Always gracious to fans, he spent much time answering fan mail. His phone number was listed in the telephone directory, and fans were amazed that they could dial the number and speak to Stan Laurel... When [Dick] Van Dyke was just starting his career, he looked up Laurel's phone number, called him, and then visited him at his home.Let's make a list of all current Hollywood film stars whose phone numbers are listed. You start.
Found at Today's Tie, via Lushlight.
Let's not forget, less people had phones back then. ;-)
ReplyDeletePerhaps someday they will say, "can you believe all those celebrities had PUBLICLY ADDRESSABLE Twitter accounts?"
ReplyDeleteIf my memory serves me well, I believe that Quentin Crisp also had a listed phone number when he lived in New York. And given his curious but interesting/entertaining persona, I am sure it took a special kind of courage.
ReplyDeleteParis Hilton's number became public and within hours was swamped beyond repair and had to be abandoned.
ReplyDeleteThe late Norman Fell, who played Stanley Roper on Three's Company, had his number listed. Someone I know in college called his number and he asked they quit calling, and that he had the number listed so he could take calls for work. Sad, I know. But I had to call to see if it was true. Sad, I know. I got his machine with his voice on the greeting. I told him I respected his work immensely. The same guy told me one of the actresses on the show (one of the replacements for Suzanne Sommers) had her number listed. I didn't try her. She was B list in my book.
ReplyDeleteNomad- Your memory serves you well...
ReplyDeleteWhen I moved to Los Angeles in 1980 you could call Mae West at her Ravenswood Apartment by looking it up in a standard LA phone book.
ReplyDeleteWell, Crispin Glover put his phone number on his The Big Problem ≠ The Solution. The Solution = Let It Be album from 1989. But a quick Wikipedia search says the number was disconnected in 2007.
ReplyDeleteI also remember that the Criterion Collection version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas had a commentary track with Hunter S. Thompson. At one point he decides to call Johnny Depp, and you can clearly hear the dual tones of the phone number. You could play those into a phone receiver to call Johnny Depp. I was really broke when I discovered this, and the video store I worked at would have fired me if there had been a long distance phone call to Paris (I believe that is where he lived at the time.) Not quite published, but I wish I would have tried calling him, just to say I had.
And just tonight, I was convinced that I went to High School with one of the contestants of Project Runway. When I Googled the contestants name I found a phone number. Reality shows obviously do not count.l