Wild Wild West

Wild Wild West, released by Gottlieb in 1969, designed by Ed Krynski with artwork by Arthur Stenholm.

The first instinct is to assume this game was inspired by the popular television series of the same name starring Robert Conrad and Ross Martin. The timeline matches as the series ran four seasons, starting in 1965 and ending in 1969, when this game was released. But the art on the Wild Wild West tells a different story. Arthur Stenholm seemed to be illustrating some of the storyline from a movie released in 1961, The Misfits, starring Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. The backglass hints at an early scene in the film where Monroe discovers rabbits have eaten lettuce from the garden they were tending. When Gable offers to shoot them she objects instead proposing to catch them. The cowboy on the left side of the glass might be a reference to Montgomery Clift who played a washed up rodeo bronco rider down on his luck. On the playfield, we see a scene where 2 cowgirls are sporting lassos in reference to the film's plot where they search for wild mustangs to capture.

As Stenholm was hired to replace Roy Parker he had been under his tutelage until Roy's passing in 1966. After that, he began developing his own style. Of note in this game was his use of a red sky, something rarely seen in Parker's pinball art, they were almost always rendered in true blue. Another motif found in Art's renderings was the women, always engaged in some activity, not inserted as a cheesecake objects designed to attract the roving eyes of men and get some loose change.

-Michael Schiess