Numbers, please! – The history of fictitious telephone numbers
Phone numbers in films, radio, and television are usually fictitious: A German song still caused trouble for phone owners. A look back.
Telekom wants to be one of the last providers to set up an “SMS firewall” in 2025. Protection against unwanted contact via telephone numbers is much older and has left numerous traces in pop culture. A journey through a somewhat different history of numbers.
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With the “SMS firewall”, Deutsche Telekom wants to prevent and curb phishing attempts. The technical details are still unclear, but other providers and individuals have also taken steps to protect themselves from unwanted calls. One pioneer in this direction is the “Frank geht ran” service, which has been offering a number since 2007 for people who do not want to be called back – for example in a competition or by an intrusive admirer. Today, Frank's answering machine is operated by Digitalcourage as part of the privacy protection service and is now even supported by the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) with its numbers.
Fictitious numbers for TV and film
The Federal Network Agency is moving in the same direction with film numbers for media productions, also known as “drama numbers”. The technical model comes from the USA, where the movie area code 555 guarantees that no number will be connected. Nerds have collected fictitious numbers for this purpose and immortalized them in their telephone book, including the film or series location. One of the numbers that became somewhat famous in this country is episode 555-SHOE (or 976) from the TV series “A terribly nice family”, in which Al Bundy as Dr. Shoe tries to set up a shoe advice service over the phone.
In fact, the telephone was an important tool for urbanization in the USA. In 1910, a quarter of US households had a connection, and by 1925 this proportion had risen to 40 percent. This also had an impact on pop culture. According to the study America Calling, over 650 songs describing the telephone had been written by 1937, starting with the repeatedly covered “Hello Central, Give me Heaven” from 1901.
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Advertising messages will certainly have been among them. The best-known piece of music that advertised a telephone number was Pennsylvania 6-5000, recorded by Glenn Miller and his orchestra in 1940. The number actually existed: it was the telephone number of the Hotel Pennsylvania, where the orchestra made a guest appearance in the Café Rouge. Anyone who called could be put through to the café, find out when the band was playing and book tickets in advance. The hotel opened in 1919 and was the largest hotel in the world at the time. Until its closure and demolition in 2022, it could always be reached at this number, making it the longest existing telephone number in the world to this day.
The next phone number worth mentioning was Beechwood 4-5789 (234-5789), the number of the recording studio where the Marvelletes' song written by Marvin Gaye, William Stevenson and George Gordy was recorded in 1962. It is considered a typical representative of the early Motown sound. The later superstar Marvin Gaye can be heard as the drummer.
Abba makes it ring on debut
The song Ring, Ring, which Abba released on their debut album, was written in 1973 without a number, but also at the beginning of a great career. Planned as an ESC entry, Ring, Ring failed to impress in the national qualifying round and only reached third place.
In 1981, two telephone numbers made music history: In the USA, the band Tommy Tutone released the song Jenny(867-5309), while in Germany, the telephone number 32168 became very popular because the Spider Murphy Gang published it in their song Skandal im Sperrbezirk as the telephone number of the prostitute Rosie. The number, which was invented as 32/2:16/2=8, was not actually taken in Munich, but it was in other cities. The number 1 hit cost the band many an apology from subscribers. It was initially not allowed to be played on the radio, but as an oldie, it even made it to the Bavarian state government's summer festival in 2022.
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Without a telephone number, but with beautiful contemporary tones of the unreachable connection, Kraftwerk's 1987 telephone call is one of the hits about the telephone, with a black and white video referring to the times and films in which black and white telephones signaled meaning. The fact that there were also sung advertisements for existing telephone numbers, such as emergency or counseling numbers for people at risk of suicide, should not be concealed, even if it is the flops rather than the hits that stick in the cultural memory. In the Netherlands, the German detective Derrick of all people was used to advertise the nationwide police number 0900-884, which was not intended as an emergency number for urgent cases. The end of the hundreds of telephone songs belongs to a remarkable telephone intro to a masterful piece of music, the interpretation of the song I heard it through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye and his band.
(mack)
