In case anyone is confused about it, these were things gentlemen actually did IRL, not only on TV or in movies. The practices died out by the 1970s or '80s, but films set before then might have properly shown people doing them.
For all the young whippersnappers here who might not realize how old-timey phones worked back in the prehistoric days (not accusing @Hatchie or @RealityChuck), for the first 75 years or so of the telephone’s existence, connections between callers often involved a live human, called the operator (or “Central”), at some point. Tapping on the hook or button would alert the operator that you wanted her* assistance, perhaps to try and reconnect with the caller who just hung up.
As for not trusting the phone for sensitive information, apart from spy or crime stories where a wiretap might be suspected, in places where there was a manually operated exchange, either for a town or an office building, the operator could listen in on calls. They weren’t supposed to, of course, but it’s often a plot point that one does, either for the sake of collecting gossip or for corrupt reasons.
*They were always women. In the early days of telephony (late 1800s) they tried using young men, but found they were too unreliable and prone to pranks, so from fairly early on, for most of the following 75 years or more, telephone operators were almost exclusively women.
Or even extensions. I don’t know how many people now have multiple phones in the house connected to the same landline - but when I was young, I wouldn’t have talked about anything sensitive on the phone because there was a decent chance that someone would pick up one of the other extensions.
My point was two-fold. Yes, others can listen in, but nowadays people talk on their cell phones in public without a care about who’s listening. Also, they can text to keep it even more private.
But the real reason for it has nothing to do with the technology. It’s more dramatic to have the two people in the same room.
Good point, and that concern extended long past the time when operators were an ordinary thing.
We have a landline, but with multiple cordless phones, and I don’t think you can listen into a call on one handset from another. But I’ve never even tried.
Jeannie’s magic wasn’t really that helpful though. She was hotheaded and lacked wisdom. Typically Jeannie was the one causing the problems. This was not the case on Bewitched.
Tony was an astronaut. There was nothing cooler in the 1960s than an astronaut. I don’t know that he was particularly besieged by senior officers without Jeannie, but he would have been expected to get married sooner or later and forego the hijinks and titillation that Jeannie offered.
The more I think about it, the more I think a gritty, dramatic ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ reboot, ‘Bel Air’ style, based loosely on the 1001 Nights story referenced here, would really work:
Possible titles: “I Scream of Jeannie” or “Jeannie: The Dream Darkens”
Scene:
Major Nelson: Jeannie, you caused that terrible car accident that killed my ex-wife and kids?
Jeannie: Yes, master. She was causing you grief. Now she will trouble you no more. Are you not pleased, master?
Major Nelson:BUT WHAT ABOUT MY CHILDREN?!?
Jeannie: They were flawed creatures, being the fruit of your ex-wife’s womb, and thus did not deserve to live. But worry not, master! We will have many children together who will be half divine.
It practically writes itself! Anybody know any Peacock Network execs I could pitch to?
With traditional landlines you certainly can/could. It’s a feature, not a bug: when you call home, Mom and Dad can both join in the call, just by picking up different phones.
It’s been a long time since I’ve watched IDOJ, but I seem to recall an episode where Jeannie was scheduled to be visited by a Djinn and was terrified of him, which implied that she was not a Djinn herself. Are there different categories of genies?
And that was a standard movie and TV trope - someone (the maid, a kid, a suspicious spouse (or in really old movies, someone else in a different household on a “party line”) would be listening in on the call (happened in Law and Order with a murder confession at least once).
I think they improved later on, but IIRC that could happen with the really early cordless phones. If you and your neighbor both had cordless phones that used the same frequency, and both happened to be using them at the same time, you would pick up interference from their call and vise versa.
For that matter I’m pretty sure someone nearby with a radio scanner could listen in.
ETA: Oh, and baby monitors. I seem to remember that early baby monitors used the same frequencies, and there were cases of people picking up other people’s calls on their baby monitors.
I’m far from an expert, but my understanding is that djinn come from pre-Islamic folklore, and vary tremendously from region to region, and that within Islam, there’s disagreement about exactly what djinn are and what their religious significance is depending on which flavor of the religion you’re talking about. So, there’s not so much “different categories,” as wildly different interpretations that were never intended to cohere, and several different attempt to make the stories reconcile with each other, and with contemporary (at the time) religious thought, and then on top of that, all the pop culture representations, both foreign, like IDOJ, and native to the regions that spawned the original folklore.
There was an episode of Bewitched in which their secret was out. Whether this was a “dream” on the part of Darrin or an “alternate universe” story, I don’t recall, but the results were predictable. Larry Tate made Darrin’s life miserable by demanding he get Sam to land this account and that account or he’d lose his job.
In the end, of course, everything was back to normal and Darrin was left to make it on his own merits.
Another trope: A rich old widow or divorcee tries to snare a handsome young man by offering him wealth and success. When he turns her down, she ends up marrying her butler.
I remember one of Lily Tomlin’s skits with the telephone operator where part of the joke was that the telephone company had all your information and there was no privacy with them. “Of course we know, we’re the telephone company!” I think the skit was from the late 70s, but you could still use it today and replace the telephone company with Google and it works.
