From a fine tribute to the telegram by Dan Neil, who has more:
For all their worldwide, instantaneous bandwidth, the one thing modern electronic communications systems don’t offer is a sense of occasion, of consequence. One hundred e-mails per day does not equal better information. It’s just a snowdrift of words to be shoveled off the walk. Telegrams were sparingly used and sparingly written, but every word counted.
And, in the hands of experts, telegrams could be used like a scalpel. One of the most famous telegram exchanges pitted George Bernard Shaw against Winston Churchill. Shaw to Churchill: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend if you have any.” Churchill to Shaw: “Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second if there is one.”
A Hollywood favorite: Cary Grant, evasive about his age, intercepted a telegram to his agent from a reporter: “How old Cary Grant?” it read. Grant responded himself: “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?”
Dorothy Parker, on her honeymoon, to an editor nagging her for late work: “Too [expletive] busy, and vice versa.”