HELLO... NORMA JEAN?

Staying in touch has never been more important. MARION McMULLEN looks at celebrities hanging on the telephone

1985

David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst got on the blower for another series of hit BBC comedy series Only Fools and Horses. 1968

Don’t keep us in suspense. Psycho and The Birds director Alfred Hitchcock tried the new-style telephone kiosks installed at the new Number One building at Heathrow Airport. 1969

Answering the telephone was part of drag artist Danny La Rue’s act at a Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium. He was the first drag act to perform on the show although the Cork-born entertainer preferred to describe himself as a comic in a frock. 1940

Let’s hope Frank Sinatra didn’t say Somethin’ Stupid taking a call on the set of the musical comedy Step Lively. 1958

British film star Dame Joan Collins caught up on phone calls after flying into London to see family. 1984

Comedian Jimmy Tarbuck had plenty to laugh about on the phone backstage at Bournemouth Winter Gardens’ summer show. 1956

Can you hold? Marilyn Monroe found herself juggling two phone calls while on set at 20th Century Fox film studios 1944

Who ya gonna call? Stan Laurel sabotages Oliver Hardy’s telephone call in the film The Big Noise. The movie was directed by Mal St Clair. It saw the duo acting as bodyguards to an eccentric scientist. 1971

Edelweiss singer Vince Hill was in Tonight’s The Night at the Talk of the Town Theatre when his wife Annie was expecting their first child. He kept in touch between rehearsals by calling on the stage door telephone. 1952

Are you calling upstairs or downstairs? Jean Marsh was only 17 when she appeared in a telephone photocall. The actress and writer later went on to co-create Upstairs, Downtairs and The House Of Elliot. 1966

There were plenty of long distance phone calls when American performer Liza Minnelli was working in London and living in a flat in Chelsea. She made her film debut that year in Charlie Bubbles with Albert Finney.