The Cloud, Circa 1940s

There are many good reasons for watching old movies on Turner Movie Classics. And by old, I have to add, really old, 1930s, 1940s. I've done the math, and realize that there have to be those who think Robert Redford made old movies. We know they weren't old when he made them, and neither was he, but they are now old movies. Anyone realize how long ago "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was?

Old movies can be like documentaries. They can show you the way of life. Take for instance phone booths. Who by now who has watched a few gangster flicks from the 30s or 40s doesn't know that lots of phone calls needed to be made from drugstores? And who doesn't know that when the tension in the film rises, that nothing good can ever happen to the person who in a mad rush to deliver some news makes a call from a drug store phone booth?

I just witnessed again, perhaps for the fourth or fifth time when a woman (dame) makes a hurried call from a drugstore phone booth. Bullets find her. Lots of bullets. But she doesn't slip into the hereafter until Jimmy Cagney jumps out of a hospital bed and listens to the dying woman struggle to give him the address of the garage where the other woman (dame) is being held by a very bad guy. All this happens in the 1935 classic movie "G-Men."  Don't know what the "G" stands for? Tough.

Lessons in life: Don't eat the yellow snow, and don't make, or take phone calls from drugstore phone booths. I bet you, with cell phones, no one (or very few) have ever met their maker while making or taking a call while walking down the street. It's always better to keep moving.

But it's hardly all gangsters and bullets. Take 'Mr Hex,' a 1946 Bowery Boys edition that has the boys wondering what to do with themselves while in a malt shop. Never heard of the Bowery Boy? Don't know what a malt shop is? You've got your work cut out for you.

Well, the Bowery Boys themselves are hardly boys. They are adults who act like juveniles. The  principal Bowery Boys are played by Leo Gorcey who is Slip Mahoney, and Huntz Hall who is Sach Sullivan. My father knew Huntz Hall from the Madison Square Boys Club on East 29th Street.

Well, in this particular Bowery Boys movie the "boys" are wondering what to do, when they walk over to the jukebox and deposit a nickel. So far, this seems like any scene that might have been in 'Happy Days.'

I confess, I had never seen this movie, but switched onto it while it was already in progress. So, the nickel goes in, and then Leo Gorcey starts talking to the jukebox. Is he nuts? No. The jukebox of that vintage is the one pictured above. It connects, via a phone line to an operator who is somewhere at a switchboard with a rack of 78's in pigeon holes on a shelf on front of her. Leo's song request is something the operator, Gloria expects, since they boys always call at this time and request the song just to hear Gloria's voice.

You might start to see where this is going, but I'm going to tell you anyway. Gloria, played by Gale Robbins, sings the song into the phone receiver. The boys are enraptured. They want to get enough dough to get Gloria a recording contract. There's more, way more, like how they try and accomplish getting the dough, but that's another part of the story.

I've yet to run this type of jukebox by my friend whose oldest sister might have spent 1940s quality time in a malt shop. I don't know if these jukeboxes were common to New York City, but you can read what they delivered below.

Rock-Ola: Entering the jukebox fray in 1935, Rock-Ola hit it big with its opulently designed, high-fidelity machines. The company held its own against Wurlitzer and Seeburg, but was the dominant player in one unusual and all-but-forgotten niche: telephone jukeboxes. The company’s Mystic Music telephone jukebox held the then-standard 12 selections but also gave customers access to a virtually unlimited range of songs transmitted to the jukebox over telephone lines from a remote call center equipped with a large record library and request-taking operators.

Imagine, a call center not in India queuing up records. How many copies of the same song did they keep in the call center? Simultaneous playing of the same song to different callers might have been tough.

But what could be better than talking to someone personally, requesting a song, and possibly getting Gloria to sing it live to you?

Think of having Suri talking to you, but she's not blonde, and you can't ask her out. Some improvement.

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