The Telephone
R: Unknown. D: Leo Delaney, Rose Tapley, Dolores Costello. P: Vitagraph Company of America. USA 1910
Release Date: 29 October 1910
Print: Library of Congress under the title “The Fire Story” which does not exist!

Vitagraph had suggested “to play selections from the popular stage musical ‘The Telephone Girl’ to accompany the telephone exchange scene in Vitagraph’s October 1910 film The Telephone.” This has been critized by Clyde Martin, house pianist at Dodge’s Theatre in Keokuk (Iowa):
“During the telephone exchange scene the telephone girl is connecting the frantic wife with her husband at the club, and the men at the club are calling the fire department, from the expression of the telephone girl’s face you can imagine she hears the cracking of the flames on the other end of the wire, that have cut off all means of escape for that frantic mother and child. And in such a scene the Vitagraph company would like to hear the catchy selections from ‘The Telephone Girl’.”
Rick Altman: Silent Film Sound. Columbia University Press 2007, p. 222