Surely there is a lesson we can all glean from Madeline’s response to the obscene caller. (Does anyone make obscene calls nowadays, or is that a plague that has been lifted from this sorry earth, now that everyone has Caller ID and also no one makes phone calls?)
“Here I’ve waited my whole life for you, and now you don’t even want me.” In an alternate universe, she would have been the perfect Emily Gilmore.
Madeline Kahn is the best at everything. If the academy had any sense, they’d call them the Madeline Kahscars.
So, my mom was trying to sell some jewelry through the newspaper not too long ago (she’s low tech), and a person called presumably interested in buying the jewelry. And then he started asking about her feet. What size were they? Were the toenails painted, and if so what color? Would she let him touch her feet? Would she let him rub her feet? He started breathing pretty heavy and she finally hung up on him.
And then, she and I both got a call from a local guy claiming to have a wrong number – he just hired this girl, he must have written her number down wrong, hey, you have a sexy voice would you like to come work for me? I’ll take you shopping. That one wasn’t strictly obscene, but the fact that we each got the identical call at a different number tells me he was getting something out of it.
“I am so good at this.”
At this and everything, Madeline. Yes. Yes, you are.
This is my absolute all-time favorite Christmas movie and I can die a happy woman now that the Toast has shared it.
oh Madeline, how I love you.
Unsolicited dick pics and twitter death threats is the old goatse (that week I learned how to tweak my browser settings) is the old obscene phone calls, I think.
I love that before I knew who Madeline Kahn was I would get all excited whenever I saw or heard her (she has a very distinct voice) and say “It is the lady from that Steve Martin movie, Mixed Nuts!”
YEP. I did this. To many of my Broadway-loving friends.
I feel like obscene phone calls have been replaced by dick pics.
(also, I feel like my handle is more appropriate now than ever)
People still make obscene phone calls to call centers, as they did in the days when I worked in them.
It’s a good thing I’m home alone, because “I am so good at this” made me laugh uproariously.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday… you know. We'll watch the Kahn any day of the week. She was SO good at this.
I once got an obscene phone call when I was about 13, but the guy was muttering so low (and I was so clueless) I kept going WHAT? HUH? WHAT DID YOU SAY?? and it wasn’t till he hung up in disgust that I realized what he’d been saying.
My grandmother kept a little box of Bible verses printed on slips of paper next to her phone. When she got an obscene caller (fairly often for some reason) she would just start reading random verses until he hung up. (the box was shaped like a loaf of bread and called Our Daily Bread, I remember it so clearly because it puzzled me for the longest time).
My mom, an RN, is 4’8″ and in her late 60s. She’s a harmless-seeming button of a Catholic lady, but when something sets her off she is truly a burning motherbeast. She once had a nursing job at a residence for troubled teens–kids prone to anger and violence, most of whom proved too difficult for their parents to manage at home–and she was quickly flagged by these kids as a perfect target for harassment. They would just try to shock her and make her feel threatened.
My favorite of these instances was when a 15-year-old boy, to whom my mom was attempting to administer medication, said, “Hey, Nurse Gael. Why don’t you suck my dick?” And little Nurse Gael, mother of nine, coolly looked him right in the eye and said, “Excuse me, young man? Did you just tell me to suck your dick? Why on earth would I want to do that?”
I work at a support phone service for students. Yes… yes, people very much do still make obscene calls. Sometimes they are quite entertaining, but mostly they are icky.
Madeline probably got so good at fielding these types of calls because she had so much experience… starting with her role as Victoria Brisbane in Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety!