Interesting looking AE phone from 1930's Hollywood Movie

[Waterland]

This phone is too unique to post in the Phones in Movies and TV thread, so I'll start a new thread about to get the discussion going.  This is a still from the 1931 film "Girls About Town," and this really amazing looking phone is present in a couple scenes.  It has what's obviously an Automatic Electric handset (1a or 34 style) but the base is something I've never seen before, it kind of looks like a skyscraper.  It could be just a prop phone made specifically for the movie, but it shows up for such a brief period I can't imagine why they would go to the trouble to create a custom phone for two brief scenes, especially considering there are several other standard model phones in the rest of the film.

Was this a real phone, and if it was, does anyone have any information on it?  If it was indeed a genuine phone, I would love to get my hands on one as it's one of the best phone designs I've ever seen.