Don Ameche Loretta Young Henry Fonda Charles Coborn
Cinematography
Leon Shamroy
Edited by
Walter A. Thompson
Music by
Ernst Toch
Production company
Cosmopolitan Productions
Distributed by
20th Century Fox
Release date
April 14, 1939 (1939-04-14)
Running time
98 minutes
Country
United States
Language
English
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell is a somewhat fictionalized 1939 biographical film of the famous inventor. It was filmed in black-and-white and released by Twentieth Century-Fox. The film stars Don Ameche as Bell and Loretta Young as Mabel, his wife, who contracted scarlet fever at an early age and became deaf.
The first half of the film concentrates on the hero's romantic, financial, and scientific struggle.
Henry Fonda is notable in a co-starring role as Mr. Watson, who hears the first words ever spoken over the telephone. In a pivotal scene, Bell (Don Ameche), while working on the telephone, accidentally spills acid onto his lap and shouts in pain, “Mr. Watson, come here! I want you!” Watson, barely able to contain his own excitement, rushes into the room and stammers out the news that he heard Bell calling out to him over the telephone receiver. Bell has Watson repeat his own words to him to confirm it, and the two men begin hopping around the room, with Watson yelling out a war whoop.
The last part depicts the legal struggle against Western Union over patent priority in the invention of the telephone, ending with a courtroom victory. The final scene has the hero contemplating crewed flight, under his wife's adoring gaze.
The film led to the use of the word "ameche" as juvenile slang for a telephone, as noted by Mike Kilen in the Iowa City Gazette: "The film prompted a generation to call people to the telephone with the phrase: 'You're wanted on the Ameche.'"[1] Such an identity between Ameche and the telephone was forged, that in the 1940 film Go West, Groucho Marx proclaims, "Telephone? This is 1870, Don Ameche hasn't invented the telephone yet."
^Kilen, Mike (December 8, 1993). "Ameche's son in Iowa City recalls dad's legacy of joy". Iowa City Gazette. Archived from the original on October 11, 2012.
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