Bell Telephone must have laid out a small fortune for this short, judging by the professional talent employed. A top-notch cast includes Audrey Meadows, Ruta Lee, Hal Peary (without moustache but with his Gildersleeve giggle) and Bonnie Franklin. The acting is smooth; watching Meadows is always a treat. Look at her work with her hands and with props when the pot boils over.
Announcer Bill Baldwin shows up periodically to narrate. It's almost an intrusion later in the film, as the actors are very much carrying the ball. Baldwin had a long list of credits on camera and off. Animation fans will know him from "The Flintstones has been brought to you by....Winston! " before Fred sings the Winston's jingle off-key.
Bek Nelson did some dramatic work on TV shows around this time.
I suppose Bell used this short to remind PBX operators to be calm and fix mistakes for the good of their company. Certainly, Nelson's character can't be blamed for Hal Peary being a doofus and not answering his phone, but the film hints at just that.
The sets are good; the designer is uncredited. I like how Meadows draws wooden blinds that have no business being where they are except to block half-naked Lee from the camera.
Music is from EMI of Britain/Capitol Hi-Q. We hear several Phil Green/Geoff Love/Ken Thorne cues from the early '60s
The only disappointment is a personal one. There was a surprise cameo at the end. It's a shame they couldn't have got Art Carney.

A couple of private switchboard operators discuss their extension users, who fall into the "Goofus and Gallant" roles.

The plot: a company loses a potential contract due to bad telephone manners, and another gets it because of good coordination. Probably not surprizingly, the one had more up to date equipment than the other.

A nice bonus are the Bell System focus screens at the beginning, and the four wall breaking at the end.

A training film The Phone Company made to help users of business telephone systems.

Back in the day, the person who operated a company's switchboard played a crucial role. Besides being responsible for connecting incoming callers to the right person, operators often had to dial outgoing calls for their extension users.

In many old movies, we sometimes hear an executive tell the operator, "Get me Elmer on the line!", and hang up their phone. The operator would have to get the other party on the line and then try to connect them with the calling executive. If meanwhile that person left the office or now just didn't answer their phone, it put the operator in an awkward situation. This movie offers tips for users to avoid problems such as that.

The film is well produced and must have been fairly "high-budget" for a training film; playing the part of operators are the well known actresses Jayne Meadows and Ruta Lee. Unlike most other fictional depictions of people operating switchboards, these actress operators do quite a realistic job. Their manipulation of cords, pressing of buttons, dialing digits, etc. as well as the general operating procedures, all seem quite accurate.

Switchboards are often referred to as PBXs, which stands for Private Branch eXchange; there are two different kinds featured in the film:

Audrey Meadows' PBX is a more traditional cord switchboard. The operator answers and connects calls by plugging cords into jacks that are arranged in rows on a large vertical panel. The cords are arranged in pairs across the horizontal surface of the switchboard. To answer a call, the operator selects a pair of cords and plugs one cord into the jack of the calling party. After finding out what the caller wants, the operator users the other cord in the pair to connect them with the desired party. Associated with each cord pair is a set of buttons and lamps the operator uses to process each call and monitor it's completion.

Although it still uses cords and jacks, this PBX is much more advanced than the typical, all manual switchboards that often appeared in films or on TV (e.g.: Lily Tomlin's "Ernestine" used a Model 555 manual switchboard). The switchboard that Audrey Meadows operates in this film would have been just one part of the PBX system. Additional equipment not shown in the film would have allowed extension users within the company to call each other or place their own outside calls without the operator's intervention.

Ruta Lee's PBX is an even more advanced model. She operates a cordless switchboard; calls are processed by pressing a sequence of buttons, instead of using cords and jacks. This was "state-of-the-art" for it's time.

Also of note: a user at Ruta Lee's company, Mr. Quinn, has a card dialing telephone. An early form of "speed dialing", this phone used punched plastic cards to dial frequently called numbers. It took an entire card to store a single phone number. On the top of Mr. Quinn's phone can be seen two stacks of these cards. To call a number, the card was inserted in a slot above the dial and the large button beneath it was pressed. The card would rise up slowly out of the phone as the number was automatically dialed.

Other, more common wall and desk phones are featured in the film, however all of the Touch Tone phones are early models that had only 10 buttons and did not yet include the "Star" and "Pound" keys.

All in all, the movie is an interesting glimpse into days gone by when a skilled and powerful switchboard operator literally ran the company. Automated attendants and voice mail systems devalued the craft in subsequent years. Today, the attentive customer service once provided by switchboard operators is virtually non-existent. This movie is an excellent documentary of the service that used to be commonplace in business.

Elmer

Great little time relic of switchboard operators bemoaning that their bosses don't respond promptly when taking calls, and ask secretaries to make calls for them then leave the desk! Audrey Meadows and Ruta Lee (!!) are "roommates" in the largest apartment I've seen anyone making secretary's wages ever get. One has a boss that has poor telephone manners, the other has been trained on the Bell Phone Manners Course. Guess which one gets the account from Pierre Perrente from Caracas?
This one is another gem from the Jerry Fairbanks studio which, by a long shot, are now my favorite industrial film producer. Recognizable stars. a somewhat Drag Queen costuming/hair and make up vision, and a GREAT twist ending all make for this HIGHLY RECCOMENDED viewing!

(Great beginning Leader as well)