Screeno to punch out the winning numbers on their cards. Apparently, on most nights patrons paid a modest fee for their cards, but one night a week was designated as “Bank Night” in which the audience would get free Screeno cards with their movie tickets. A 1937 romantic-comedic-musical movie entitled “Thrill of a Lifetime” featured a song called “Keno, Screeno and You.” Screeno Screeno (a portmanteau of "screen bingo") was a form of bingo played in American movie theaters during the Great Depression of the 1930s. To bolster attendance on slow weeknights, the neighborhood movie houses would feature the game in
Keno war, and its widespread popularity helped raise funds to build the Great Wall of China. In modern China, the idea of using lotteries to fund a public institution was not accepted before the late 19th century. Chinese lotteries are not documented before 1847 when the Portuguese government of Macau decided to grant a license to lottery operators. According to some, results of keno games in great cities were sent to outlying villages and hamlets by carrier pigeons, resulting in its Chinese name 白鸽票 "báigē piào", literally "white dove ticket", pronounced "baak-gap-piu" in Cantonese (on which the Western spelling 'pak-ah-pu' /