EXchange names, NOLA edition

[From Bed of Roses (dir. Gregory LaCava, 1933). Click for a larger view.]

Mr. Stephen Paige (John Halliday) has no telephone number, so Lorry Evans (Constance Bennett) will call on him in person.

Note the typo: Andobon.

Related reading
All OCA EXchange name posts (Pinboard)

EXchange names fill the screen

[From Larceny (dir. George Sherman, 1948). Click for a much larger view.]

American primitive realism: the page fills the screen. Otherwise, you might not believe that someone is really looking at a telephone directory.

The page is a slapdash creation (“aYtes”), but CHina and UNderhill were authentic Los Angeles County exchange names.

Related reading
All OCA EXchange name posts (Pinboard)

Harts, Keen’s, WIsconsin

Kevin Hart of harvest.ink shared a photograph of a letterhead from his father’s correspondence. It was 1973, and Keen’s English Chop House still had its WIsconsin exchange name.

[Click for a larger view.]

Kevin’s father was a newspaperman and a member of Keen’s Pipe Club. When Kevin sent me a link to a page with Keen’s history, I realized that I’d read about the restaurant somewhere. And I could think of only one possibility.

[Harold H. Hart, Hart’s Guide to New York City (New York: Hart Publishing, 1964). Click for a larger view.]

There seems to be no family relation, but the synchronicity of Hart and Hart is not lost on me.

Keens has lost its apostrophe, and though the restaurant still serves mutton chops, it now calls itself a steakhouse. And though the restaurant has dropped the WIsconsin, the telephone number remains the same: 212-947-3636.

Thanks, Kevin, for letting me share this piece of history here.

An EXchange name sighting

[The Human Jungle (dir. Joseph M. Newman, 1954). Click for a larger cab.]

More telephone EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Black Angel : Black Widow : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Craig’s Wife : Crime and Punishment U.S.A. : The Crooked Way : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : The Dark Corner (again) : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dial Red 0 : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Escape in the Fog : Fallen Angel : Framed : Hollywood Story : Kiss of Death : The Life of Jimmy Dolan : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Mr. District Attorney : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Nocturne : Old Acquaintance : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : She Played with Fire : Shortcut to Hell : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Slightly Scarlet : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success (1) : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Tension : This Gun for Hire : Till the End of Time : This Gun for Hire : The Unfaithful : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

An EXchange name sighting

[Crime and Punishment U.S.A. (dir. Denis Sanders, 1959). Click for a much larger view.]

That’s George Hamilton — yes, really — turning in an excellent performance as our American Raskolnikov, Robert Cole, a Los Angeles college student. But what’s the exchange name on that telephone?

A 1955 AT&T/Bell publication gives the following “officially recommended” possibilities for HO: HObart, HOmestead, HOpkins, HOward.

More telephone EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Black Angel : Black Widow : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Craig’s Wife : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : The Dark Corner (again) : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dial Red 0 : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Escape in the Fog : Fallen Angel : Framed : Hollywood Story : Kiss of Death : The Life of Jimmy Dolan : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Mr. District Attorney : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Nocturne : Old Acquaintance : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : She Played with Fire : Shortcut to Hell : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Slightly Scarlet : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success (1) : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Tension : This Gun for Hire : Till the End of Time : This Gun for Hire : The Unfaithful : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

EXchange names on screen

From Mr. District Attorney (dir. Robert B. Sinclair, 1947). The movie is a bit ’phone-crazy. Click any image for a larger view.

[B.: Berotti (Steven Geary), no first name. His MA: MAdison, I presume.]

The next three screenshots show a clever trick. How can Marcia Manning (Marguerite Chapman) let District Attorney Craig Warren (Adolphe Menjou) know that B. is hiding in the next room? By making a phony call to spell out B-E-R-O-T-T-I.


It’s a good thing Marcia wasn’t trying to spell L-E-D-D-Y, which could have been mistaken for J-E-F-F-Y.

More telephone EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Black Angel : Black Widow : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Craig’s Wife : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : The Dark Corner (again) : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dial Red 0 : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Escape in the Fog : Fallen Angel : Framed : Hollywood Story : Kiss of Death : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Nocturne : Old Acquaintance : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : She Played with Fire : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Slightly Scarlet : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success (1) : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Tension : Till the End of Time : This Gun for Hire : The Unfaithful : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

EXchange names on the screen

[From Dial Red 0 (dir. Daniel B. Ullman, 1955). Click for a larger page.]

It makes sense that a movie that opens with a shot of a telephone directory would at some point have a look inside.

Why do columns of directory text fill the screen in old movies? I think such shots provide a low-grade reality effect. 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.

NOrmandy was a real exchange name. In Los Angeles, the exchange may have been NOrmandie. So spelled, that’s a Los Angeles street name.

More telephone EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Black Angel : Black Widow : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Craig’s Wife : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Escape in the Fog : Fallen Angel : Framed : Hollywood Story : Kiss of Death : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Nocturne : Old Acquaintance : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Slightly Scarlet : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success (1) : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Tension : Till the End of Time : This Gun for Hire : The Unfaithful : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

An EXchange name sighting

[From Black Angel (dir. Roy William Neill, 1946). Click for a larger view.]

I can’t remember the last time I saw a matchbook in the wild (next to the cash register, say, on a counter in a candy store). But I always remember when I see a matchbook filling the screen.

The movie is set in Los Angeles, and CRestview was indeed a Los Angeles telephone exchange.

More telephone EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Black Widow : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Craig’s Wife : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Escape in the Fog : Fallen Angel : Framed : Hollywood Story : Kiss of Death : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Nocturne : Old Acquaintance : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Slightly Scarlet : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success (1) : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Tension : Till the End of Time : This Gun for Hire : The Unfaithful : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Who was Jack the Bear?

Re: Duke Ellington’s “Jack the Bear”: where did that title come from?

John S. Wright identifies Jack the Bear as a name in a ritualized Black American exchange of greetings of the 1930s and ’40s: “How are you?” “Like Jack-the-Bear: just ain’t nowhere.” “Call me Jack-the-Bear, for I am in a state of hibernation,” says the narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

Mark Tucker writes that “the real Jack the Bear was a Harlem bass player who, as reed-player Garvin Bushell recently [c. 1986] recalled, had a tailor shop at the corner of St. Nicholas and Edgecombe Avenues.” Jack the Bear has also been identified as a pianist. Perhaps he played both instruments.

The tax photographs in the NYC Municipal Archives Collections show no tailor shop at the corner of Saint Nicholas and Edgecombe, but one block over, at the corner of Edgecombe and 141st Street, a tailor was at work:

[131 Edgecombe Avenue, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

If you squint a bit, you can make out the TAILORS signage.


Steven C. Tracy identifies the musician, bassist or pianist, as one John Wilson. Tracy doesn’t identify him as a tailor. The 1940 Manhattan telephone directory lists a John W. Wilson residing at 281 Edgecombe. Ellington lived for many years at 381 Edgecombe.

Was John W. Wilson the tailor at 131 Edgecombe? Was that tailor Jack the Bear? Did Ellington ever make use of his services? I’ll never know.

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)

Sources
Stephen C. Tracy, “A Delicate Ear, a Retentive Memory, and the Power to Weld the Fragments,” in A Historical Guide to Ralph Ellison, ed. Tracy (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Mark Tucker, liner notes to Duke Ellington, The Blanton-Webster Band (RCA, 1986).

John S. Wright, “The Conscious Hero and the Rites of Man: Ellison’s War,” in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”: A Casebook, ed. John F. Callahan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

An EXchange name sighting

[It fills the screen. From Hollywood Story (dir. William Castle, 1951). Click for a larger view.]

GRanite? GReen? Both were Los Angeles exchange names. And yes, there were two-letter four-digit telephone numbers.

More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Craig’s Wife : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Escape in the Fog : Fallen Angel : Framed : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success (1) : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Tension : This Gun for Hire : The Unfaithful : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

EXchange names in directories

The telephone directory, informally known as the ’phone book, allows the user to look up the name of a person or business and find their number. Ah — there’s Mr. Passmore’s number.


But the telephone company’s directory allows the user to look up a number and find the name of a person or business. Ah — there’s Mr. Craig’s name.

[From Craig’s Wife (dir. Dorothy Arzner, 1936). Click either image for a larger view.]

Someday I’m sure I’ll tire of seeing exchange names on screen. But not yet.

And, yes, ’phone is slang, or was.

More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Escape in the Fog : Fallen Angel : Framed : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success (1) : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Tension : This Gun for Hire : The Unfaithful : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

An EXchange name sighting

[“HIllside 8661.” From The Blue Dahlia (dir. George Marshall, 1946). Click for a larger view.]

That’s not a pocket notebook — it just sits by the telephone. I believe it’s what used to be called a telephone pad. In a few seconds the bungalow that goes with that telephone pad will fade into the apartment that goes with that number.

As contributors to the Telephone EXchange Name Project attest, HIllside was a genuine exchange name, in Los Angeles (where The Blue Dahlia takes place) and elsewhere.

*

June 6,2021: As I just discovered, that telephone first appeared in these pages in 2016.

More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Fallen Angel : Framed : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Sweet Smell of Success (2) : Tension : This Gun for Hire : Vice Squad : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

A pocket notebook sighting (with EXchange names)

[William Woodson as “Dave.” From Vice Squad (dir. Arnold Laven, 1953). Click either image for a larger view.]

Here a police officer poses as a telephone repairman so as to snoop. And he finds a six-ring pocket notebook with a whole bunch of “clients.” And their telephone numbers. And a misspelled state name: Arizonia.

More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Fallen Angel : Framed : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Naked City (8) : Naked City (9) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

More notebook sightings
All the King’s Men : Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : The Big Clock : Bombshell : The Brasher Doubloon : Cat People : City Girl : Crossing Delancey : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : The Devil and Miss Jones : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : The Face Behind the Mask : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : Now, Voyager : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Scarlet Claw : Sleeping Car to Trieste : The Small Back Room : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Stranger Things : Time Table : T-Men : To the Ends of the Earth : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Walk East on Beacon! : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window : You Only Live Once

An EXchange name sighting

[An unnamed extortionist (Peter Falk) makes a business call. From the Naked City episode “Lady Bug, Lady Bug,” December 9, 1958. Click for a larger view.]

If you squint a little, you can make out the exchange name: TEmpleton. As contributors to the Telephone EXchange Name Project report, TEmpleton was a genuine Manhattan exchange. Says one contributor,

Mrs. John L. Strong, a New York society stationer, has had the number TEmpleton 8-3775 since the late 1940's. The shop is located at 699 Madison Avenue.

Not anymore: the company folded in 2009. The brand was purchased at auction that year, and whoever Mrs. John L. Strong now is, she sells online.

But we were talking about TEmpleton:

[TEmpleton3-9754. Click for a larger view.]

Elaine and I are making our way through the four seasons of Naked City for a second time. For anyone who loves the idea of mid-century New York, it’s a treat.

More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : The Case Against Brooklyn : Chinatown : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Fallen Angel : Framed : The Little Giant : Loophole : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : Pitfall : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?