History Theatre / BellsAreRinging

The story was [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory very loosely inspired by]] Adolph Green's answering service operator, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Printz Mary Printz]], who would go to extreme lengths to help her clients, far beyond just answering the phone. The musical was conceived as a star vehicle for Judy Holliday, who also appeared in a film version released in 1960, with Creator/DeanMartin as Jeffrey Moss. This film version, directed by Vincente Minelli, was the last of the many movie musicals produced for Creator/{{MGM}} by Arthur Freed.

The story was [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory very loosely inspired by]] Adolph Green's answering service operator, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Printz Mary Printz]], who would go to extreme lengths to help her clients, far beyond just answering the phone. The musical was conceived as a star vehicle for Judy Holliday, who also appeared in a film version released in 1960, with Creator/DeanMartin as Jeffrey Moss. This film version, directed by Creator/VincenteMinelli, was the last of the many movie musicals produced for Creator/{{MGM}} by Arthur Freed.

The story was [[VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory very loosely inspired by]] Adolph Green's answering service operator, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Printz Mary Printz]], who would go to extreme lengths to help her clients, far beyond just answering the phone. The musical was conceived as a star vehicle for Judy Holliday, who also appeared in a film version released in 1960, with Creator/DeanMartin as Jeffrey Moss. This film version, directed by Vincente Minelli, was the last of the many movie musicals produced for Creator/{{MGM}} by Arthur Freed.

--> '''Sandor:''' What is [[Creator/LudwigVanBeethoven Beethoven]]?

* ManOfAThousandVoices: * [[ManOfAThousandVoices Woman of a Thousand Voices]]: Ella, both out- and in-universe. Ella speaks in a wide range of accents, personalities, and characters in order to help her clients. For a woman whose son won't eat his vegetables, she pretends to be SantaClaus. For a French restaurant, she puts on a phony French accent. For struggling artist Jeffrey Moss ([[RunningGag Plaza 0-4433]]), she adopts the comforting voice of an elderly woman whom he can call Mom. Any actress who wants to portray Ella needs to have one hell of a vocal range.

* ManOfAThousandVoices: ''Woman'', and in-universe. Ella speaks in a wide range of accents, personalities, and characters in order to help her clients. For a woman whose son won't eat his vegetables, she pretends to be SantaClaus. For a French restaurant, she puts on a phony French accent. For struggling artist Jeffrey Moss ([[RunningGag Plaza 0-4433]]), she adopts the comforting voice of an elderly woman whom he can call Mom. Any actress who wants to portray Ella on-stage needs to have one hell of a vocal range.

* IAmSong: Subversion: Ella, believing that all her work has been for naught and that the man she loves won't love her back, sings about how she's not even sure who she is any more, and deciding to going back to working a big, anonymous switchboard instead. Also qualifies as an inverted SettingOffSong, since she's returning to her old job and leaving New York City for good.

-->I'm in love with a man,

* [[ManOfAThousandVoices Woman of a Thousand Voices]]: Ella, both out- and in-universe. Ella speaks in a wide range of accents, personalities, and characters in order to help her clients. For a woman whose son won't eat his vegetables, she pretends to be SantaClaus. For a French restaurant, she puts on a phony French accent. For struggling artist Jeffrey Moss ([[RunningGag Plaza 0-4433]]), she adopts the comforting voice of an elderly woman whom he can call Mom. Any actress who wants to portray Ella needs to have one hell of a vocal range.

* SpySpeak: Well, not spies, ''mobsters'', but the principle is the same. A group of bookies is trying to secretly place bets on horse races over the phone. How do they do this? They set up a fake classical music company, Titanic Records, which sells recordings of various symphonies and takes phone orders through Susanswerphone—but the phone orders are code for the bets being placed. For example, as laid out in the song "It's a Simple Little System" by the "president" of Titanic Records, Sandor, the names of composers correspond to various major racetracks:

--> '''Goon 1(reading off list):''' [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belmont_Park_Racecourse Belmont Park!]]

* TroubleEntendre: After Titanic Records accidentally loses thousands of dollars of horse racing bets, the Corvello gang sends a pair of goons to approach Sandor, president of the operation, in a café. Sandor explains them to Sue, his unknowing girlfriend, as "musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra," but is horrified to learn that Titanic Records might want him to attend a "recording session", over the East River, of "Siegfried's Rhine Journey and Funeral March."

* TheVoice: Inverted. Ella is, to her clients, just a voice (or, in some cases, ''several'' voices). She, in turn, knows them only by ''their'' voices. A good chunk of the story is her getting to know them and helping them, in secret.

* ManOfAThousandVoices: ''Woman'', and in-universe. Ella speaks in a wide range of accents, personalities, and characters in order to help her clients. For a woman whose son won't eat his vegetables, she pretends to be SantaClaus. For a French restaurant, she puts on a phony French accent. For struggling artist Jeffrey Moss ([[RunningGag Plaza 0-4433]]), she adopts the comforting voice of an elderly woman whom he can call Mom. Any actress who wants to portray Ella needs to have one hell of a vocal range.

One might expect that, to serve such a wide variety of clients, Susanswerphone would need a "vast personnel of well-trained girls," as an advertisement for them says. In fact, three girls, including the owner, Sue Summers, handle all the calls, but Ella Peterson is skilled at finding a different voice to answer each of their subscribers. Sue complains that Ella's a bit too friendly with the subscribers, especially after a couple of misguided policemen open an investigation. But the threat of being sent to the Women's Detention Home does nothing to deter Ella from starting an affair with Mr. Moss, her Sleeping Prince, under the pseudonym Melisande Scott.

-->What a perfect relationship,

The musical was conceived as a star vehicle for Judy Holliday, who also appeared in a film version released in 1960, with Creator/DeanMartin as Jeffrey Moss. This film version, directed by Vincente Minelli, was the last of the many movie musicals produced for Creator/{{MGM}} by Arthur Freed.

* DistantDuet: "Better Than a Dream." They're only in different rooms, but it still counts.

* IAmSong: Subversion: Ella, believing that all her work has been for naught and that the man she loves won't love her back, sings about how she's not even sure who she is any more, and deciding to going back to working a big, anonymous switchboard instead.

* ManOfAThousandVoices: ''Woman'', and in-universe. Ella speaks in a wide range of accents, personalities, and characters in order to help her clients. For a woman whose son won't eat his vegetables, she pretends to be SantaClaus. For a French restaurant, she puts on a phony French accents. For struggling artist Jeffrey Moss ([[RunningGag Plaza 0-4433]]), she adopts the comforting voice of an elderly woman whom he can call Mom. Any actress who wants to portray Ella needs to have one hell of a vocal range.

* TroubleEntendre: The management of Titanic Records is shocked to find that its orders for Beethoven's Tenth Symphony have been switched to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. They don't care that Beethoven only wrote nine symphonies, as the coded "orders" placed with Titanic Records have less to do with classical music than with horse-racing. So the Corvello gang sends a pair of goons to approach Sandor, president of the operation, in a café. He explains them to Sue as "musicians from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra," but is horrified to learn that Titanic Records might want him to attend a "recording session" over the East River of "Siegfried's Rhine Journey and Funeral March."

-->Then put men in jail!

* Dr. Walter Kitchell, a dentist and amateur songwriter;

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