To bolster attendance on slow weeknights, the neighborhood movie houses would feature the game in which audience members would have a chance to win cash prizes.
[1] The story is that many a theater was saved from bankruptcy by the advent of screeno.
A number dial and a giant spinning needle were projected onto the movie screen.
Patrons were provided with toothpicks to punch out the winning numbers on their cards.
A 1937 romantic-comedic-musical movie titled Thrill of a Lifetime featured a song called “Keno, Screeno and You.” In 1937 Fiorello La Guardia, mayor of New York City, tried to have screeno banned as part of his anti-gambling crusade that also targeted pinball and bingo in the city.