Number Please - Falling Panties by Art Frahm (1955)

This classic mid-century pin-up illustration is titled “Number, Please” (also widely commercialized simply as “Phone Booth”), painted in 1950 by the legendary American calendar and glamour artist Art Frahm. Created using a traditional oil on canvas technique, the composition utilizes a humorous, slapstick-infused "lady in distress" motif: a startled blonde woman rushing out of a public wooden telephone booth inside a retro diner or pharmacy has her pink lace-trimmed undergarments completely collapse to her ankles. The origin of the piece stems from the post-war commercial calendar boom, where it was commissioned by major commercial printing houses to be distributed across America as a mass-market novelty calendar illustration. The backstory behind the painting highlights it as a quintessential entry in Frahm’s eccentric, multi-year "falling panties" series. To maximize the situational comedy, Frahm uses recurrent visual tropes: the woman's hands are fully occupied holding an overflowing grocery bag featuring his signature stalk of celery, forcing her to drop her pink "Prabco" hatbox and scatter the contents of her purse across the checkerboard tile floor. Meanwhile, an amused man in a fedora looking up numbers in a phone book leers from the side, cementing this piece as a highly prized, enduring example of 1950s Americana kitsch.

Professionally restored and reproduced from the original artwork, this print preserves the powerful visual impact of Art Frahm's painting while offering exceptional detail and color fidelity for modern display. • Premium 200 g/m² matte paper • Exceptional detail and color reproduction • Professionally enhanced and restored image quality • Available in 12x18", 16x24", and 24x36" sizes • Unframed for custom display options • Printed in the USA