I've been researching the history of some very cool pool tables and coin-op games made in Brooklyn, NY in the 50's-70's made by the Irving Kaye Co. Inc.

Here's what I know about Irving Kaye:

In May of 1953 the FBI report on Abner “Longy” Zwillman reported that Zwillman had some of his men in New York City were easing their way into the automatic vending machine business. The informant to the FBI advised them that one of these men was alleged to be Irving Kaye.

In 1962 William T. (Bill) O'Donnell then the sales manager of Lions Equipment Corp (later renamed Bally) approached Barney Sugarman and Abe Green of Runyon Sales Company, Sam Klein of Stern Vending Company and Irving Kaye of Irving Kaye Co. Inc. with a request to raise money to buy Bally. In order to get the financing needed to raise the $1.2M Barney "Shugy" Sugarman reached out to his "silent" partner in Runyon Sales Company Gerald "Jerry" Catena.

In 1963, George Wood a theatrical agent and William Morris' chief troubleshooter since 1940 started a development deal to license a video jukebox machine called Scopitone in the U.S. Wood worked out a arrangements with Abe Green to have Runyon Sales handle the distribution for Scopitone. In return Green and his partner Geraldo Catena would have approval on all the other partners in the deal. The original Scopitone investor group included Vincent Alo, Danny Brown; Joe Cataldo, Aaron Weisberg and Francis Breheney. Fronting for Alo was 31-year-old Miami Beach attorney, Alvin Malnik who organized Scopitone, Inc. Ownership of Scopitone, Inc. was evenly divided between Malnick and his “associates” and the Uchitel “group”. The Uchitel group consisted of four business men from the New York area: Maurice Uchitel, Abe Green, Alfred Miniaci and Irving Kaye.

Eight months later 80% of the stock of Scopitone was sold to a Chicago firm Tel-A-Sign. According to the Wall Street Journal in an article on April 26, 1996 investors such as Weisberg and Green traded an $8000 investment in Scopitone for stock in Tel-A-Sign worth $3.3 million. Tel-A-Sign eventually bought all the stock back for cash before going bankrupt in 1969.

Bally went public in 1969 and after an initial hiccup where trading was suspended because of improper disclosure of the participation of Sugarman and Kaye, Bally was the first gaming business to listed on the New York Stock Exchange. A second public offering was also made in 1971 and to clean up the ownership of Bally, Irving Kaye used some of his proceeds from this offering to buy out Catena's ownership interests of Irving Kaye Co. Inc.

Then in 1975 Irving Kaye, Bill O'Donnell and Sam Klein applied for a gaming license in Nevada for Bally's Casino Holdings, Inc. and Bally Entertainment Corporation. O'Donnell and Klein's applications were granted but Irving Kaye's Nevada gaming license was denied due to his “numerous business relationships over a period of years with Gerard Catena”.

During the 60's and 70's Irving Kaye Co Inc. continued making some of the best "bar box" coin-op pool tables and millions of dollars before passing away in 1977.

Is there more to add to this story?