Word: jackpot
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...time in the history of Nevada, the only state in the U.S. where gambling is legal in nearly all its forms (prohibited: dog racing, jai alai), an organized band had figured out a way to fulfill the fondest dream of hundreds of thousands of lemon-loathing laymen: hitting the jackpot on the slot machine, otherwise known as the one-armed bandit...
...Skill. But spooning has become a crude technique, with a relatively picayune payoff. The real returns (from $15 to $1,000) come in hitting the jackpot. When that happens in most Nevada gambling houses, only a few coins tumble down. A bell rings, the box lights up, and a sharp-eyed change girl arrives at the machine, sometimes with an assortment of mechanic types who check to see that there has been no ham-handed tampering. If the win looks legitimate, the change girl pays the big money...
...Drill. Some thieves use a tiny, battery-powered electric drill concealed in their sleeves, make a little hole in the machine (see cut), insert a wire into the works, and by careful manipulation "walk" the reels until they stop at the jackpot position. But since freshly drilled holes are too easily detected, other jackpotters have fashioned keys with which they can unlock machines and stop the reels by hand. A first-class crook can walk the reels, hit the jackpot in 30 seconds flat and, before the change girl appears, slip his small tools to an accomplice, who ambles away...
...every innovation by the bandit-beaters, the operators develop a safeguard. And for every safeguard, there is a new way to hit the jackpot. "Hell," says one disgusted slot-machine mechanic, "you could surround the thing with sheet metal, and they will find a way to beat it." Yet for all the troubles with the professional jackpotters, there are always enough honest, ordinary suckers around to make the one-armed bandit history's healthiest highwayman...
...Indian movie. With the exception of a few original moviemakers in Calcutta, where Director Satyajit Ray filmed the prizewinning Father Panchali (TIME, Oct. 20), the Indian movie business is likely to go on pandering to more undemanding millions than Hollywood ever envisioned. There is good reason: the occasional jackpot is full of jack indeed. For a borrowed $500,000 two years ago, Bombay Producer Mehboob Khan made a color film, Mother India (no kin to Katherine Mayo's book of the same name), which has since raked in $2,000,000. Mehboob's next step: getting Hollywood itself...