I got involved with this phone when a reader sent me the following photograph of James Dean's apartment on 68th Street in New York City. The photo was taken in 1955.

James Dean's 1955 Apartment

Here is a closeup of the phone in the picture

The Phone in James Dean's 1955 Apartment

The picture of Dean's apartment has Stromberg-Carlson Model 1212 telephone. The unique design of the broad-bottom phone with the built-in ringer was a transition between the 1940s Model 302 (see below) with a square base and classic phones of the 1920s that have an oval base. The Model 1212 is known by collectors as the "Fat Boy." The phones of the 1920s did not have a ringer in the desk set (it was in a separate box mounted on the wall). Hence the earlier phones had a very slim footprint. When the ringer was incorporated into the deskset, the apparatus had to grow in size.

This phone was pretty much out of date by 1955, although once Ma Bell installed a phone in your apartment, you were pretty much stuck with it. After World War II, there was an enormous demand for new phone service, particularly single-party numbers. During this period, the Bell System was hard-pressed to keep up with demand. This situation was the basis for the film "Pillow Talk" (Rock Hudson/Doris Day). This phone is consistent with James Dean's status as a "starving young actor" at the time.

If you want James Dean's Phone (or one like it) All you have to do is put "Stromberg-Carlson Model 1212" into a search engine and you'll probably find a phone vendor. This type of telephone needs to be modified somewhat to work on contemporary systems. (Fortunately, all the changes are on the inside...) I would NOT buy one of these from an online auction -- rather, I'd get it from a dealer who warrants that it will work on today's systems. Expect to pay $225-$275 for this model in good working condition. It will only get more valuable with time as they are somewhat prized by Art Deco collectors.

We seem to be a magnet for James Dean photos. Another reader sent in this photo, ostensibly of the office of James Dean's Agent. This puzzled us for quite some time, because the phone appears to be an Automatic Electric Model 80 -- but, you can clearly see that the dial is on a white background.

The Phone in James Dean's Agent's Office

I am going to guess that the Agent has an Automatic Electric Model 80 phone -- and that he had bad eyesight and put on a bigger Dial Ring to see the numbers better. It looks like the phone behind his hand is another AE80 without the after-market dial ring. That's my guess. Here is a photo of the AE80 and another phone (not an AE80) with the after-market dial ring.

The Automatic Electric Model 80 Desk Phone


Phone with an After-Market Dial Ring

You are free to write us if you can positively identify the phone. We are only guessing.

The Phone in James Dean's Parents' House

Thanks to the magic of the internet, we have yet another photo of James Dean and a telephone. In this case, Mr. Dean is shown actually USING the telephone. The setting has been identified as the Indiana home of Mr. Dean's family. Thanks to the miracle of PhotoShop, we can enlarge the photo:

Closeup of The Phone in James Dean's Parents' House

The photo is pretty grainy -- my first impression was that the phone was a standard garden variety black Western Electric Model 300. This is discussed in some detail further down on this page, but here is a larger picture of the WE300 for those James Dean fans who don't want to scroll any further.

The Western Electric Model 300 "Plain Black Phone"

However, our friends at Vintage Swank suggested that this might be one of the famous Kellogg Model 1000 "Redbar" phones because the base is fairly thick and the handset has a distinctive "ridge" along the top. (It gets its nickname frome the distinctive red bar that serves as the hook flash...)

The Kellog Model 1000 "Redbar" Phone

You are free to write us if you have any more photos of James Dean and his Telephones.

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This is a reproduction of a Western Electric Model brass candlestick phone. The original dates from about 1925. The earpiece is hard rubber. There is a little engraved plate on the mouthpiece that advises you to "Hold Close to Mouth" This type of phone is the real transition point between the modern automated telephone system and the older operator-linked systems (no more "Number Please" at least in the big cities. In small places, like Washington, Pennsylvania (about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh), operator assisted systems persisted into the early 1950s. My Grandfather's number was "3975J".

You may see this exact model in the movies! In the film The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) learns of the death of his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) on a Model RE. Spade turns the phone to the camera and you can clearly see the little plate that says "Hold Close to Mouth"

Be very careful if you see one of these phones at a yard sale or flea market -- they were widely copied during the 1970s and 1980s due to the popularity of the film The Sting. Reproduction, pay $25, real, be prepared to pay $300 and up.

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The Automatic Electric Company was an independent telephone manufacturing company until they were absorbed by General Telephone and Electronics (GTE), the principal competitor of AT&T. Because this instrument combined transmitter and receiver into one handset, it was given the trade name Monophone to differentiate the product from the Candlestick (above) in which transmitter and receiver were separate.

Monophone
Base of the Monophone

The design for the Monophone was created by Mr. Herbert F. Obergfell of Chicago, Illinois.

 
The Monophone Design Patent - D117,876
We are indebted to Herbert F. Obergfell for This Design

Our Reader "Steve-O The Great" has a Monophone that was used aboard a US Navy ship:

Exterior Appearance


US Navy Label


Base of the Shipboard Monophone

Steve writes:

".... it was salvaged from a WWII Era naval ship, possibly a destroyer. Amazingly it still works after all these years. [I'm] Not sure of the exact year, or what kind of ship it came from. I'm really interested to see if anyone knows anything about the phone. ..."

Another of our readers observes:

"... I have two different models of this phone. One is the desk model as shown the other is the wall mount with the cradle for the handset on top. Both work beatifully and have a nice LOUD ring. I am a ship nut and while cruising through photgraphs of interior shots of the fast battleships of WWII I saw both versions. The wall mount was in the captain's cabin mounted on the bulhead by the door to his quarters and the desk model was on a desk in the gun plot fire control room. I purchsed both from a surplus company 25 years ago. They have never failed to work unlike the modern versions. ..."

So, I invite more of our readers to write to us about the shipboard monophone.

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This is a Western Electric Model 302 telephone. They were in service from 1939 to about 1954. This is the classic phone in the 1940s film noir movies. My partner found this at a yard sale for a dollar. Our phone has the curly cord which dates it to the early 1950s. Earlier models had a brown cloth cord that often became twisted and tangled; I can remember my dad would untangle the phone cord about once a month after it had become so short that his face was almost in the dial. All of those "seekers after authenticity" out there should take this into account.

Back in the days of the Bell System monopoly, the customer NEVER owned the phone. It was leased for about $4 a month (in perpetuity, a sum that would amout to about $40/mo in 1999 dollars. This phone is incredibly well-built --- it weighs about ten pounds. The "chassis" is extra-heavy steel and the case and handset are hard rubber, impervious to almost anything. The wiring in the cords is very unusual --- there are strands of live rubber intertwined with the copper conductors, and the whole thing is triple insulated with rubber on the individual wires, rubber around the bundle, a cloth layer and a rubber outer cover. These wires are not going to fray or break! If you want to learn more about the Western Electric 300 series, check out Ralph Meyer's Old Time Telephones.

The Symbol of Service
...service in the Animal Husbandry sense

The invulnerability of the phone coupled with its relatively low manufacture cost (about $10) generated vast torrents of revenue for the Bell System, since they rarely, if ever, broke down. The phone company took draconian steps to preserve this cash cow. The customer was absolutely prohibited from attaching any other kind of equipment to the system, a regulation that was enforced by a small army of line voltage testers. If you insisted on having something other than a "plain black phone", you had to acquire the thing (at your own cost), then GIVE it to the phone company, then pay a substantial charge for "re-wiring", and then pay the $4 a month lease charge anyway. A popular slogan during the 1940s was "Ma Bell has you by the calls".

Western Electric Repair Truck
Well Equipped for Anything

Under license to the Bell System, several companies would customize the Model 302, mainly by changing the color. White was popular, although we have seen 302's in blue, red, brass, and faux onyx. When you see a scene in a 1940s movie that features a nonstandard phone, you may be certain that the director is sending the message that the character is a person of some wealth and influence, like an executive or a gangster's moll.

Western Electric Assembly Line
Lovely ladies cranking out the 302s

Speaking of Western Electric, our Reader Rich, a proud member of the US Marine Corps (OOH-Rah!) has a Field telephone that he would like to learnmore about:

General Appearance of the Western Electric Military Field Telephone


Western Electric Maker's mark

So, I invite our readers to write to us about the Field Telephone.

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After some research into the history of our WE 302 phone and a considerable amount of probing into its innards (where we learned exactly how well it was made...), we concluded that the dial mechanism was damaged beyond our ability to repair it.

We did not fret or worry, because we simply typed "Repair Antique Telephones" into the Yahoo! search engine on the home page of our site. This put us into contact with several vendors of old phones and repair services. After sending some e- mails, we found that The Phone Vault in Seattle had the best prices and wrote back the most charming letter.

From: The Phone Vault

Hello!
We don't feel confident giving wiring advice on telephones through the mail, phone or email. Our primary reason for this is that through the years, many of these units have been worked on, and pieces and parts switched or replaced and it is very difficult to give a correct answer to a specific problem.

Many of these phones have harmonic ringers that were used in the days of party lines. These ringers won't work on most of today's telco systems. We usually replace them with a straight line ringer that is compatible with today's systems. Another problem you could be having is a polarity problem.

Our labor for restoring the older phones is $25 plus parts and return shipping. If we need to work on the dial, there is an additional $25 labor charge.

Please make sure that you insure the phone with whatever carrier (USPS, etc.) you choose. They are heavy, and we've seen a few of them damaged in shipment to us. Pack it really well!

Shipping information:
PhoneVault.com
P.O. Box 770
Ocean Park, WA 98640

Other Stuff:

• Insurance Value: We sell the 302's for between $120-$150 depending on base and condition.
• Payment: You can pay us either by personal check or by Visa/MasterCard. We usually don't accept payment until the work on the phone is finished.
• Line Cord: Depending on the year your phone was manufactured, the rubber line cord could be the original. We can replace it with a cloth cord (brown or black), but we prefer to leave as much of the original phone in tact as he possibly can. Your choice, though.
• Modern Compatibility: Yes, when you get your critter back home, it will be ready to plug into a modern modular (RJ11) jack.
• Ringer: The old ringer's usability will depend on whether it is one of the harmonic ringers I mentioned before. If we have to replace the ringer, we try to find one with a similar sound.
• Dial Card: Sure, we can come up with the dial card for you. When you send us the phone, please note that on your letter to us... and what phone number you would like on the card.

Thanks for stopping by our site. I checked yours, and it is great. I bet that keeps you busy.
Sheri Stritof
Roy's Phones

We shipped our little phone to Roy's on November 9 and we had it back on December 20 --- there were about eight days of shipping involved. The total cost, including two-way shipping was $70. The phone is a thing of beauty and when it rings, it evokes the 1940s, especially Pennsylvania 6-5000 Best of all, the folks at Roy's found us an authentic dial card for the old C&P phone company and prepared it with our correct "exchange format" number --- WOodley 6-1691. We were happy to have our little phone back for Christmas --- he tells us that he had a great time talking about the good old days with his pals in Roy's shop

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Not all telephone companies were affiliated with the Bell System. There were a number of independent local phone companies that built and maintained their own equipment, since they did not have access to Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of the Bell System. This is a Type TP-6A manufactured by the U.S. Army Signal Corps for the Connecticut Telephone and Electric Company. This phone probably dates to the mid 1930s when the Army was scrounging for every dollar it could get under the disarmament wave following WW I.

We doubt that this phone is in absolutely original condition because after I cleaned it up, and wired it to the wall, it worked perfectly. It has a curly cord for the headset, which we believe may have been added in the 1940s or 1950s.

The phone has red letters and black numbers inside the dial. We believe that it is from the 1930s because it has the letter "Z" over the figure "0" along with the word "oper" (for the Operator). Note also that phone dials do not contain the letter "Q" --- in films, they used a number like "QUincy-5-1234" to create a fictitious number, much like modern films use numbers like "555- 1234" for the same purpose.

This phone has a heavy cast aluminum case. The headset appears to be made of wood. It works just fine and has a great ring. Kudos to the Signal Corps!

One of our readers sent in this observation:

"I would also like to tell you that the Conneticut military phone you picture is also known as the 'Soviet Princess.' I don't know the origin of the nickname, but thought you might like to have that info.

This fellow really KNOWS his telephones! Check out his Website!

Oh yes, sitting next to the phone is a "Penguin Ashtray" from the Chase Art Metal catalogue

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About 1946, Bell Labs sponsored a large series of "human factors" experiments aimed at making telephony a more pleasurable experience. One of the findings was that the traditional layout with an opaque dial and letters inside the holes led to a whole lot of mis-dialing. These data were turned over to Henry Dreyfuss, the celebrated industrial designer who came up with the layout that was to become standard -- white sans-serif letters outside a clear plastic dial ring

By the way, later studies showed that misdialing went down by more than 50% --- which paved the way for the telephone company to move to direct long distance dialing and eventually to all digit phone numbers. We have to agree with Henry Drefuss and Bell Labs --- this phone is a whole lot easier to dial than our Model 302, shown above.

A reader sent in this valuable information about the WE-500 series:

"The 500 was the normal desk set found in most homes. This numbering was carried forward when the touch tone phones were introduced by adding a 2. The touch tone desk set became the 2500 and the wall set became the 2554. There were many other types of the 500 series with different features and different numbers. For instance the 501 was configured for party line use. The Phone Store has a terrific site that shows these different feature sets. "

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We found this telephone on Bulk Trash day. This is a Stromberg-Carlson prototype for the Western Electric 500 series, the classic 1950s phones. We believe this dates from the late 1940s. Please note the face --- the letters are outside the dial which itself is made of clear plastic.

This phone is also a curiosity because it looks something like the Model 500, but it is made of hard rubber instead of thermoplastic. Note that it has squared off corners, because rubber could not be moulded into the streamlined curves that characterized the Model 500

Remember --- that trash can on the corner may just be filled with History

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