User Reviews

Monogram Pictures, for the most part, is known for producing ultra-low budget and often craptacular films. Their films never would be mistaken for art and were often entertaining in a low-brow sort of way. I actually am a bit low-brow, as I often like their films even though many as simply god-awful. In light of this and the fact that "Telephone Operator" has slipped into the public domain, I just assumed the movie would be terrible. The only terrible thing about it was the quality of the print that I downloaded LEGALLY from the link on IMDb. Bits and pieces are missing and this mostly affects the beginning of the film.

As far as the plot goes, it's about two obnoxious telephone line men (Grant Withers and Warren Hymer). They spend most of their time sexually harassing the females at work (and in 1930s fashion, the girls LIKE IT) and fighting. But, when they aren't doing this, they are putting up telephone lines as rapidly as possible...and having run-ins with the boss. Most of the first 2/3 of the film is like this, but the film takes a massive turn in another direction when the dam breaks--and the guys and their new girlfriends spring to the rescue. Aside from a few pieces of slightly grainy stock footage of floods, the flood scenes they used were actually very high quality for the time--particularly the scenes they staged of the dam bursting. Overall, it's interesting and fun...and might ruffle a few feathers at the boorish antics and sexual harassment by the two leads!

Society confined women to subservient roles in America for most of the twentieth century. The blue collar role of the telephone operator exemplifies the kind of responsibility with which women were entrusted. However, the telephone operator emerged as little more than a glorified secretary who manipulated basic equipment for men. "Telephone Operator" rounded out Scott Pembroke's Hollywood career. He had helmed dozens of silent films before the sound era and had acted in his share of them, too. Mind you, "Telephone Operator" amounts to little more than pure pabulum, and the emphasis in Scott Darling's screenplay seems to fall evenly between the two female telephone operators and a pair of male telephone linemen. This marginal but tolerable epic clocks in at a lean 70 minutes, but the only surviving print is missing about 17 minutes. Meantime, the action concludes rather abruptly as the hero and heroine manage to escape so they can get married. Nothing about "Telephone Operator" is remotely memorable. This is a potboiler if there ever was a potboiler. Basically, the two out-of-town linemen enter the city of Riverdale to assist in a project to string telephone wire to a dam. When these amiable but free-wheeling fellows, Red (Grant Withers) and Shorty (Warren Hymer), show up, they try to persuade switchboard gals Helen Moloy (Judith Allen) and Dottie Stengal (Alice White) to be their girlfriends. Of course, the gals play hard to get until they must have the guys. Somewhere along the line, disaster strikes. The dam bursts, and our telephone operator struggle to alert everybody about the impending catastrophe Red and Shorty stick around to help them when they aren't trying to romance them.

This one is well worth watching for the interplay between Grant Withers and Judith Allen, with Hymer and White for a counterpoint. The sparring-to-snogging relationship between the principals is delightful to watch, and the dialogue, while dated, still comes out fresh. Nothing stilted or wooden here.

One scene in particular is interesting in the way it's handled, involving as it does one woman covering for another's infidelity. It's handled frankly for the late thirties, but still with enough decorum not to faze the Hays Office censors (although it seems strange today to think of an employee being canned for moral turpitude).

One drawback for me was the overuse of stock footage for the flood scenes. It was pretty visibly taken from a wide variety of newsreels, and some of the backgrounds are incongruous. In particular, I noticed a shot of people panicking in the streets of a city much bigger than anyplace referenced in the film (and I'm fairly sure I've seen the same footage somewhere else).

Yes indeed, two reels is missing from this monogram programmer that starts off as your ordinary look at a blue collar job and ends up Looking into the future with the creation of the disaster film. Certainly, there were other films around this time that dealt with natural disasters, most notably "Deluge", "San Francisco", and "In Old Chicago". The film focuses on expressing the importance of communication in the event of a disaster and that happens thanks to the sudden breakage of a damn and the massive destruction that is caused by it. practically the first three quarters of the film deal with getting to know the fivw main characters: head operator Judith Allen, her boyfriend Grant Withers, his pal Warren Hymer, Allen's dizzy co-worker Alice White and Allen's pesky but lovable younger brother, Ronnie Crosby. It is obvious that something serious is taking place at the dam because of certain calls that come from the operations center, and while the exposition of the plot does seem to go on a bit too long before anything substantial happens, I can see how necessary it was to be included.

Obvious, the footage filmed showing the breaking of the dam and the Damage that is caused afterwards is stock footage taken in a natural disaster that occurred around this time. the danger is real and thrilling to watch increase, especially when Allenn and White work vigorously in the telephone operating center of getting news out to the public. It certainly would be interesting to find a complete version of this but I can't imagine anything more detailed then what remains of the last 20 minutes where the disaster occurs. This may not stand the test of time when compared to the other classics made in the mid-1930s dealing with disasters, but it certainly is pretty impressive for a poverty row second feature.