I've Got Your Number is a 1934 film directed by Ray Enright.
Marie (Joan Blondell) is a switchboard operator at a hotel. An acquaintance of hers named Nicky talks her into re-routing a phone call from the intended room to his, claiming it's a gag. However, it's actually part of a gambling swindle. A telephone repairman and lineman named Terry (Pat O'Brien) is sent to the hotel to see if the phone line was tapped, which is the only other way the crooks could have gotten the info. When Terry determines that there was no phone tap, Marie loses her job.
Meanwhile, Terry the Casanova has fallen in love with beautiful Marie. He manages to get her a new job, with a businessman named Schuyler who knows Terry. But when Marie makes an indiscreet comment about some bonds being delivered to Schuyler's office, in the hearing of one of Nicky's partners-in-crime, even more trouble ensues.
Tropes:
- Blind Without 'Em: The nerdy technician at the phone company takes off his glasses before diving into the climactic fight with the gangsters. As a result he fights Terry's friend Johnny instead of one of the bad guys.
- Chekhov's Skill: Being a telephone company lineman comes in handy. After figuring out that the fancy lawyer sent to help Marie must have been sent by Nicky, Terry goes back to the central exchange and taps Nicky's phone line to find out where he is.
- Crazy-Prepared: Terry brings a portable phone with him when he goes to the gangsters' lair! He pulls it out of a pocket and clips it to the phone line and calls for help.
- Creative Closing Credits: Opening credits. Warner Brothers in this era almost always used Video Credits for the opening titles. In this film, which focuses on telephone operators and repairmen, the video credits appear on the dial of a giant phone.
- Double Entendre: Lots. Pat wrecks Bonnie's Phony Psychic gig but she still is willing to have sex with him; she leads him into the bedroom by saying "I'd like to show you my crystal." When Terry arrives to fix Marie's phone, he gives her a very obvious Male Gaze once-over and says "I guess I'd better go over your apparatus."
- Last-Minute Reprieve: The opening montage of people making important phone calls in various settings includes a shot of the governor of New York, calling Sing Sing prison to issue a last-minute reprieve to a condemned inmate.
- Lingerie Scene: Terry and his sidekick Johnny are sent out on an installation job. The apartment they arrive at appears to be a brothel, what with the three young and very sexy women that they find in the apartment, wearing skimpy lingerie.
- Mathematician's Answer: When Terry asks "Where's 623?" (he's looking for a phone tap on the line to that room), Marie says "Right next to 622."
- Phony Psychic: Terry and Johnny are called out to remove an illegally installed phone connection. They find it belongs to "Madame Francis" (her real name is Bonnie), a hilariously phony medium who has that connection hooked up to a speaker and uses it to fake voices from beyond the grave. Terry hooks into the phone line and tells everyone there that Madame Francis is a con artist and they're "saps."
- Stock Footage: Some pretty obvious stock footage of a building on fire for the scene where Terry is dispatched to cut the phone lines to a building that's burning down.
- Uncle Tomfoolery: A little racist humor focuses on Crystal, one of Madame Francis's minions, who is black. Crystal is supposed to be imitating the voice of a middle-aged white woman but she can't stop herself from saying "How is you, child?"
- Video Credits: Of all the main players at the start of the film, which was Warner Brothers house style in this era.
