| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

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| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative

Movie Reviews

Phantom of the Operator (Le fantôme de l'opératrice). Prod. by Caroline Martel. Artifact Productions, 2004. 65 mins. (Women Make Movies, 462 Broadway, Suite 500WS, New York, NY 10013-2618; 212-925-0606, ext. 317; <orders@wmm.com>; <http://wmm.com> [Sept. 12, 2005])

This visually imaginative documentary explores the roles of women telephone operators in the early days of corporate production of both telephones and telephone service. Its most illuminating aspect is the incorporation of film clips from Western Electric and Bell Telephone of Canada. Many of them are movie news promotions and recruitment and training films with clear "industrial psychology" motives in mind, but others show intriguing glimpses of real telephone operators on the job, telephone assemblers in factories, and clerical workers filing and typing. The most fascinating are from the early twentieth century and portray women operators punching in with time cards and changing stations, operators delivering messages on roller skates, women supervisors standing over the assembly line production of "service with a smile," and operators in fashionable 1920s dress dancing with each other to the sound of a gramophone. "What girl," intones the narrator, "didn't dream of becoming a telephone lady?"

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