Party Lines is a short 1946 advertising film promoting being courteous when on party lines. The ad features Bil Baird’s marionettes and a small model town. The film opens with a shot of a model town with small, colorful houses. Two marionettes pull up in cars in front of their homes, one patiently ceding the right of way to the other. An adult man marionette gets out of the car (01:18), whistles for his dog, then enters his home. He picks up his telephone, and the film cuts to several other houses where female marionettes talk on the phone, tying up the party line. The film then reenacts the previous sequence to demonstrate what could happen if the marionettes don’t “work together.” The man picks up his phone, and the two women using the line refuse to get off. He becomes visibly angry. His telephone is now a marionette (04:34). One of the women on the telephone is shown with an angel and devil hovering over her, arguing about whether or not to get off the line. A teenage marionette (in some sort of cowboy dress) is in a phone booth (05:38), and he is shown talking to his blonde sweetheart who is sprawled out on a couch in her living while talking. The blonde marionette takes a bubble bath (07:02). A mustachioed marionette runs through a list of phone calls he needs to make (07:40). The main marionette finally gets to use his phone when it rings; however, the father of the blonde gets on the line and refuses to get off. The narrator says that this type of “drag-out” conflict is similar to knights fighting, and viewers see Baird’s two knight marionettes engaged in a sword fight on a bridge (09:07). The film goes back to the small town the next day (10:28); a bird sings near its nest. The main marionette sees a building on fire out of his window, and he goes to report it but the line is being used by another man. This other man refuses to give up his time on the phone line, and he goes crazy, yelling at his phone and crashing around his room. Smoke moves into his room, and then viewers see a fireman driving a horse and fire wagon. Angel marionettes sitting on clouds show how to work together and share the party line (13:16). The extremely angry and crazy man demonstrates being polite on the party line and quickly hangs up for another neighbor so they can make a call. His “angel on his shoulder” marionette kicks the devil marionette out of the house, concluding the film.
A party line (multiparty line, shared service line, party wire) is a local loop telephone circuit that is shared by multiple telephone service subscribers. Party line systems were widely used to provide telephone service, starting with the first commercial switchboards in 1878. A majority of Bell System subscribers in the mid-20th century in the United States and Canada were serviced by party lines, which carried a billing discount over individual service; during wartime shortages, these were often the only available lines. British users similarly benefited from the party line discount. Farmers in rural Australia used party lines, where a single line spanned miles from the nearest town to one property and on to the next.
William Britton "Bil" Baird (August 15, 1904 - March 18, 1987) was an American puppeteer of the mid- and late 20th century. One of his better known creations was Charlemane the lion. He and his wife Cora Eisenberg Baird (1912-1967) produced and performed the famous puppetry sequence for "The Lonely Goatherd" in the film version of The Sound of Music. He wrote The Art of the Puppet (1965) and also provided the puppets for Dark Shadows. Baird also created the expandable nose Peter Noone wore as Pinocchio in the 1968 musical adaptation of the Carlo Collodi story that aired on NBC as a Hallmark Hall of Fame special.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit www.PeriscopeFi...
7 сен 2024
