Volume II: Filmography

MY BABY'S VOICE

March 29, 1912 (Friday)

Length: 1 reel

Character: Drama

Cameraman: Carl L. Gregory

Cast: Marguerite Snow (the mother), Marie Eline (the child; see Note 2), Florence LaBadie (the telephone operator)

Notes: 1. Marie Eline's name was given erroneously as "Helen" Eline in a review in The Moving Picture World. In an account in The Motion Picture Story Magazine, Mignon Anderson was listed in the role of the telephone operator; the same account mistitled the film as Her Baby's Voice. 2. Although reviewers credited Marie Eline with the role of the baby, the part would seem to have been better suited for Helen Badgley. Margaret Gray, a research associate for the present work, has posed this query: "How could Marie Eline play the part of a baby in this film, and play the part of a 19-year-old midget in The Star of the Side Show, produced around the same time? Perhaps reviewers confused the Thanhouser Kid (Eline) with the Kidlet (Badgley)."

ARTICLE by Gordon Trent, The Morning Telegraph, March 17, 1912:

"Great persons and great inventions are quick to exchange compliments. One of the latest and greatest inventions, the motion picture, honors and holds up for praise and other late and great invention, the telephone, in a novel Thanhouser story released Friday, March 29. The title is My Baby's Voice, and that just about is the sum and substance of the story. A woman saves her soul by simply hearing her baby's voice on the telephone. The tempter tries to lure her from her duties by a honeyed message on the phone, but just as she is about to give her answer an all-wise switchboard operator pulls out the plug connecting the wife's wire with the tempter's and switches the wife's line to her little daughter's room. The child is awakened by the ringing of the phone bell and recognizing her mother's voice, says: 'Hello, mamma, did you call me?' Whereupon, of course, it is all off with the tempter and his temptation, thanks to the baby's voice, the telephone, and the clever 'hello girl.'" (Adapted from a Thanhouser news release)

ARTICLE, The Moving Picture World, March 23, 1912:

"The man who is too busy to fulfill his simplest family obligations - to be in that family's company a little of the time - had better go look at My Baby's Voice, a Thanhouser picture issued March 29. The story shows how a wife is almost tempted from her duties merely because her helpmate is so 'rushed' by business affairs he unconsciously neglects her. Running into an old friend, the lonely wife accepts his invitation to go walking and takes her baby daughter along. She does not intend disloyalty to her husband, but she craves a stroll and an escort and the old friend is convenient. But in the end he proves no friend at all, and when, following fresh signs of her busy husband's 'neglect' she is all rage and resentment, he asks her to elope. She is about to consent when through the manipulation of plugs by the switchboard girl she hears her baby's voice. The innocent tones of the child dispel immediately the temptation, and finally the husband finds he can cut down his business hours enough to spend several of them at home, whereupon the day is saved."

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture News, March 16, 1912:

"Rose Scott is the stenographer in the office of wealthy John Mackey and is wooed by a clerk there, one Merwin. But Mr. Mackey himself takes a fancy to her and she becomes Mrs. John Mackey. Ten years elapse and we find the Mackeys and their little daughter Ruth on a pleasure trip. Ruth makes friends with a hotel switchboard operator and to amuse herself uses the phone in her own room to talk to the little lady at the board. For the first time since the old office days, the Mackey's meet Merwin. Mackey finds the time very much occupied with his business projects. Mrs. Mackey, though, has time aplenty on her hands, time to renew the old friendship with Merwin. With Ruth they go walking through the city, for her husband is too busy with his affairs to do even that - even though he is on a 'pleasure trip.' So Merwin fills in nicely as an escort and makes himself very agreeable to the mother and daughter. But Merwin's designs are not innocent. He tells the wife that he wants her to desert her husband. Instantly she spurns him, flees from him - she realizes that her friendship has been carried too far.

"Then some evenings elapse, and putting her daughter to bed she goes to her husband to find that he cannot stay with her even at night - even then do business appointments call him. In a rush of anger, she decides to leave him, and she tells him everything in a note expressing her resentment of his neglect. She tells Merwin on the telephone that she will join him, and the girl at the switchboard happens to hear. Immediately the switchboard operator's mind is made up. She will act in the wife's own best interest - swiftly. She pulls out the plug connecting the clerk's phone with that in the wife's room and switches the wife's line onto the phone in the little girl's room. So instead of falling into Merwin's toils she hears a sweet, clear voice of her child saying: 'Hello, mamma, did you want me?' The baby's voice acts as cold water on her anger. She is shocked into reason, and rushes to the table on which lays the note - and tears the missive into bits. In the meantime Merwin tries frantically to get the wife's room on the phone again. Finally he does succeed in getting an answer from the brainy 'hello girl,' who says, 'Sorry, but that line is busy.' But Merwin sticks to his task and compels the operator to give him the line. Little Miss Operator, however, has won the great game for all that, for when the wife does talk to him she says, 'I've changed my mind. I'll not go out this evening.' Whereupon smiles are brought to the angels - through the efforts of mere little 'hello girl.'"

REVIEW, The Morning Telegraph, March 31, 1912:

"In its entirety this is interesting and entertaining, relating a well-defined story in a most novel manner, its basis being original. A business man wins his stenographer from the clerk who had loved her. He makes a good husband, though his business takes up most of his time. The clerk becomes a traveling man and years after at a hotel he meets the wife with her husband and child. He then meets her when the husband is out on business and that evening telephones to her room asking her to elope with him and secure the happiness of life her husband's busy career denies her. The telephone operator had taken a fancy to the child and when she learns of the plot she switches off the mother in her room and rings the phone to the child's room. This awakens the little one, who has been taught to use the phone and to talk with the girl operator. The latter, by making the child talk to the man and then switching the phone so as the mother can hear her little one's voice, brings about an entire change in the mother's thoughts and plans, and when the phone is rung off she rushes to the baby and takes her to her arms as the husband returns home. A pretty scene is pictured as the couple kneel beside the baby's bed and the wife realizes the real love her husband bears for her. It is well staged, the telephone switchboard, the room phones, the business of each individual being shown while phoning all being finely done. The several parts are admirably handled, the Thanhouser Kid doing very effective work."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, April 6, 1912:

"A picture artistically made and very pretty. In it a mother, who is neglected by her busy husband, is tempted to be untrue, but is saved by her baby whose voice she hears over the telephone. This is fine and is made as convincing as could be. It was brought about by a little plot of a quick-witted and a warm-hearted telephone girl. When we say that Miss Marguerite Snow plays the mother, Miss Florence LaBadie the telephone girl, and Miss Helen Eline [sic] the child, and that all three play as well as they always do when playing a good situation, we have praised the picture highly. It is a very commendable, human release. The scenes, both those that are sets and the exteriors, are well photographed and are unusually pretty. It is a sure feature picture, one that could hardly fail to please everywhere."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, April 3, 1913

"A human element enters into this picture of interrupted elopement on the part of the mother, who suddenly realizes her duty to her child through the unique method that is brought about by the alert and sympathetic telephone operator in the hotel. The mother met her former lover at the hotel after many years, but the telephone girl, who had made friends with the young daughter, saved the day by connecting the mother with her little daughter when she would call up the man with whom she had decided to go away. Thus the mother went back to her child. The picture is acted with the usual skill and art displayed by this company, and equally as well put on, representing the backgrounds and setting of a hotel with exceptional truth and detail."

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