dougspeterson wrote:

In the 1944 RKO flick "The Facon Out West" a group of suspects in the home of murded owner hears his voice singing over his phonograph music system with distributed speakers. The phonograph is apparently in another room because the victim's ex says to the detective, you can turn him off by using The Remote Control, which is about a 1 foot square box sitting on a table with a massive phone type dial 6" in diameter with labels that you dial:

Phono
6 fake radio station call letters:
Kvc
Wso
Kbr
Kdt
Wyz
Kzw
Silent
Soft
Loud

At the top is a manuf label saying HILL or HILLS.

Does anyone know if this was a product for real or the writer's imagination?

There were remote controls made in that era that used a telephone dial in conjunction with telephone system selector relays.

I don't know about a huge dial; it was more likely just a standard pay telephone dial (not small).

In any case, one dial and stepper relay would allow you to connect to 10 different circuits, or to select an unconnected circuit or dummy load to mute the system.

It took a lot of wires, but it was not that hard to do.