Lyn Durant photos?

Duncan Brown

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Aug 14, 2012, 10:38:07 AM8/14/12

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Sifting through some old 50's-era photos from United Manufacturing got
me to thinking: I am not sure I've ever seen a photo of Lyn Durant.
Harry Williams, Sam Stern, Ray Moloney, David Gottlieb, we've all seen
iconic pictures of them... but Lyn Durant? Google image search doesn't
bring up anything useful. I haven't done a search through my stack of
pinball books because they're still all packed away due to a recent
move, so maybe there is something in there I'm forgetting. Anyone got
anything?

Duncan

Pinball Muggle

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Aug 14, 2012, 11:27:29 AM8/14/12

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Nor did I see a photo of him In Jeffrey Lawtons new book.
Will ask him next time we speak (should be later in the week).
Wonder if Danny Leach knows of one??

--
Pinball Muggle

Steve Smith
Richmond VA
This USENET post sent from http://rgparchive.com

Terry Cumming

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Aug 14, 2012, 12:10:58 PM8/14/12

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There are a few photos of him around but mostly impromptu unposed shots. I've seen these in Cashbox or Marketplace mags probably. I don't have them scanned or indexed so I can't give you a specific reference.

I can think of at least one or two night club pictures.

I have one tiny picture of him in Pinball and WW2 (postage stamp sized - ironically my second reference to this book in 10 minutes), probably from Billboard.

Terry Cumming

Duncan Brown

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Aug 14, 2012, 1:20:47 PM8/14/12

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OK, here's an interesting find. I had heard Lyn was a bit of a ladies'
man, which the US Court of Appeals agreed with (!) but sentenced him for
tax evasion anyway...

http://openjurist.org/324/f2d/859/united-states-v-a-durant

Supposedly he was going to appeal this to the Supreme Court, but I have
to imagine they refused to hear it. Sounds like a pretty clear case to me.

Duncan

jonny o

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Aug 14, 2012, 5:14:51 PM8/14/12

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If you go to books.google.com and search for him you can find several
Billboards with pictures of him.

--
jonny o

frobo...@gmail.com

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Aug 15, 2012, 8:08:51 AM8/15/12

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Oh right I always forget that they have scanned in most of those old Billboards.

Here is the first decent shot of him I found, along with a couple of bonus pinball scions:

http://backglass.org/united/durant_moloney_gottlieb.jpg

I also ran across this fun moment-in-time:

http://backglass.org/united/united_annoucement.jpg

I'm pretty sure I have some better pictures of Lyn in this pile of United photos. There's an 8x10 glossy headshot that may be him, I need to make sure before saying so definitively.

It's weird, most of the well known photos of pinball people seem to start in the 1970's when people started to write books about the game and the industry. All these guys were old men by then, so that's how we know them. Lyn Durant was a dashing young ladies' man, but it's no fair, he's got a 20 year advantage in these photos...

A google groups search of rgp turns up a relative of his asking for info in 1997, and nobody ever answered him :-(

Anyone know what happened to Lyn? He was still heading United when Seeburg bought them in 1964 or so, and I assume left as part of that deal, or shortly thereafter.

Duncan

DocPinball

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Aug 17, 2012, 11:20:54 AM8/17/12

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Can I get a high res scan of that photo of David and Lynn and Harry to reprint and hang at EXPO this year?

Let me know.

Thanks
David

Duncan Brown

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Aug 20, 2012, 9:08:57 AM8/20/12

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It's just screen-captured from a copy of Billboard magazine in Google
Books. Go here http://tinyurl.com/9kwumdb
and you can see the picture on the page up one from the one that appears
in the middle of the screen. Zoom in and screen capture to whatever res
you can manage!

Duncan