Not being a frequent visitor to Chicagoland, I assume that Northside is a district or borough of Chicago. What is the 777? Why would anyone call 777 in Northside?
If the answer is obvious in the film, forgive me. I haven't seen it yet.
-Tod
Well...Without giving much away, an ad is placed in the paper telling people to "call Northside 777" if they have information on something.
shareIn those days phone numbers in Chicago were prefaced with the person's neighborhood (similar to a phone number's exchange today). So Northside 777 makes sense. My Grandma's phone number was Riverdale 648.
In those days, telephone numbers practically EVERYWHERE in the United States began with a "prefix" which included the name of the "exchange" for that number, which generally related to the geographic area covered by that exchange. That is why you have letters as well as numbers on the face of your telephone keypad; they were not placed there in recent times to make 1-800 numbers easy to remember, nor for entering information when dialing automated systems (and not for text messaging, either! -- none of these existed 60 years or more ago) Rather, the the phone company felt that the use of names would make phone numbers of all kinds easier to remember (moreover, chances are they were already in use even before the invention of the telephone dial itself, in the era when to place a call you had to call an operator to place it for you -- just watch the ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW sometime). As late as the early to mid-1970's I remember still seeing businesses in the Los Angeles area advertising on TV and giving out their phone numbers with the exchange name, e.g., Wilshire-9-5000, instead of 949-5000 (the first two letters of the exchange name being the first two digits of the phone number). This also explains the title of the once-famous Glen Miller song "Pennsylvania-6-5000" -- it was a song title that was a phone number, at least forty years before the eminently-forgettable 1980's ditty "Jenny" ("867-5309").
shareA little more telephone numbering history.
Back in the 1930s to 1950s era small towns typically had just a single central office (telephone exchange), and local numbers within town could often be just 3 or 4 digits. Within town there was no need for any names, but the town name was typically used to name the exchange for the outside world. This was before long-distance dialing, and if you wanted to call Smallsville, Idaho from some other state at that time, you just called your local operator and asked for the number: "I'd like Smallsville, Idaho, 286 please."
5 and 6-digit numbers were common in larger towns with multiple central offices, with various schemes in which the first one or two digits were dialed as letters representing the exchange (district) name. For example, Washington D.C. at one time used 6-digit numbers in which the first two were dialed as letters, e.g. DUpont 6200. The capitalization and oftentimes boldening of the dialed letters was a common notation in advertisements, phone directories, and so on. Again, callers from outside the area would just have to call their operator and ask for "Washington D.C., Dupont 6200."
The larger cities used 7-digit numbering from early times, with a 2L-5N scheme being common. The first three digits actually determined which central office within the city served the number, but only two of those three digits were shown as letters, e.g. MAdison 4-1200. There could be names in other parts of the city which shared the first two letters, so long as the third digit was different. For example, if there was a MAdison 4 and a MAdison 5, there might also be MArket 2 or MArket 6 in some other part of town. The key point is that the letters dialed were purely for human convenience. The equipment just needed to look at the first three digits to decide to which central office to send the call. It was this 2L-5N numbering system which was adopted right across the country with the arrival of direct distance dialing from the 1950s onward.
Although 2L-5N had been commonplace in the large cities, a handful had actually used a 7-digit scheme arranged as 3L-4N. New York was one such place, and the number made famous by Glenn Miller's recording had originally been PENnsylvania 5000. New York changed from 3L-4N to 2L-5N in the early 1930s, thus it became PEnnsylvania 6-5000. Today, of course, it's just 736-5000 (and that particular number still belongs to the same hotel!).
Chicago was another city which had started out as 3L-4N, but changed to 2L-5N around 1948. Using just two letters instead of three allowed much more flexibility in assigning names to prefixes.
However, mixed in with these exchanges there were still manual offices in many places during the 1930s/40s (as in no dials on the phones at all, you just picked up and waited for the operator to come on the line - "Number please?" - and told her the number you wanted).
Had Chicago actually had a number Northside 777, then it would have been a number on a manual exchange. Why? Because it doesn't fit the 3L-4N plan the city used up until 1948. With manual offices it was usual not to use leading zeros on the number. So you could have Northside 68, Northside 777, and Northside 2499. When exchanges were changed to automatic (dial) operation, the lower line numbers were usually padded out with leading zeros to make them up to the consistent length. So if Northside in Chicago was going to switch to dial operation under the 3L-4N plan, Northside 777 would almost certainly have become NORthside 0777.
I say "if" above because there was no exchange actually named Northside in the Chicago area during the 1930s/40s. There was an exchange named NORmal, however, which became NOrmal 7 when the numbering plan changed in 1948.
So there you have it: Northside was a fictitious exchange, but with a number like Northside 777, then if it had existed it would have been manual service.
Wow! Impressive response!
Borough? In Chicago? Lol.... Yes, Northside 777 was for the telephone prefix exchange. Did I mention my dad was in it? Read my post.
shareThe title, "Call Northside 777" is the telephone number you call if you have information. Although it never said so I believe it was Tillie, Franks Mothers Phone Number. She also had the $5000.00 If your information got Frank out of Statesville...
shareWhen McNeal meets Tillie, he tells her he's come about the ad, and he even says something like, "I called Northside 777 and they said you'd be there." The film offered both visual cues (it showed the ad itself, which included the words "Call Northside 777") and a dialog reference to the title.
Matthew
You might be right about that number but I am more inclined to believe the refers to Tillie's work number because Tillit more than likely did not have a phone, remember she was saving her nickels for the 5K, so in fact the nsid 777 was probably her work number since Jimmy Stewert said he called that number and they said I would find you here. post back if you disagree. I hope I explained it enough. I thought of that too then I remember Mac saying they told me to look here.
That makes sense, especially since Tillie was saving even nickels by walking instead of taking the bus. Just watched this movie recently. It's terrific!
shareAccording to http://hillnholler.net/2012/07/05/an-expose-of-injustice-and-human-triumph-call-gro-1758/, the original newspaper advertisement had a different telephone number listed. It read
"$5,000 reward for Killers of Officer Lundy on Dec. 9, 1932. Call Gro. 1758, 12-7 pm."
I assume that the number was changed to a fictional "Northside 777" to prevent crank calls to the real number when the movie came out.
Many of the previous postings here have explained about telephone exchanges and number assignments. My internet research reveals that exchange names either had one capital letter or two capital letters. One example is Hudson or HUdson.
The one capital letter exchange name indicated the call went through a manually operated switchboard and a two capital letter exchange name indicated the call went through an automated switchboard. Since Northside has only one capital letter, then it went through a switchboard with a live operator. Maybe calls to Norhtside 777 were something like a message service where instead of connecting the call, the operator would write down the information so that it could be forwarded to the correct person? Since a manual switchboard is manned by live operators 24 hours everyday, there would never be a missed call. I know that the telephone company did offer a message answering service before separate telephone answering services came into existence.