BY KYLE LOVERN
Phone booths used to be everywhere, but you don’t see them these days.
I guess the younger generation wouldn’t even know what one was if they saw it. Heck, they would not even know how to use a rotary-style telephone inside an older booth.
The first public coin-operated pay phone appeared in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1889. The first phone booth debuted in the early 1900s.
The 1970s brought those semi-enclosed pay phones, which for most of us, lacked the charm of the older booths. Superman couldn’t even use those to change from Clark Kent into his blue and red superhero tights and cape.
In the 1990s, there were nearly 3 million pay phones in America. Those have dwindled down and now you would be lucky to find one.
The iconic phone booths used to be everywhere. They were outside grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants and even inside some buildings – like a hotel lobby.
They were at train stations, bus stations, hospitals and government buildings, such as courthouses.
Now they are like the many other fond memories of our past – almost extinct.
A big city like New York or Chicago had thousands of phone booths. If a family had a phone booth near their house or apartment, they didn’t have a phone in the home; they just trotted down the street to use the pay phone.
I can remember a couple of glass phone booths across the street from the Williamson Fieldhouse. If you needed to call home after practice or a game, you could put in your dime, dial the number and make the phone call.
I recall a phone booth beside the gas station at Nolan where I grew up. There was one outside of Falls Branch Market near Chattaroy where my family shopped many times in the 1960s and 70s. If you were driving down any road, eventually you would see a phone booth. So if you needed to contact someone, you pulled over and entered the small cubicle, dropped in your coin and made the call. If you didn’t know the number, there was usually a phone book in the booth attached to a small chain.
There are the beautiful wooden indoor phone booths that are considered antiques these days. If you have one of these, it is worth a lot of money.
Pay telephones eventually became so profoundly ingrained in American life. Even the government catered to them. When the U.S. Treasury changed the composition of coins, they checked with the telephone company to make sure the coins were compatible with pay phones located in telephone booths.
Phone booths have been used in many movies throughout the years. They were an iconic part of America’s countryside and city streets, and they were almost everywhere.
With the evolution of the cellphone, the need for phone booths disappeared. The emergence of cell and car phones made it even harder to justify the upkeep of pay phones and telephone booths for Bell Telephone and other companies. Thirty years or so ago, they slowly started fading away. I can’t recall the last time I saw one.
I guess I’m just a sentimental guy. I miss things like phone booths, drive-in restaurants, old movie theaters, general stores and many things from our past.
Like the phone booth, these are just fond memories for many of us.
(Kyle Lovern is a longtime journalist in the Tug Valley. He is now a retired freelance writer and columnist for the Mountain Citizen.)
One response to “Remembering phone booths: They have disappeared from our landscape”
We know the cliché of Clark Kent ducking into a phone booth to change into Superman, but how common was it, really? I remember more stories where he changes in a storeroom at the Daily Planet instead.
— Scott
The cliché grew out of the Fleisher cartoons of the 1940s, which showed Clark changing in one of the old-fashioned wooden phone booths [which resembled outhouses]. I think E. Nelson Bridwell did a search once and found only one or two occasions in the comic books where it happened.
A seemingly expansive list, excluding unofficial homages to the telephone booth as impromptu dressing room/changing booth/fitting room, bar those published by the official publisher.
1. Superman:”The Mechanical Monsters” November 28 in 1941
2. Superman:”The Bulleteers” March 27, 1942.
3. Sunday newspaper comic strip December 27, 1942.
4. Action Comics #99, cover date August, 1946. First phone booth change in a comic book. Kudos to sharp-eyed reader @Scott Gardner for spotting this one.
5. “Action Comics #119” (1948) in the story “Superman for a Day!”
6. “Superman #60” (1949) in the story “Superman Fights the Super-Brain”
7. “Superman #69” (1951) in the story “The Prankster’s Apprentice”
8. “Adventures of Bob Hope” #92, cover date April 10, 1965.
9. 1966 Broadway Musical “It’s a bird, It’s a plane, It’s Superman!”
10. Action Comics #345, cover date January, 1967, November 29, 1966.
11. Action Comics #355, cover date October, 1967, published August 29, 1967. It’s not Superman in the phone booth
12. Adventure Comics #363, cover date December, 1967, published October 31, 1967. Superman cameo in Super-Turtle. (with a “tip-of-the-hat” credit to @Mike Korcek for this one)
13. “Adventures of Jerry Lewis” #105, cover date March, 1968, published January 4, 1968. Superman guest stars and attempts to change in phone booth but passes out.
14. Superman #221 (1969)Superman in booth but no change to Clark, and it is only an imagined scene
15. The Brady Kids S01 E05 “Cindy’s Super Friend” Oct 7, 1972 (with a “tip-of-the-hat” credit to @Delmo Walters Jr. for this one)
16. Action Comics #419, cover date December, 1972. Title change of letter page, now called “Superman in Action” with phone booth change logo. I’m only counting the letter page logo as one event. Tip-of-the-hat to @Garrie Burr, for pointing me to the Julius Schwartz’ editorship in the Bronze Age era to find this!
17. Action Comics #421, cover date February, 1973. Turns out to be a Superman imposter
18. Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #162 (1974) A Superman imposter
19. It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman TV special on ABC, Feb 21, 1975
20. “Action Comics #450” (August 1975)
21. “World’s Finest Comics #252” (September 1978)
22. “World’s Finest Comics #255” (March 1979)
23. Superman Family #209 (1981) Clark in phone booth but no change to Superman
24. Superman #383 (1983)
25. “SuperFriends: The Legendary Super Powers Show” “The Bride of Darkseid” Episode aired Sep 8, 1984 (Firestorm arrives and negates the change)
26. Superman #400, cover date October, 1984. Jack Davis one page Cartoon piece (with a “tip-of-the-hat” credit to @Mike Obre for this one)
27. “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace” (1987)
28. Ruby Spears “Superman” S1 E09 “Bonechill” (1988)
29. Ruby-Spears “Superman” S1 E12 “Night of the Living Shadows” (1988)
30. Ruby-Spears “Superman” S1 E13 “It’s Superman” (1988)
31. “Superboy” TV series “The Fixer” (1988)
32. “Superboy” TV series “Bizarro… the Thing of Steel” (1989)
33. “Superboy” TV series “Programmed for Death” (1989)
34. “Superboy” TV series “Superboy, Rest in Peace” (1989)
35. “Lois & Clark” “The Eyes Have It” (1995)
36. “Lois & Clark” “When Irish Eyes Are Killing” (1995)
37. “Lois & Clark” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” (1997)
38. Batman: Shadow of the Bat #92, cover date December, 1999. “Stormy Weather”. (Tip-of-the-hat to @James King for this one).
39. Adventures of Superman #598 (2001) Mike Wieringo cover only, not in story
40. Man of Steel #120 (2001) Mike Wieringo cover only, not in story
41. “Smallville” S03 E01 “Exile” (2003) (Clark calls home from a Metropolis phone booth. Not a “Clark changing to Superman”)
42. Superman Confidential #7 (2007)
43. Legion of Super Heroes in the 31st Century #13 (2008)cover only
44. “Smallville” S10 E18 “Booster” (2011) Clark changes to The Blur
45. “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” S3 E08 “Triumvirate of Terror” (2011)
46. “Superman & Lois” “S1 E11 “A Brief Reminiscence In-Between Cataclysmic Events” (2021)
Action Comics #1075: Possibly cover only
Sidebar: The long and reliably dead Zatara, who also debuted in Action Comics #1, seems unacknowledged in this issue; his daughter Zatara did a guest spot in another connected title around the publication of this issue.
In the syndicated strip, during 1948, in a sequence with a bathysphere, a phone booth as dressing room scene occurs.
In Wonder Woman Annual#2, published circa 1989, mention occurs of the phone booth as a dressing room, verifying perhaps an undepicted occasion.
Supergirl seemed to use a phone booth as a dressing room in Superman Family#165.
Adventure Comics#355; reverses the anticipated situation, dressing in routine clothes in a telephone booth which might have frosted glass
In an episode of Superboy, perhaps during the second season, seemingly an occupied phone booth deters availing of said venue as an impromptu dressing room, which would have seemed odd due to the transparent sides.
Perforce other to examples of the Kryptonian availing of a phone booth, though perhaps indicating another protagonist might have learned of this tradecraft:
Sensation Comics#13, 29, 42, 95
Wonder Woman#2, 89, 118
Approaching this pattern, in an episode of the 1970’s produced while set circa 1940’s series, Princess Diana stops into an alley, takes off her spectacles and hat forming part of the Diana Prince in the Navy persona, and places them in a telephone booth; conversely, the spin change occurs outside of the telephone booth.
Elusive quote:
Oliver Queen changed into his Green Arrow outfit in a phone booth . When he came out, he thought “There’s an old story that says Superman changes clothes in a phone booth ! I’ll have to ask him about that ! It’s awfully crowded in there !” .
The following quote verified as from Mike Grell’s interval:
Well, we don’t ride white chargers any more, but there’s still a few of us around. And we don’t really need a fancy costume or a phone booth to change in.
Sidebar on other options for changing clothes:
Atomic Kommie Comics
“The Spider and the Shadow had special compartments in their limousines or cabs to put their cloaks into, and would change in their limousines. Can anyone else recall similar scenes, of the hero changing in his cab or limousine?” The Green Hornet is shown changing clothes in the back seat of Black Beauty several times during the 1960s tv series…
“Frog is a Deadly Weapon” (from Hornet to Reid)
“Eat, Drink, and Be Dead’ and “Hornet Save Thyself” (from Reid to Hornet)