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I found this unique press photo on eBay a couple of weeks ago and was so intrigued I bought it. The subject appears to be a prototype Mills DICE (note the perfunctory back door and missing coin release hardware) being handled and observed by an array of very motley characters, attending what is probably a coin-op trade show or convention; a banner in the background appears to say "Gottlieb and Co." Maybe it's the J. Edgar Hoover-looking guy staring straight at me from dead-center that pushed me over the edge, but I'm intent on finding out as much as I can about exactly who these people are: a few look strangely (and I do mean strangely) familiar to me, while others-- such as the gentleman pulling the handle-- really ought to be somebody, like one of "The Mills Brothers." Can anyone on this board positively identify any of these guys--? I've been trying to, and will follow up with a few of my dubious findings.

The Mills representatives at the February 1935 Coin-op Convention were: Vince Shay, Jim Mangan, Art Cooley, Harold Perkins, Charley Schlicht, Frank Lorden, Midge Ryan, Lea Purington, and Bob Schwarz. (as per info from Automatic Age, Feb. 1935) Perhaps this was taken at one of their booths as the Mills Dice was introduced at that show.

Naturally, I was hoping that the guy pulling the handle was Fred Mills himself, President of Mills Novelty Co. However, pictures from the Fey and Bueschel books show Fred to have a more bulbous sort of nose and a strongly cleft chin which the guy in the picture lacks; most obviously though, Fred always had some firmly-rooted hair on top of his head, while the handle-puller boasts only a few thin strands. I found a video tour of the Mills factories online, and saved some stills... Fred's brother Ralph (VP-Sales) looked fleetingly like he might be the guy, but even his thinning hair looks a bit too much... and maybe it's just because of the harsh flash in the picture, but the handle-puller looks about ten years too old to be a Mills sibling.

rtmccurdy wrote:The Mills representatives at the February 1935 Coin-op Convention were: Vince Shay, Jim Mangan, Art Cooley, Harold Perkins, Charley Schlicht, Frank Lorden, Midge Ryan, Lea Purington, and Bob Schwarz. (as per info from Automatic Age, Feb. 1935) Perhaps this was taken at one of their booths as the Mills Dice was introduced at that show.

Thanks-- I'm going to look that up straight away! Automatic Age is online somewhere as page-by-page PDFs, if I remember correctly...

The guy standing second from the right resembles what I recalled of pictures I had once run across, taken of Gordon Mills back when he was called in by California investigators in 1935. I searched up and found those pictures again: and here again, the guy in my press photo looks about ten years too old to be the guy I was hoping he was. Gordon Mills was the man who actually made the Mills DICE work reliably enough to earn money... he was the Mills brothers' California cousin, operating his own Mills Sales Company on the West Coast.