Movie Phone Booths and Telephone Songs

In 1988, I drafted a multi-generational novel set against the backdrop of history – the history of the phone booth. (Yeah, I know, that's what my friends thought, too.) While the draft eventually went the way of the phone booth itself, I kept all of my pre-Internet research notes, including lists of songs for motivation and a list of movies just because. Finally, I can put them to some use. Of the 44 movies and more than 100 songs I compiled, here are my top ten favorites in each category.

Telephone Songs

The original list has some of everything – rock, pop, standard, country, blues, rap, humorous, spiritual, even a bossa nova number. These ten made the final cut.

10.  “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand” (Primitive Radio Gods): While not destined for immortality, this song wins the prize for best title.

9.  “Call Me” (Frank Sinatra/Chris Montez): Both versions will do. It's a nice standard that's stood the test of time (what standards do).

8.  “Pennsylvania 6-5000” (Glenn Miller): The only instrumental on the list, except for that infectious phone number shouted out by the orchestra.

7.  “Shanghai” (Doris Day): Not the Nicki Minaj song (please, God, not that). This is a lesser known standard, but worthwhile because not many of the songs I found actually have phone booths in the lyrics (“I'm right around the corner in a phone booth/And I wanna be with you tonight”).

6.  “Jenny/867-5309” (Tommy Tutone): The most infectious and probably the most popular of all the pop songs I found. It's amazing how many people I've known have that number memorized.

5.  “He'll Have to Go” (Jim Reeves): This is my favorite of all the country songs. Between Reeves' voice and the plaintive lyrics, it's the kind of record I wish country music were making more of today (“Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone”).

4.  “As Soon As I Hang Up the Phone” (Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty): This is the kind of record we can be thankful country music isn't making today. But it's so irresistibly goofy in its earnestness that I never tire of listening to it. Twitty (the distant voice on a telephone) calls Lynn, whom he calls “Loretta,” to tell her it's over between them. He speaks his lines, while Lynn sings hers in a voice full of hope one moment and despair the next.

3.  “Obscene Phone Caller” (Rockwell): The flip side to his hit “Somebody's Watching Me.” Actually, the two songs aren't all that different thematically, as you can tell. But because it's one of a kind, and Rockwell's interpretation is so serious and tongue-in-cheek at the same time, this song is almost impossible to get out of your head.

2.  “If the Phone Doesn't Ring (It's Me)” (Jimmy Buffett): As silly as the title is, this is actually a serious love song that really resonates. It's my favorite Jimmy Buffett song, and one I still listen to from time to time.

1.  “Telephone Line” (ELO): The one song on the list that I would call gorgeous. The whole arrangement, including the perfect harmonies, lifts the whole idea of a telephone song into the stratosphere. Jeff Lynne and company outdo themselves with, for my money, the finest record of their career.

Phone Booth Movies

I've always been drawn to movie phone booth scenes. They're sometimes the best scenes in the movie. Here are the ten I never get tired of watching.

10.  The Happening: Not the one with Mark Wahlberg. This was a 1960s dud that I like just because it's so shameless (and because it was filmed very near where I lived at the time). It was Faye Dunaway's first movie (from which she made quite a leap to Bonnie and Clyde the following year), and the one movie I'm sure Anthony Quinn wishes he could forget. It starts out as some kind of hippie period piece but quickly turns into just another standard crime caper. Memorable for a scene in which an enraged Quinn takes his fury out on a bank of outdoor phone booths.

9.  The Graduate: Dustin Hoffman in a phone booth at the Taft Hotel, speaking to Anne Bancroft, who's seated just a few yards away, about their impending assignation. When she reminds him before he hangs up that there's something he forgot to tell her, he says, “I just want you to know how much I appreciate this.” “The room number, Benjamin, I think you should tell me that.”

8.  Duel: Steven Spielberg's first movie, made for TV, is what you'd find if you looked up “road rage” in the dictionary. Great moment: Dennis Weaver leaping out of a phone booth just before the demonic oil tanker slams into it. Truck 1, phone booth 0.

7.  Marty: Two lonely people, butcher Ernest Borgnine and schoolteacher Janet Blair, find love at the Stardust Ballroom. But peer pressure from his buddies almost destroys the prospect of happiness until the final scene, where he finally rejects his friends' callous attitudes and calls her up in a phone booth to reconnect. Based on a TV drama written by Paddy Chayefsky, who adapted his story for film. It went on to earn both Borgnine and the movie itself Academy Awards. The original poster showed an illustration of Marty inside the booth.

6.  Dirty Harry: A serial killer wants to be sure San Francisco detective Clint Eastwood isn't being followed as he carries a suitcase filled with ransom money, so Eastwood has to scramble from one pay phone to another throughout the city.

5.  Rosemary's Baby: Maybe the scariest moment in a movie filled with them. Mia Farrow is on the run from the husband and neighbors she's convinced want her unborn child for some sort of satanic sacrifice. She's rejected the doctor they recommended to her, convinced he's in on the conspiracy, and calls her own doctor in an outdoor booth while a man who looks much like the first doctor walks up to it and waits with his back to us. High tension, until she opens the door, he turns around, and it's just William Castle, who produced the movie.

4.  The Birds: Yikes! Tippi Hedrin trapped in a phone booth while a flock of seagulls smashes repeatedly into the glass, trying to kill her. Only Alfred Hitchcock could convince us this is really happening.

3.  Local Hero: A very sweet, very funny minor classic about an American executive (Peter Riegert) sent by his boss (Burt Lancaster) to buy out a little Scottish village so his company can build an oil refinery. The twist is that they love the idea. The centerpiece is a red outdoor phone booth in the middle of the village, which the exec uses to stay in touch with America. In the end, he returns to Houston but realizes the Scots' lifestyle might be better than his own. One night, he makes a call, and the final shot is of the red phone booth, the phone inside ringing and ringing.

2.  Phone Booth: I mean, come on, how can a thriller named Phone Booth not make this list? Almost the entire movie takes place in and around the last working phone booth in Manhattan.

1.  Wait Until Dark: Audrey Hepburn is a blind housewife targeted by three criminals who are convinced she has a doll filled with heroin. Because a little girl lives right upstairs, they stage an elaborate charade to convince Hepburn she should turn the doll over to them. (If this were made today, I'm sure they would have simply killed them both.) They keep watch across the street in a van parked beside the phone booth they use as part of their scheme. This was the movie that cemented my fascination with phone booths.