AT&T Archives: All Kinds of People

A profile of Bell System employees, cinema-verite style, by director Mel London. London was a film producer who shot a lot of commercial work, but who also was nominated for best documentary short at the 1963 Academy Awards.

London's employee profiles are fleeting, and the film's conceit hangs on the interviewer asking Bell employees "what they would show in a film about Bell System employees"! ...and patchworks their answers into the film. As it jumps from person to person and division to division, you get a picture of what the people at the company were like, and, hopefully, would want to work there (this resembles a slightly unconventional recruitment film).

The composer of the song, Richard Berg, may be the same Richard Berg, NY ad/music composer, who became the voice of the Kool-Aid man a few years later. Richard Berg, get in touch and let us know if that's you who did the film's theme song!

Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

To see more from the AT&T Archives, visit http://techchannel.att.com/archives