The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I rarely participate on threads pertaining to crapophones. I believe they are beneath all members of the Forum. In tonights season finale the date was 1926 and they used a crapophone to entertain the young people after dinner. I love the series and it prides itself in historical accuracy. Imagine all the splendid machines they could have chosen to represent a state of the art talking machine in a wealthy royal estate set in the late 1920's. I think we should all write to the creators of the series. Just joking but not really, Jerry Blais

Season 6 starts January of 2016. I can't wait. Jerry

What makes the use of a crapophone even worse is that in an earlier episode Lady Mary is seen dancing with one of her many suitors to the strains of an authentic HMV open horn machine. Why didn't the props people use it again?

While we are moaning about Downton Abbey, they couldn't get their Model T Fords right either. Black radiator examples trundling around before 1917?

Hi Jerry,
You are spot on! My wife and I were watching the show when the scene with the " Gramophone" came on. I startled my wife by yelling " Crapophone'!! She said how do you know? I said you can spot one of those a mile away. I was shocked. And yes, why did they not use that beautiful wood horn HMV that was originally owned by Mathew Crawley in the show??
Pete

I noticed it too. But as the cameras panned around the room many times as the people were dancing, I could not see that phonograph again no matter where the camera aimed. Also, as one record finished playing, the second "record" came on the audio with no time to change needles, let alone change a record. This whole scene was a historical travesty, especially given the apparent care they gave to historic accuracy at other times during the production of the series.
John

Perhaps the crap-o-pone was a parting gift to Shrimpy when he was leaving IN-dya...


historical gaffes aside, I was generally a little nauseated by the fast-forward, deus ex machina, "wrap it all up with a happy ending treacly-bow" of the last half-hour...

Oh well... we only have one more season to endure...


Still one of the very best shows on the telly...

It looked to me like the Christmas tree lights were wrong too. Too small for the era. Funny how they strive to be so authentic and then they get these little things wrong.
B.

barnettrp21122 wrote:It looked to me like the Christmas tree lights were wrong too. Too small for the era. Funny how they strive to be so authentic and then they get these little things wrong.
B.

I think they have to pick & choose which details they MUST get absolutely correct, and which ones (usually at the fringes) that they might squeak by with...

This must be a frightfully expensive series to produce... having some background in theatre myself, there is usually not enough money in the budget (or more importantly, actual money in the accounts! ) to get everything perfectly right...

I believe in the US, in the 1920's - '50's, Christmas lights used the now obsolete "mini-screw-base" and C-5 bulbs, which ran in series, and got dangerously hot. Somewhere in the late-1920's - early 1930's, the candelabra-base Christmas lights came along, with the C-7 bulbs.

Don't know what they had in England in the Downton era... I wouldn't have been surprised to see them putting real candles on that tree...

Maybe Shrimpy brought it back from India.
Jerry

De Soto Frank wrote: Don't know what they had in England in the Downton era... I wouldn't have been surprised to see them putting real candles on that tree...

Don't know why that would be a surprise? I am pretty sure they would have had real candles on that tree back then. We were still using real candles back in Germany until we moved to the US 15 years ago. My parents and siblings still do. Remember, houses in Europe are mostly built from stone, not wood. And people know to watch the candles while lit. Christmas trees are only mounted from Christmas eve till January 6th, so they don't dry out as much as in the US either, where the tree may be up for 4-6 weeks.

Andreas