The Musical BYE BYE BIRDIE
An old-fashioned phone booth
September 19
“All my life until this very moment, I was nothing… and now I’m alive, fulfilled. I know what it means to be a woman!"
Kim in a phone conversation in the musical Bye Bye Birdie with music by Charles Strouse and lyrics by Lee Adams, based upon a book by Michael Stewart.
The happy musical Bye Bye Birdie gets its plot from a real life happening: the conscription into the armed forces of teen rock and roll idol, Elvis Presley. Media surrounding the event included Elvis's giving a momentous last kiss to a member of the Women's Army Corps. The Birdie writers pull from this incident to create a small town Sweet Apple, Ohio, where all the teenagers are members of the Conrad Birdie fan club, a takeoff on Elvis.
During the action, in a phone call Kim MacAfee tells her best friend Ursula that she has been “pinned” by Hugo Peabody, and thinks that at age 16, she has reached some real maturity. In a fun song, “The Telephone Hour,” Ursula is quick to spread gossip about Kim and Hugo’s going steady. With her new found womanhood, Kim suddenly quits the Conrad Birdie fan club, and Ursula is crushed. But the young lady has second thoughts after another phone call informs Kim of her selection to be Birdie's final smooch as he leaves for the army.
In contemplating Bye Bye Birdie, we could ponder the disruption in the life of a small town with the appearance of a celebrity. Or, we could ruminate on the importance of a girl being "pinned" or the song where Albert tells Rosie that women have to obey men. Or, we might reflect on the adolescent-hormone theme of the plot.
But my focus is the telephone. There are several telephone scenes in the musical, set in 1958 and staged in 1960 on Broadway, followed by a 1963 film and a 1995 television show. When producing Birdie or any other play with telephone action, directors and designers not only have to decide what kinds of phones to use as props, but also where to find them and how to make the phones ring.
After the end of World War II, times were prosperous for the United States and the 1950s experienced many technological advances. By this decade, around two-thirds of the households in America had at least one telephone, and that number grew as both homes and businesses adopted this form of communication.
In the present day proliferation of cell phones that can take photos, connect to the internet, text messages, play music, read books, and so much more, the old-fashioned telephone seems really quite archaic. In the Bye Bye Birdie 1950s, most phones were big and black. techwalla.com reminds us, “Telephones in the 1950s had a sleek, shiny appearance but were bulky… They consisted of a freestanding base with a rotary dial on the front -- as keypads had not yet been introduced. The dial had 10 finger holes in it, corresponding to the digits 1 through 9 and zero. By winding the phone from the correct finger hole, callers could dial any number. Behind the dial was a holster for the receiver. The receiver resembled a horn, with a large earpiece and mouthpiece on either end and a comfortable handgrip in the middle. The base itself housed two bells for the ringer, a spring for the rotary dial, a governor to keep the spring from uncoiling too quickly and various electronic components.”
Wow. Remember that? If you were alive from the 1930s until well into the ‘60s — before area codes and prefixes — you will remember that two letters and five numbers were used to make calls. I cannot remember my early phone numbers, but my grandmother’s was TR9-3668, with TR standing for Tremont.
My dad worked for Ma Bell, so we probably had more telephones in our house than the President of the United States. I had a pink Princess model when I turned 12 years old, so I could have private conversations in my room — until I clued into a slight click indicating that my mother had picked up on another receiver. My parents had an ever-changing color and model on the nightstand by my dad’s side of the bed. And the wall model in the kitchen had a 25-foot cord that stretched to the dining room or den.
Long distance calls were quite expensive, and overseas ones almost prohibitive. If I needed to talk to someone while shopping downtown, I slid into a corner telephone booth, pulled the glass doors closed, and put coins in slots to twirl that dial. Or sometimes, I would sneak into a hotel that had a row of phones in the lobby to call a friend. Phone companies employed real people for their switchboards, portrayed hilariously by Lily Tomlin’s character Earnestine on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.
And before voicemail, we had answering machines!
When I contemplate how the telephone has evolved throughout my own lifetime, I can become nostalgic for those old communication ways. Dialing a phone was a sensory experience. There was a length and quality to conversations that the old instrument elicited. And the ring caused excitement. Who might be calling? A boyfriend? An editor with a job offer? A long-lost relative? My beloved English professor?
Today, I still have a landline, but only telemarketers call me on it. I’ll get rid of it soon. Why? An extra expense. And anyway, my iPhone lets me see weather predictions, talks me through street directions, reminds me to pick up grandchildren, charges my meals at a restaurant — and so much more. What would the Birdie teenagers think?
(Follow this link to see a great series of a Life Magazine photo essay of teenagers on the phone in 1956! https://www.life.com/lifestyle/theres-quaint-and-then-theres-a-story-on-phone-obsessed-teens-from-1956/)