The Scopitone

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

The Scopitone was a early music video jukebox invented in France, that played a short music video clip after you threw in a coin. It was mostly placed in bars, and was apparently a big thing in Europe after the second world war.
As apparently most videos were produces by a rather small number of producers and had to lure the audience into paying for the material, many of the videos have a somewhat similar style: The things targeted an adult audience, and many of the videos that were available were - at least by the standards back then - a bit smutty, and usually feature lightly-clad, over-the-top merry female dancers.

The whole business had close ties to the mob, and - according to my information - went into decline over a mafia-intern conflict (Wikipedia, however, states that American and British acts boycotted the thing due to its bad reputation, others state that color-TV was responsible for their decline).

Many Scopitone videos can be watched on Youtube. They are a interesting time-capsule for the everyday-culture back then, and many of the material is so outdated that it appears nearly like a parody from modern perspective:

[TheFrugalGamer]

What an odd little bit of history! I have to admit, watching the video, the first thing that comes to mind during the dance scenes is "white people flailing."

It kind of reminds me of the Nickelodeon machines that were similarly coin operated, though I know that word refers to many different types of early movie theaters also. I found a site with a picture of the Scopitone itself, and I swear I've seen these things in the Fallout series or something, because they look very familiar!

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Scopitones

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

What an odd little bit of history! I have to admit, watching the video, the first thing that comes to mind during the dance scenes is "white people flailing."

13:05 has a mixed troupe with a very white drummer.

If they appeared in Fallout, nobody seems to have noticed yet; just tried to find web resources regarding media appearances of these machines, and it seems to be a pretty blind spot.

[TheFrugalGamer]

Ha! I love how understated most of the singers in these clips are compared to the dancers.

Maybe it wasn't Fallout...but it's deep in my brain somewhere; maybe it'll work its way out someday. I have a distinct memory of seeing something that I thought was a jukebox, and then thought, "Wait, why is there a screen on that thing?"