This day in history: Bingo was seen as an innocuous enough form of gambling that even 2-year-olds could play

From 1976: No casinos were operating in Spokane 50 years ago, but one form of legal gambling was wildly popular: bingo.

A total of 58 nonprofit establishments – including lodges, churches and various charities – were licensed to operate bingo games in the county. Together, they brought in $3.4 million a year in bingo revenues.

The biggest bingo game in the county was the Shamrock Acres game in Newman Lake, which had a Class H license for revenues of more than $500,000 a year. It supported a boys ranch for 10 teens “referred to it by the courts.”

“There is no legal requirement on how much of the bingo profits must go to charity, but 75 percent of revenues – less the cost of operations – must be returned in prizes,” The Spokesman-Review reported.

State law allowed anyone to play bingo, even children if accompanied by a parent. The S-R noted that “theoretically, a bright 2-year-old with his mother tagging along could join the bingo circuit and perhaps whoop it up.”

From 1926: Spokane’s Hippodrome Theater, on Howard Street near First Avenue, was set to reopen as a vaudeville house, supplemented with first-run films on some nights.

The building originally opened under the name the Orpheum, but was renamed the Hippodrome and had operated as a movie theater before it closed.

Now the Spokane Theaters group had signed an indefinite lease and planned to bring back live entertainment most nights.

Frank Finney, a nationally known comedian from Spokane, had signed up to “present a musical ‘tab’ show” four nights a week. A tab show – short for tabloid show – was an abbreviated one-hour version of popular musical comedies or vaudeville acts.

In addition, a vaudeville touring circuit “associated with the B.F. Keith and Orpheum circuits” would provide “the best variety entertainment available,” the new manager said.