. AMF stands for the American Machine Foundry Co. In the 1940’s the company manufactured automated cigarette machine and baking, and stitching machines After World War II ended, the son of the founder Mr. Patterson decided that in order for the company to grow he had to search for new products. He came across a crude prototype of an automatic bowling-pin setter. He purchased the patent rights and with work and modification AMF perfected the AMF Pinspotter, and brought it to the market in 1951/52. No longer did an owner of a bowling alley have to rely on "pinboys.". This invention helped turn bowling into one of the most popular American sports to participate in and to compete competitively too.
Now organized, with agreed-upon standards, the game grew in popularity.
In the 1950’s that new medium television embraced bowling and the game's popularity grew even more. NBC's was the first network to cover bowling with "Championship Bowling". Coverage proliferated with shows like "Make That Spare,", "Celebrity Bowling", and "Bowling for Dollars."

ABC in 1961 began to telecast bowling competition of the Pro Bowlers Association and it became one of ABC sports most popular watched shows. I remember my father watching that weekly.

Today bowling has fallen victim to the competition and promotions of other sports conglomerates the most popular is football. And there is the internet, activities such as on-line gaming, social networks that now compete for our time and have diminished the popularity of bowling.

The 1950’s also brought a futuristic and exotic themed architecture to the bowling centers of that time and it added to the whole appeal of bowling’s popularity.

The bowling alley is another part of vanishing Americana that has fallen on hard times in recent years In Southern California with skyrocketing land values the large parcels land have become attractive to developers and many of these centers have been torn down and replaced with malls or parking lots or more speculative developments. These classic centers are threatened with

extinction. Luckily there are community groups and preservationist groups that are trying to save these gathering disappearing from our landscape and our collective memory.

Bowling was part of the Fabulous Fifties that spoke to the growth of suburban American. It was connected to the new broadcast medium called television. It was about community and having fun with friends, neighbors and family. It’s still a great activity that way today. Give it a try. Maybe have a 50’s bowling party. What fun it could be.