Phone sighting on classic tv show

[Bill Cahill]

Hi. I received a DVD set of the first season of "My favorite martian" from Amazon dot com today. Upon starting the first of the series, Tim O'Hara gets a phone call in his apartment bedroom. He picks it up, and, it looks like it's a WE 302...
By the third in the series, he is using  a white WE 500 in the living room....
It's very interesting to me to see these phones in old tv shows.

Come to think of it, they are using some interesting phones int the classic sci-fi movie "Gog".

I am also interested in the phones, and, televisions used in another sci-fi classic "The day the earth stood still".
I definately recognized a Zenith tv in one scene.

Bill Cahill

[Dan]

 Interesting Bill.....I watched the twilight zone marathon on jan 1, and the episode "third from the sun "
had the people get their phone call to leave on an Ericophone! It didn't chirp, it made a weird alien ring sound....
The same day I watched a leave it to Beaver and Beaver called on a white WE500, while his friend was on a 5302 (black) with a F1 handset.

I have NEVER seen a 5302 on TV before.

[winkydink]

Well not exactly TV shows, but coming out of the Christmas holidays, I watched my share of movies.

It's a Wonderful Life - George Bailey's home phone is a non dial candlestick, possibly a WE 40-AL.  Mr Potter office is equiped with a WE 202 with an E1 handset.  Additionally in the Hatch household there were 2 phones, a candlestick (don't think it had a dial so it would be WE 40AL) and also an extention phone upstairs (where Mrs Hatch was listening in on the conversation).  My guess is a WE 533A (as the timeline was circa 1933).

Miracle on 34th Street - At the Walker household they have a WE 302, the Shellhamers seem to have a 202 and there are some 202 in various offices at Macy's.  All were using F1 handsets that I could tell.

[HobieSport]

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=312.60

[BDM]

My whole interest in antique phones started with Green Acres, go figure

[Bill Cahill]

My whole interest in antique phones started with Green Acres, go figure

Green acres??   Go figure. Most of the time the phone was a lineman's phone on the pole. Once, they had a phone in the kitchen, but, It looked like it might have been a WE 533.

Bill Cahill

[benhutcherson]

My whole interest in antique phones started with Green Acres, go figure

Green acres??   Go figure. Most of the time the phone was a lineman's phone on the pole. Once, they had a phone in the kitchen, but, It looked like it might have been a WE 533.

Bill Cahill

Well, there was the Candlestick that Mr. Drucker had in the general store.

I think that the telephone in the kitchen was always there, it just never worked since the telephone company ran out of wire and could only bring the line in to the telephone pole.

[winkydink]

My whole interest in antique phones started with Green Acres, go figure

Green acres??   Go figure. Most of the time the phone was a lineman's phone on the pole. Once, they had a phone in the kitchen, but, It looked like it might have been a WE 533.

Bill Cahill

Well, there was the Candlestick that Mr. Drucker had in the general store.

I think that the telephone in the kitchen was always there, it just never worked since the telephone company ran out of wire and could only bring the line in to the telephone pole.

I believe the Mr Ziffle (Arnold the Pig's owner) also had a candlestick phone, except that he did not have a receiver (he had a hammer holding the switch hook down).  He could never hear who was calling, the only thing he could do was talk.


There was one episode where Oliver Douglas whipped the town up into a frenzy because of all the poor phone service (such as Mr Ziffle's no receiver).  The phone companies answer was to part out all of Mr. Douglas' phone pieces to make complete phones for everyone else in town, leaving him no phone.

http://www.tv.com/green-acres/oliver-vs.-the-phone-company/episode/12122/summary.html

[HobieSport]

Zha Zha Gabor had such huge...

eyes of course.

[benhutcherson]

Ah, I'd forgotten about the Ziffle's candlestick-I knew that their phone had some sort of peculiarity, but couldn't remember what it was.

TV Land seems to be more interested in showing three year old TV shows these days rather than the real classics like Green Acres, so it's been a while since I'd seen it.

[BDM]

The candlestick phones caught my attention as a young lad at the time. From there I started paying attention to old phones. I believe I told the story of the D1 mount that was in my great grandmothers home into the mid 70s when she passed away. I never grabbed it as it never occured to me at the time. It was in service until the day she passed.

[metdial]

Dan,  I too watched several episodes of the Twilight Zone during that New Year's Day marathon.   I had just been bitten by the phone collector's bug, and was watching very closely to see what models of phones I could see and identify.

One of the best episodes that I saw was one in which the telephone was a crucial element in the story.  It was the episode entitled "Night Call" and was about an elderly woman in a wheelchair that kept receiving these anonymous phone calls at all hours of the day and night.  Intitially she hears only static on the other end.  But in subsequent calls, she hears someone moaning, and eventually, the weak, garbled voice of a man saying "hello".  The old lady becomes increasingly irritated with the anonymous prank caller,  and demands to know who he is and what he wants.  The unknown caller eventually asks her, " where are you, I want to talk to you".  She demands that he leave her alone and slams the phone down.  The phone calls stop for a while, and the phone company traces the source of the calls to a downed phone line in the local cemetery.  The old lady goes out to the cemetery with her caretaker to see exactly where the downed line is (the snapped line is resting right on the grave of her fiance that was killed in a car crash).  It turns out that she was driving the car that fateful day and had spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair.  There is one more phone call  "from beyond the grave"  at the end, and she pleads with the spirit of her dead fiance to speak to her now that she knows it is her lost love.  He of course tells her that "I always do what you tell me to"  and never calls again because she had demanded that he stop calling.  We learn that she had also demanded that he let her drive the car on that long ago fateful day.

I believe the phone in the episode was a model 202 with the "spit cup" mouthpiece.

One creepy sidenote to this episode; it was originally scheduled to be broadcast on Nov. 22nd, 1963.  It was of course preempted by the news coverage of the Kennedy assasination.  The show later aired on Feb. 7th, 1964.

[Dan]

Loved the Gladys Cooper episode and mentioned it on the link

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=312.60

see reply #33

watch it here   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh0R-osj3rU


TZ is the best show ever (along with the Andy Griffith Show)

[Dan]

Watch here at 1:40 or so on this twilight zone!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhaAfhtnN5o&feature=email

[BDM]

Watch here at 1:40 or so on this twilight zone!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhaAfhtnN5o&feature=email

Ericsson TELCO model "Ericafon". I had one of those that I sold several years back. Nifty idea, but I didn't like it. For some reason it never felt natural while using it So off it went to a better home to someone who loved it