Payphones of “Sorry Wrong Number” (1948)

“Sorry Wrong Number” includes a lot of phone calls, among them a few that took place at public payphones around New York. I plucked every scene which included use of public pay telephones in this noir-like thriller. It’s interesting to see the subtleties of behavior and how making calls was a different experience compared to future generations.

In these excerpts Sally Hunt Lord, played by Ann Richards, runs out of nickels and cannot complete her call, but tries to cram as much of what she has to say in the remaining time. After spending her last nickel she begs a store owner to make change for her but he instead tells her that the place is closing. In those days most public phones, or rather “semi-public”, as these booths located inside storefronts were more accurately described, were found inside places of business. Finding a phone late at night could be difficult.

Freestanding outdoor phone booths did not appear in New York until early 1960. For Sally Hunt Lord to find a working phone late at night she had to go down to the subway, since it was late late and most other places of business that might have had a phone booth were also probably closed.

And there is the persistent intrusion of the telephone operator, constantly demanding more money as the hapless caller cannot keep up with the payments, until the meanie operator just cuts off the call, as happens to poor Sally Hunt Lord. The film stars Barbara Stanwick and Burt Lancaster.

The last sequence seems to illustrate how phone booths used to allow incoming calls, with Leona apparently calling Henry at a payphone in a restaurant.  Also seen are vestiges of the old Telephone Exchange Name phone numbers that preceded 10-digit dialing. At 3:12 we see a man asking for a phone call to be transferred from the house phone to the booth.