MovieChat Forums > Seven Chances (1925) Discussion > "Wrong party"?

"Wrong party"?

posted 9 years ago by mwuuh89
3 replies | jump to latest

All right, this might be a trivial thing to get caught up in, but that's what happens when you have an, er, "alternate lifestyle" -- you begin to see it everywhere, as if wishful thinking.

After Keaton's character asks the woman in the phone booth if she'd like to marry him (we see her shake her head) he goes back out of the booth, turns to the other two, and says, "Wrong party."

Forgive me my ignorance, but was that a way to say that she wasn't interested in men? Or did that mean something completely different?

[–] TheChamCham 9 years ago

It was in reference to a "party line". Years ago,it was less expensive to have a phone line that you shared with other people rather than a private one. The downside was that you had no privacy and often connected with the wrong "party", or person.

This is how I perceived that line.

It isn't ignorance. You are probably just too young to know about such things. (I asked my mum the first time I heard the term used in a film.)

At Disneyland in the General Store on Main Street they have old-fashioned telephones on the wall and if you pick up the receiver you can listen in on conversations and experience what it must have been like to have a party line.

"Life is uncertain, eat dessert first !" - HOMER J. SIMPSON

[–] mwuuh89 9 years ago

Aw man, thank you so much for the explanation! It makes so much more sense now.

[–] TheChamCham 9 years ago

You are quite welcome. Cheers!

"Life is uncertain, eat dessert first!" -HOMER J.SIMPSON