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If it hadn't been for the instability leading up to the Depression, which left a young man named Ray Moloney jobless in the late 1920s, there probably never would have been a company called Bally.

And although the casino company that is being bought for $3 billion by Hilton Hotels Corp. is a far cry from the Bally that Moloney built on the success of pinball machines, it's a company that was part of Chicago history long before Las Vegas became a mecca for glitz and gambling.

1996 Winn Bally Slot Machines

With the high-priced takeover, the focus has been on Bally Chairman Arthur Goldberg, who is credited with turning the company into a valuable property. But a man named Moloney deserves some attention, too.

Moloney started Bally in 1931--when he was 31--in a fourth-floor loft on Erie Street between Franklin and Orleans Streets in what is now the River North gallery district.

One of 11 children, he had moved here from Cleveland in 1926 with his wife and baby son, Raymond Jr., to start a new job. Times were beginning to get tough, however, and his job had vanished by the time the young family got here.

His wife, Carmelia, supported them by working as a secretary for about a year, until he landed a spot working for Linehan printing company. In short order, he became a foreman and then department head.

And in 1931, he became head of a new company formed by Linehan to make punchboards--little games of chance played by using a stylus to punch out bits of paper that said whether you had won a prize or not.

Moloney, with 50 percent ownership of the new company, named it Lion Manufacturing Co., but Bally became the name that quickly became known.

Ballyhoo was the name given the first pinball machine Moloney made. His son Don, who was born in 1932, says his father got the idea for creating a pinball machine after going to a punchboard convention and seeing a semi-upright pinball machine that another company had made.

'My father looked at it and got the idea to make a flat game, like they are today. So he came home, and built a flat machine in the fourth-floor loft. He named it Ballyhoo,' his son said.

The name was distinctive and Moloney ultimately made it the company trademark. When asked to come up with a logo, he simply wrote the name out.

'My father had beautiful handwriting--everyone learned the Palmer method back then--so he just wrote the name,' his son said. 'That's been the logo ever since.'

With pinball machines selling like hotcakes by the mid-1930s, Moloney took advantage of his distribution system and branched into slot machines. He also bought out Linehan's 50 percent interest in the business, and the old punchboard business was phased out.

His son says his father steered clear of organized crime by hiring an ex-chief of the U.S. Secret Service as executive vice president of the company. 'I know the Mafia tried (to get in), but my father was very cautious,' he said.

The Mafia still affected the company's course, however. A few years after World War II, the company was forced out of the slot machine business because of federal legislation forbidding the shipment of slot machines across state lines.

'All the major slot machine manufacturers had been in Chicago until that time,' Don Moloney said. 'And then all of them except Bally moved to Nevada. But my father felt he didn't want to eliminate 500 jobs in Chicago . . . so then he started concentrating on pinball and arcade games, the kiddie rides.'

He also never wanted his sons, Don and Ray Jr., in business with him.

'He didn't want us at Bally,' Don said. 'We never understood why. It was very curious. When I was in high school, I would go over to the factory just out of curiosity, so I could understand the games. But he never wanted us in the business.'

But, when Moloney died in 1958, his second wife asked the two sons to take over.

They ran the company until 1964, and were successful in gaining an exemption that allowed them to once again ship slots to Las Vegas.

'But there wasn't enough money in the (Moloney's) estate for us to continue once Uncle Sam got his share, so in 1964, we had to sell the company,' Don Moloney said.

1982 Bally Slot Machine

'It was very tough.'

Ray Moloney Jr. died the year after Bally was sold. Bally went public in 1968. The company got out of the pinball business about 10 years ago, and spun off the slot machine business as Bally Gaming more recently.

Today, Don Moloney has Bally memorabilia stored in various places.

When his own eight kids were growing up, he says, their North Shore home was a New Trier High School hangout. 'We had a big old house, 18 rooms, and it was full of slot machines and pinball machines. Kids were always there.'

1980 Bally Slot Machine

But now those old machines are under lock and key. 'They're vintage,' he said. 'They're history.'