Bells Are Ringing (film)

Synopsis

Based on the successful 1956 Broadway production of the same name by Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Jule Styne, the film focuses on Ella Peterson, who works in the basement office of Susanswerphone, a telephone answering service.

Peterson, based on Mary Printz, who worked at Green's service, listens in on others' lives and adds some interest to her own humdrum existence by adopting different identities for her clients. They include an out-of-work Method actor, a dentist with musical yearnings, and in particular playwright Jeffrey Moss, who is suffering from writer's block and desperately needs a muse.

Adding complications to the plot are the police, who are certain the business is a front for an "escort service," and the owner's shady boyfriend, who unbeknownst to her is using the agency as a bookmaking operation.

Plot

Ella Peterson works as a switchboard operator at the Susanswerphone answering service. She can't help breaking the rules by becoming overly involved in the lives of the subscribers. Some of the more peculiar ones include a dentist who composes songs on an air hose, an actor who emulates Marlon Brando, and a little boy for whom she pretends to be Santa Claus.

Ella has a secret crush on the voice of subscriber Jeffrey Moss, a playwright for whom she plays a comforting "Mom" character. She finally meets him face to face, when she brings him a message under a false name (Melisande Scott) and romantic sparks and some confusion begin.

A humorous subplot involves the courtly Otto, who convinces Susanswerphone to take orders for his "mail-order classical record business", known as Titanic Records. Unfortunately, Otto is actually a bookie whose orders are a system for betting on horses. Unwittingly, Ella changes orders for the supposedly incorrect Beethoven's Tenth Symphony, Opus 6, not realizing she is changing "bets".

Although the police begin to assume that Susanswerphone might be a front for an escort service, the plot ends happily, with Jeff proposing, and her wacky subscribers coming to thank her.

Box office

According to MGM records the film earned $2,825,000 in the US and Canada but only $800,000 elsewhere and wound up losing $1,720,000.