[Dr. Sivana]

Those shoe phones used to work without having any landlines attached to them.

Yup . . . WATTS lines. I learned about them because when I was a kid, I read the introduction and afterward to our SNET phone book.

Also used by Humphrey Bogart in his 1954 car phone in Sabrina.

[frank ballenger]

Ha.
The early car phones as in Burke’s Law in Gene Barry’s Rolls Royce were surprising to people.

“Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1957–1960)
Sixty years ago, Richard Diamond became the first major TV character to regularly use a car phone.”

A DJ said every guy who could afford the new car phones would stand at the curb next to his car and make a point of talking on it so women would be excited to see how affluent they must be.

https://www.metv.com/lists/these-6-cool-tv-detectives-had-car-phones-decades-before-you-did