Quick "Music Man" question

[Otto]

Was there really the sort of fear and loathing toward pool halls as presented in “Trouble” or was it all an invention of Meredith Willson?

[Skywatcher]

OC Register:

Historians trace the origin of billiards to the lawn games played in the royal courts of Europe during the 1300s. The game evolved, but for centuries it remained a game played by the wealthy.

“It was a game of kings and queens,” said John Savolainen, owner of A.A.A. Billiards in Lake Forest.

It wasn’t until much later “when the game got a bad rap,” said Savolainen, whose family has been in the billiards business for more than 30 years.

“The correct term for the game is pocket billiards,” he said. But during the 1800s the name “pool” became attached to the game in reference to betting, and to simpler shot making. These early poolrooms served as a betting parlor for horse racing. The pool tables were there for patrons to amuse themselves between races. The game became associated with gamblers and hustlers.

[RealityChuck]

Willson tended to take actual life in the time period and exaggerate it for comic effect. The pool hall would have had a bad reputation, but not as extreme as portrayed in the song. It was really similar to Grease – a look back at an earlier time, but whereas Grease shows great contempt for the 50s, The Music Man portrays it affectionately.

[Spoons]

I cannot speak for the time period in the “Music Man,” but I do know the time period when I was a child. Then (that is, the 1960s), we kids were all warned to stay away from the pool hall that was located a few blocks from where we lived. According to my mother, “bad people” were there. Mom wasn’t alone; most of the mothers of my friends felt the same way.

Whether or not Mom’s attitude was justified, I cannot say. The place closed by the early 1970s. Still, years later, when I was too old for Mom to tell me what to do, my friend Ron and I would often play a game or two of snooker at another pool hall (or, to use the place’s terminology, “billiard academy”). When I mentioned to Mom that Ron and I shot a few games last Friday at the XYZ Billiard Academy, she would just shudder.

Was there fear? In my mother’s case, yes. What she was afraid of, I have no idea. Was Mom’s fear justified? No, the place was just a place to rent a table and play; not really any different from a bowling alley. I certainly never met or saw any unsavory characters there.

[GrandWino]

Let’s not forget that Harold Hill did a pretty good job blowing the “trouble” of the pool hall out of proportion. Chances are the townfolk of River City wouldn’t have thought twice about their young men “fritterin’ away their noontime, suppertime, choretime too” if he hadn’t come along w/ his crazy scheme.

Well, either you’re closing your eyes
To a situation you do now wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated
By the presence of a pool table in your community.

[DMark]

In my small, Illinois hometown the local pool hall was where the greasers hung out, where they sold porn and teens learned to inhale cigarettes. There were also rumors of older boys picking up younger boys for unsavory acts.

I used to sneak into that pool hall every chance I had.

[Walloon]

The situation in Louisville, Kentucky:

In 1933, when the Jefferson County White House Conference prepared a report on “Youth Outside of Home and School,” its members visited thirty pool rooms in Louisville to investigate children’s easy access to such locations. The reporters found swearing, drinking, pool-shooting children in almost all the establishments examined. The Youth Outside of Home and School Committee, chaired by Ingram, deemed only four of the thirty pool rooms “suitable places for men and boys,” and they found three of the pool rooms so despicable as to report them to the Directors of Safety and Health. Although the report contained a summary of findings, the Ingram Papers at The Filson include the complete results of the investigation and descriptions of the halls inspected. The investigators’ reports provide detailed accounts of “prostitutes, drink, and suggestive dancing [that] were the dominating features” of the seedier pool halls.

Indiana in 1904:

But for every two steps forward the temperance cause seemed to make, it took one step backwards. Not long after the mid-year vice crackdown, Noblesville’s citizens were once again complaining that police were letting boys into pool halls and that gambling rooms were nearly as wide open in violation of the law as saloons. This only caused more agitation, prompting the city council to vote to bar all minors from saloons and poolrooms in December.