While combing through the 1973 film “Serpico” last night, in search of a possible cameo-like appearance of graffiti left by the legendary PRAY, I spotted this unexpected bit of telephonic ephemera. As Al Pacino drives over the Williamsburg Bridge, singing horribly, a van with a couple of old-style telephone exchange name formatted telephone numbers passes ahead of him. This van from Du Valle Cleaners shows three old-style phone numbers, two in the TRafalgar-6 exchange and one from LExington-5.

My interest is more in the old phone numbers, but it’s cool how this little bit of free publicity raises the now-defunct Du Valle cleaners into a kind of immortality. The telephone exchange name format was phased out in the mid-1960s, but to this day you can still spot such numbers in the wilds if you know what to look for. I’ve collected photos of my sightings for years, most recently adding a RAvenswood number I had known about for years but somehow neglected to add it to the collection.

I found evidence that this company really existed, and was not a fictional construct injected by the filmmakers, in the form of help wanted ads in several New York papers, including this one from the January 15, 1976 edition of the Daily News. Other evidence of Du Valle’s existence certainly must linger in other sources.

Assuming this source (company-detail.com) is reliable it appears the company did business from 1955 until folding in 1991. I wonder if anyone at Du Valle Cleaners ever knew about the appearance of their van in this film.

I also posted the above screenshot from “Serpico” at sorabji.com, adding it to my collection of telephone exchange name sightings mostly around New York, as well as on television and in movies, and on paper and print ephemera like matchbooks, post cards, etc.