"Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?"

headsets

"(snort) Here at the Phone Company we handle eighty-four billion calls a year. Serving everyone from presidents and kings to scum of the earth. (snort) We realize that every so often you can't get an operator, for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order [plucks plug out of switchboard], or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn't make. We don't care. Watch this -- [bangs on a switch panel like a cheap piano] just lost Peoria. (snort) You see, this phone system consists of a multibillion-dollar matrix of space-age technology that is so sophisticated, even we can't handle it. But that's your problem, isn't it ? Next time you complain about your phone service, why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string. We don't care. We don't have to. (snort) We're the Phone Company."
Lily (Ernestine) Tomlin
on Saturday Night Live

Ernestine videos at www.heylady.com    
Lots of stuff at http://members.aol.com/nrb409/lily.html

quote from "Saturday Night Live: The First 20 Years" (1994 Cader Company)

"Answer the ameche."

Actor Don Ameche was born Dominic Amici in Kenosha, Wisconsin -- a city he hated -- in 1908; and was active in showbiz for 60 years. He died of cancer in 1993.

Ameche's first fame came from "The Bickersons," a radio comedy about spatting spouses, in which he co-starred with Frances Langford. His first movie was "Dante's Inferno" in 1936, and he quickly became a busy star at 20th Century-Fox. Later, when film roles diminished, he was active in television and theater. Ameche's movie career was revived with a role in Trading Places (1983), and he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work in Cocoon (1985).

Despite many roles and the late Oscar, the film for which Don Ameche will probably be most remembered is The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939), with co-stars Loretta Young and Henry Fonda. He was so identified with the role of Bell, that school kids allegedly answered "Don Ameche" when asked to name the inventor of the telephone.

The film popularized two famous phrases:
*Ameche's name became synonymous with the telephone, and for a long time when a phone rang, people would say, "Answer the Ameche."
*Also, the film memorialized the line that Bell uttered from another room when he needed Watson: "Mr. Watson! Come here. I want you."

For Trivia Addicts: The cast included not only Loretta Young, but all three of her sisters: Polly Ann and Georgiana Young, and Sally Blane.

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