question about "the babysitter" episode...

[njf520]

this is the episode where alice bus a telephone and gets a babysitting job to pay for it.

what is interesting about the episode is that there are four or five times when a character says the complete phone number. most (if not all) of the time, the voices are dubbed over so that the nunber we hear the character say does not match the number they are saying if you watch their lips. anyone know why this is?

thanks.
njf

[TV DVD Fan]

thats interesting. i'm stumped, but then again, i know nothing about the stuff the behind the scenes people of shows do.

pat

[Tweety]

Although I've never heard an official explanation for this, I've always assummed that this is the reason:

In the "olden" days, phone #s were used on TV Shows all the time, with the characters actually saying all seven digits (be they numbers or letters)...
Of course, a number of shows used "Klondike 5 - xxxx" , which would translate to 555-xxxx... 555 is not an exchange used in residential or business numbers. It's reserved for information operators and phone company use.

Nowadays, in reruns, they always dub out at least one (sometimes two) digits of that part of the dialogue, so that they don't give out an actual phone # that may belong to someone...

It could very well be that back in those days, if a full phone # was given out, a few people out there would try to call the number, just to see who answered... That would be pretty annoying if the phone # belonged to you, wouldn't it?

Don't know if you watch "The Brady Bunch" as well, but in the episode in which Jan makes up the existence of a boyfriend ("George Glass"), there a couple of scenes where she sneaks away from the rest of the family to call the operator, asking the operator to call the Brady home, on the pretext of "having trouble with our phone"... when the operator calls back, Jan answers and pretends it's George... pretty clever ruse, actually...

But in the scene when Jan gives her # to the operator, they always dub out a couple of the digits in reruns..

[Tweety]

Tweety you got it exactly right, I've discussed this plenty of times. :tiphat:

Thanks :wave:

Nowadays, whenever someone gives their phone # on TV, they always use 7 digits, but it's always a 555 number.