A wood phone booth
From Ephemeral New York, a wood phone booth , complete with phone, in a bar on St. Marks Place.
EXchange names, NOLA edition
From Bed of Roses (dir. Gregory LaCava, 1933).
PAYPHONE
A pangram from the dowdy world, in yesterday’s New York Times Spelling Bee.
EXchange names sighting
Restaurants in the telephone book. From The Public Eye (dir. Howard Franklin, 1992).
An EXchange name sighting
Milchester is a place name in the Miss Marple world. MIlchester is therefore a real exchange name in a fictional world.
Hold the hold music
From Letters of Note, a plea to CVS: “Please change your hold music.”
Ship, plane, or call center
“Please wait while I connect you with a crew member.”
Another Lassie–MTM connection
Jenny from Calverton.
EXchange names fill the screen
From Larceny (dir. George Sherman, 1948). The page fills the screen; otherwise, you might not believe that someone is really looking at a telephone directory.
Mother’s Day
An AT&T ad for long-distance calling, May 12, 1967.
Harts, Keen’s, WIsconsin
An EXchange name on a restaurant letterhead.
An EXchange name sighting
MEDeric and, later, MEDicis were both Paris EXchange names.
An EXchange name sighting
SYcamore: from Backfire (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1950).
Pay-phone noir
From Naked Alibi (dir. Jerry Hopper, 1954). The cinematography is by Russell Metty.
Phone etiquette
The Washington Post has tips about phone etiquette in our times (gift link). Useful stuff.
An EXchange name sighting
From One Way Street.
An EXchange name sighting
BRadshaw. From the 1960 movie Strangers When We Meet.
An EXchange name sighting
From This Woman Is Dangerous.
One more from John Alton
A page from a telephone directory.
An EXchange name sighting
From Crime and Punishment U.S.A.
EXchange names on screen
There’s always a directory around when you need one, big enough to fill the screen.
Jury doody
“Over 100 people are calling this number, so you may experience busy signals,” the summons said. “Please be patient and try again.”
EXchange names on screen
From This Gun for Hire and Shortcut to Hell.
EXchange names on screen
From Mr. District Attorney (dir. Robert B. Sinclair, 1947). The movie is a bit ’phone-crazy.
EXchange names on screen
In a real telephone directory, I think. From The Dark Corner (1946).
EXchange names on the screen
From She Played with Fire (dir. Sidney Gilliat, 1957).
“Total privacy”
A telephone booth, in Dorothy B. Hughes’s The Expendable Man.
Tele-Rest No. 300
I’ve had a Tele-Rest No. 300 sitting around for many years, purchased (in the 1990s?) from a going-out-of-business office-supplies store. I bought this item only for its box, which predates ZIP codes.
Over and out
Managing things for my mom, I’ve gotten good at ending telephone calls.
EXchange names on the screen
It’s not enough to show a character opening a telephone directory; we must see what the character sees. And what the character sees is somehow real: even a fictional telephone directory is in some way a work of non-fiction.