Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Invisible Diplomats

What was Audrey Meadows doing in late 1964? Besides appearing in reruns of The Honeymooners, I mean.

Not an awful lot, it seems. So why not appear in an industrial film?

Mike Connolly’s syndicated Hollywood column of Dec. 26, 1964 led off with the news:

Audrey Meadows, Ruta Lee and Gig Young signed to star in a 60-minute, strictly-no-commercials commercial film for Bell Telephone. It’s the first time the company has signed such big names for an industrial movie. It’s also the longest ever made by the outfit. It even has a plot and I hope I’m not giving it away when I reveal that the colorfilm (using all the colors of the Princess Phones and then some) will be titled “The Girl with the Velvet-Smiled Voice.”

If that was the plan, it went through a pile of changes. Jerry Fairbanks Productions was hired to make the film, which ended up running about 20 minutes and was titled “Invisible Diplomats.” A note in the Fairbanks papers about this film reads “A script and combined picture and sound track continuity by Leo Rosencrans, Oct. 8, 1964 and May 17, 1965, 43/35 pages.”

I haven’t been able to discover when the film was shot, but I’ve found screenings of it for Bell employees as early as July 1965 in Birmingham, Alabama and Columbus, Georgia. It was still being shown to phone company workers as late as November 1974.

The “plot” Connolly refers to basically tells office PBX telephone operators to put up with incompetence and nonsense, and that your local Bell company can help.

Gig Young’s presence confused me until I discovered he and Meadows had appeared in A Touch of Mink on the big screen in 1964.

Several cast members receive no screen credit. Among the ones who do are Hal Peary, who does his laugh from Fibber McGee and Molly and The Great Gildersleeve. It is odd seeing him without a moustache. And there’s a short appearance by Bonnie Franklin, who was trying to get cast in one-shot roles on television at the time (The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Karen).

Does Art Carney make a surprise cameo at the end? You’ll have to watch.

By the mid 1960s, Fairbanks wasn’t using Ed Paul as a music director any more. He paid for cues from the Capitol Hi-Q library instead. I don’t have a copy of the music over the opening/closing credits but it’s unmistakably a Phil Green-Ken Love-Geoff Thorne cue originally from England’s EMI Photoplay series.