The CRPF "Old Phones in Movies & TV" Compilation

[Brinybay]

That's lovely Brinybay, but what if Statham came round with his hammer?

I'm armed:

[HobieSport]

I just re-watched the 1966 movie "The Russians Are Coming". It's one of my favorite movies and was filmed in our little town. I didn't live here in 1965 when they filmed it, but we watched it when it first came to our theater in 1966.

It's really interesting to see our town back then, and compare it to "East of Eden" which was also filmed partly here in the early 1950s. Most of the buildings in both movies are still here, and the town has mostly only changed to this day with more paved roads, refurbished historical houses, underground phone and power lines, and of course too many tourists and cars. But it's still a great little town...

They needed a full sized Russian submarine for the film, and of course those were a bit hard to come by in those days, especially when they asked the Russian and US governments/navies if they could borrow a sub for a couple of months... I would have loved to be "a fly on the wall" when they tried to negotiate that with the Navy... So instead they built a full sized sub mock up. It looked great sitting in our quaint little small town fishing harbor.  

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060921/

[Phonesrfun]

That was a good movie.  I'll have to see it again.  It's been a long time.

Good to have you back, Matt!

-Bill Geurts

[Brinybay]

A friend of mine grew up in your town and as a kid was one of the extras in one of the scenes. 

[HobieSport]

In "The Russians are Coming" as far as I can tell, the house on the beach scenes were done on the old log hauling road on Ten Mile Beach just North of Fort Bragg. The harbor scenes were done in Noyo Harbor in Fort Bragg. The town scenes were done in Mendocino where I live now, and most of those houses and other buildings still exist, just that now they are all spruced up. And I believe that some scenes were shot in the town of Elk, about 15 miles south of here.

Whatever the case, I wish I had that full sized Russian sub mock up. I can just see sailing it quietly and nonchalantly into Mendocino Bay on a nice sunny day and scaring the crud out of the tourists...heh heh.

Short of that, here's an amusing trailer for the film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_nGW7pWBDY

-Matt

[foots]

     I've been watching a lot of "old" movies lately on AMC since television shows seem to be really crappy these days - especially the "cough" reality shows. The only series I do really enjoy, The Sons of Anarchy, just ended its season, so now I just TiVo a buch of shows off of AMC and watch those. They may have been made long ago, but many of them are new to me since I haven't seen them before. Thanks to you people, I now pick out and identify every phone that I spot, along with automobiles, motorcycles, typewriters, and radios as well as the actors and actresses.

[HobieSport]

I didn't really "get into" movies until a couple of years ago.  I mean, I've always loved watching lots of good movies, old classics or new, but renting videos was a little expensive. For awhile I used Netflix and that was great, but I wasn't always in the mood to watch the particular movies that I had ordered. Then we got high speed internet and now I just download whatever I want. Yeah, I know, it's evil, but...I'm a poverty stricken movie addict.  Just don't tell anyone.

And yes, I love recognizing all the good old phones, clocks, cars, motorcycles, fans, typewriters, radios, boats, travel trailers, furniture, heck, even old toasters... Oh yeah, and those other pesky props called actors and actresses too.

[bingster]

Lauren Bacall once said there's no such thing as an old movie, if it's one you haven't seen before.  Bright lady, that Lauren.  And not too hard on the eyes.

[McHeath]

It would seem that Lady Gaga is a fan of rotary phones.  Note the high quality phoneware in these two shots from her videos "Just Dance" and "Paparazzi"

[McHeath]

And yet another rotary phone makes a showing in a Lady Gaga video, this time it's in "Eh Eh".

[Brinybay]

I just watched an old William Holden movie "The World of Suzie Wong" (1960).  I don't have a DVD screen capture, but at least every other scene in that movie was in his hotel room which had a candle stick phone by the bed, and was used frequently.  I googled all over looking for just one still that had the phone, gave up.  This phone collection stuff must be getting serious if I'm passing up pictures of a young Nancy Kwan, aka Suzie Wong, looking for a darn phone!

[Dennis Markham]

I watched Revolutionary Road this past week on DVD.  This movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet.  It was set in 1955.  They even showed a calendar on the wall for June of 1955.  Throughout the movie there were various office scenes with men in cubicles using black model 500's and even a scene in a restaurant where a waiter brought a 302 to the table for DiCaprio to use.  Even though it had a dial he just banged the plungers and had the operator connect him to his number.  But where the movie fell apart for me was when they showed a beige or ivory 554 hanging on the wall in the family kitchen.   Ok, mid 1955----MAYBE an Ivory 554.  But with each passing glance I got I could see the handset cord attached at the left corner of the base of the phone, not in the center.  Could they have used a modular 554 for this scene?  I looked as often as I could and confirmed it was a modular phone.  Also where the dial card should go to me looked like a much later #9 series dial...the white plastic hub was visible.  My suspicions were confirmed near the end of the film when close-up shots of Winslet using the phone clearly revealed she was talking on a modular 554.  When she hung up the phone they zeroed in on the phone as she SLAMMED the handset into the hook----a clear plastic Lucite hook and a finger wheel with no dial card, just the plastic #9 dial hub.  This phone would not have been created for another fifteen or twenty years!

I couldn't get over how the props department could overlook this when the rest of the movie had cars from the 50's, old kitchen utensils etc.  For that I give the movie one star.

[HobieSport]

This just in: Experts agree that the tragic downfall of the quality of movies coming out of Hollywood these days is not because they keep making redundant remakes, or too many movies about comic book heroes, but simply because the props people these days just don't seem to care enough anymore to consult this forum about historically correct telephones.

[McHeath]

That's interesting about the total failure to use a period correct phone in Revolutionary Road.  Curious as well.  Lady Gaga's rotary phones were all hardwired at least, and she's not even trying to be time period correct, weird how the Hollywood world works.

[Dewdrop]

Before I caught the phone bug I would look at the vintage dishes and kitchenware in old movies and TV shows. Way back in the I Love Lucy picture on page 3 of this thread I noticed the mixing bowls on the shelf in the background. I've watched several episodes of I Love Lucy and have seen the complete set on the shelf. I think they were a set of Pyrex mixing bowls. The largest came in yellow (4 quart), then green (2 1/2 quart), red (1 1/4 quart) and the smallest blue (1 pint). This set is known as the Primary Colors mixing bowl set that was introduced in the 50's, 60's and through the early 70's. I have a set and many more Pyrex bowl sets and covered refrigerator sets. You might remember these from your grandmother or mother's kitchen.

Debbie