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snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
An old "Brady Bunch" episode showed the parents using 3 slot
> pay phones in a fancy restaurant. They were beige. While the
> vast majority of Bell System 3 slot pay phones were black, in
> some places they did use colors; I've seen beige in many places.
The third color for 3-slotters that was sometimes used was green. I've heard that in some cases, the telephone company might even paint a 3-slot payphone some "unusual" color (for an extra fee, I assume), such as red or blue. But the three standard colors, in order of how common they were, were black, then beige, then green.
I know that Western Electric's single-slot payphones, that first came out circa mid-1960s, have been mostly black/gray/chrome, but there are also some that are green/chrome (with some gray). I don't remember if beige (with gray and chrome) was ever used.
As for the Brady Bunch, there is also that first season episode (when the kids and parents were squeaky clean-cut, before they all became "hippy-dippy"), where Mike Brady puts in a payphone line for the kids to use, since they were hogging the one phone for the entire family, and running up huge bills. This was in 1969/70. The payphone was a
3-slotter, and I think it was also beige -- and rotary dial. Mike Brady reverts back to a standard residential phone at the end of the episode.
I read on a tribute website about the Brady Bunch that for all five original ABC-TV seasons (1969-74), they NEVER had a touchtone phone at all in the house. They always had a standard rotary dial phone. Since the setting was southern California, I wonder if it could be assumed that they were always served by a "Step-by-Step" office, and one which didn't have DTMF to DP converters! Afterall, Mike would have been able to afford Pacific Telephone's monthly touchtone surcharges! :-)