" WHAT MR. BELL HAD IN MIND " 1950s TELEPHONE SALES TRAINING FILM w/ DON AMECHE 88894

This Jam Handy produced short for Chevrolet features actor Don Ameche (who played him in a feature film) as Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. The film was intended to be seen by Chevy salesmen and acquaint them with one key idea - that the telephone should be used to invite customers into the showroom. Various vignettes paint a humorous portrait of the way that people use their phones, talking to boyfriends and gossiping, and the serious ones as well -- calling for a doctor and using it to conduct important business.
The opening sequence shows how people use the phone and why. Alexander Graham Bell contemplates the topic of -- how to organize your phone business. Excellent montage shots of people on telephone with interesting reactions. In a very clever scene, Don Ameche recreates his 1939 role as Alexander Graham Bell in the famous "Doctor Watson, come here, I want you" scene; he then discusses the future of his wonderous invention, the telephone with Dr. Watson. Watson asks Bell how he is able to foretell all these amazing things; Bell washes his face, turns around, and he's Don Ameche, saying: "Well, who would know better than I?" (A Hollywood inside joke!); overdubbed narrator says: "Any resemblance between Don Ameche and Alexander Graham Bell was strictly intentional"!!
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[@jvolstad]

No cell phones. Just a nice simple telephone.

[@nmatavka]

Hey, that's what's his name from Trading Places!

[@fromthesidelines]

Don was most famous for portraying Alexander Graham Bell in 20th Century Fox's "The Story of Alexander Graham Bell" (1938). In fact, he could never shake that movie; he became *so* associated with that role, he bowed to the inevitable, and eventually appeared in- and narrated- films (and commercials) dealing with A.T.&T. and The Bell System.

[@J_Calvin_Hobbes]

👍

[@dstuart2918]

I used to like these--now it's just plain, old boring materialism that's been proven not to make people happy in study after study.