Director's Cut

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I write women's history, and I didn't know the stories of the Hello Girls. I thought I knew a lot about the First World War and what was going on, but I'd never heard of these women. Wow, I've served for 30 plus years in the service and I've studied military history, yet I had never heard of the Hello Girls. I had never heard of them. They were switchboard operators. Home they came, and did they get their veteran status? They did not. All of the things that we have today, all of the things, all of those rights, could come back down to those, those few women who served our country.

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Hi, welcome to Director's Cut. I'm Pete Schwaba, and we just saw a clip from the documentary The Hello Girls. The Hello Girls were, until recently, an underappreciated group of American women who served their country as telephone operators in World War I. Joining me to discuss his film is Director Jim Theres. Jim, welcome to Director's Cut. Thank you for having me, Pete, I appreciate it. - It's great. Yeah, I really enjoyed the film. So how did you find this project? How did you learn first of the Hello Girls? Yeah, interesting, so I was at on lunch break at work, and I was Googling, because I wanted to do my next film. And so I kind of, I want to do my films that are connected to anniversary dates.

Pete

Okay. - And so I Googled World War I, because I knew the one hundredth anniversary was coming up. And up came in the top seven of the Google search, this book, The Hello Girls, by Elizabeth Cobbs. Huh. So I clicked on it, I said, wow this is kind of neat. And I sent her an email to her author's website. She called me that afternoon. Wow. - Yeah. And she's very prominent in your film, so what a great resource she was to have for you. Yeah, she's almost like the narrator

in the film though. - Pete

Yeah. She's all the way through it.

Pete

Right. Why didn't people, it's interesting that that book came up, but on Google, when people don't really, I had never heard of them before your film. Like, why don't people know about them? Yeah, you know, interestingly enough, Elizabeth sent me an article she just wrote recently, about the Pulitzer Prize. And in the last 100 years, only one book about women was ever nominated for a Pulitzer. So it gets back to the fact that women, and other parts of the society, minorities in society, were kind of pushed to the back. And so their stories weren't told. I would think just one Pulitzer for women in war. But you're saying for women, that's crazy. Let's see another clip from The Hello Girls. It's a war that's sort of lost for Americans. You know, we know it because we can count

laughs

Pete

. There's one and then there's two. The United States had never fought a foreign war of any magnitude and certainly not with allies. So, how do you work with allies? How do you cooperate? How do you get your point across? And how do you prove that you can do this? We take it for granted today that the United States is world's largest military. At the time it had really no military at all, no standing military. And so they had to improvise in all kinds of ways. And so, as things continued to heat up with Germany, after Wilson wins re-election on his campaign of keeping America out of the war. And then there's the so-called Zimmerman Telegram, which is this message passed along by the German envoy. This telegram invites the Germans to say to the Mexicans, "Hey, if you want to go to war against the U.S., "we encourage it and we support it. "We'll help supply you and arm you, "and if you come out the victor, "we'll help you get back New Mexico, "Arizona, and Texas, which you had lost "during the Mexican-American War of 1846-48." Once that's released publicly, Wilson's got no other choice. He goes before Congress and he gives, perhaps the best speech of his life on a rainy Monday evening on April 6, 1917, and convinces both houses of Congress, plus the American people, that it's time for the United States to go to war. So, Jim, you're a filmmaker, you found this inspiring underdog story. How much research did you have to do, A, about World War I, and B, about the Hello Girls? So, as a historian I knew, you know, World War I and forward, is kind of what I study, but I had to read several books. I read Elizabeth's book front to back several times. And I read Mitch's book. You just saw Mitch Yockelson. I read his book to get a feel for Pershing. And then I did a lot of, you know, PBS has a lot of World War I documentaries, so I watched them. And visited the National Archives in Washington D.C. So how much, in terms of research, and the project as a whole, how much research would you say, or how much did take up, of like maybe in like a percentage level? Was it like years of research? No, we started the project in July of this year. Oh my gosh. - Yeah. Wow. - So, it-- You a speed reader? - Yeah, yeah, I think something. I don't know.

But the book was so important. - Pete

Yeah. The book that she wrote was so critical. So the film is based on the book. So that's what I really used as the core piece. How did you get your hands, you have so much great old footage. Is that easy to get, or did that take a lot of research? Well, that's amazing story. So, we were ready to shoot, or film, and screen at the Women's Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, March 1st. February 15th, we still weren't done with the film. And we were looking for some B-roll, we were looking, to put in the film. So we went back on the National Archives YouTube page, and we had been on there before, typed in the City of Chaumont, France, and all of this footage suddenly came up.

Pete

Oh, my gosh. - Called the National Archives and said, "Hey, we just found all this footage." And a gentleman by the name of Aaron Woo told me, "Yeah, we just put that up last week from an anonymous donor, allowed us to do that." Wow. - Crazy. That's one of those stories, I love when people, when you make a movie, and something just falls into your lap. It's like a gift. So, and that sounds like that's yours, that's a pretty cool thing. So, you started making the film in July, and you're screening it already in February. You're what I like to call a go-getter. Yeah. - It's incredible. Yeah, well, and the reason was, is that this year is the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I. Right. So we didn't want to miss that connection, so people were already connected to that. So we were on a crunch schedule to get it done. So film to photos, was there just tons, were you able to just take it, or did you have to license it, or how does that work? So with photos, the great thing about the photos is they either belong, again, to The National Archives, so in the public domain, or the other ones are sitting in the family archives. So,

yeah. - Pete

Oh, okay. So these are hundred-year-old photos in photo albums from the families that I interviewed. Now, how difficult was it to track down family members to get the interviews for some of these Hello Girls? This was already 100 years ago that they served. Did that take a lot of effort? Did you have people helping you with that? Yeah, again I toss it back to Elizabeth. She had a lot of these contacts. She was the first interview, and then we just went, she said, "Okay, well, talk to Carolyn Timby." And so I called Carolyn and Carolyn said, "Well, talk to Candy McCorkel." And so I had to decide which four women I was going to profile. So once I got that done, then I could zero in on who I wanted. Why are they called the Hello Girls? I mean, I know they're operators, but where did that term come from? Yeah, so during the time, young men and women were called boys and girls. So think of the soldiers, they were doughboys.

Pete

Yeah. So the name just stuck as Hello Girls because the first thing they would say either in English or French is bonjour or hello. So they called them the Hello Girls. That's so great. So Elizabeth is kind of your person with all the hook ups. Have there been any other movies made about the Hello Girls that you know of? Not that I'm aware of. It's her book, it's maybe a paragraph or a chapter in some other books that were written 30, 40 years ago, and this film, that's it. Very nice. - Yeah. Well, let's see another clip from The Hello Girls. Well, first off, why women? The workforce was, at the time, was very much gendered. There were women's jobs. There were men's jobs. You have to remember, this was before women got the vote across the United States and women were entering the workforce. In looking for an alternative workforce, particularly one that would fill, the initial customers were largely very affluent business people, which meant in that time period, largely men. Other telephone companies started hiring women. The women worked out very well. Not surprisingly, adult women were more likely to give polite, courteous service than teenage boys. And by the end of the 1880s, the telephone operating workforce was overwhelmingly women. The women were recruited from all over the United States, and they came from absolutely every corner. And they all were trained in different locales by AT&T. But when Pershing got to Paris, he wasn't thinking about women, let's recruit women for the Army, he was just trying to do what we all do, which is to pick up the phone and have something happen on the other end. You could wait on average 60 seconds for the phone to be connected, whereas, when the women got there, the average time it took to connect a call was 10 seconds. And part of it had to do with simply, as the Army said, women have better nerves. Well, in war time, that difference, 50 seconds, is the difference between getting killed or not. And so within a few months, Pershing put out the order, and he said to the U.S. War Department, I want women telephone operators. I want them uniformed. And so it took the Army a couple of months. They sent out letters and they got 7,600 letters from women applying for 100 positions. So, you know, half of the men in the U.S. Army volunteered, and all of the women volunteered. That's such a telling clip. What made these women want to serve so desperately? They didn't even have the right to vote yet. What do you think made them that hungry to serve? Yeah, well I think in general, and overall, the world was changing. And women, as you saw in the clip, women were starting to get into the workforce. And so once they got into the workforce, they wanted to get more involved in other things. And so I think that's the reason why. Women were just coming of age, if you will. Yeah. Okay, so making a film takes so much of you and your life, and you throw yourself into it, and you're passionate, and this is not your only film. Are you ever scared, when you get done making a film like this, that you're not gonna find another project that you're as passionate about? Is that ever a fear in a documentary film maker? Absolutely. - Really? Yeah, so many, you know, especially, there's so many indie film makers now, independent, you know? - Yeah. And so for me, it's funny, I did just fall into another story though, by accident. I was at the Maryland International Film Festival and they saw this documentary, and a guy approached me and said, "I got a story for you." Huh. - Yeah. And it's your next film, that's great. Yeah, it's gonna be my next one. How do you find stories? Do they just fall into your lap, or do you sit every day for an hour and look for potential film sources? So, now people are, after this film, and folks have seen this film, people are contacting me, Okay. - and giving me ideas, so that kind of helps. And that was my plan from the beginning was to kind of build a reputation, if you will, to make good films. How much actual footage did you have to comb through would you say, just for your, like, I don't know if they call, they call it B-roll in narratives. But was this hours and hours? We did 14 interviews, and I remember my editors said, "You got enough for a full series here. "We could do, easily, do another film." He said we could easily do the war years film and then do a documentary just on the post-war and their 60-year struggle. We had a lot of film, a lot of footage. How much danger were the Hello Girls in? Because it sounds like you know, on the surface, it's like, well, they're just answering phones. No, there was air raids that they had to go down to the cellar, the fire. Were they in a lot of danger? Was there always that risk? Well, you know, not only was there the physical danger of, as you mentioned, air raids and artillery, I mean, artillery could go 20, 25 miles in the front, and they were that close Wow. - to the front. But the other big thing during that time was the Spanish flu. Two of the women died from that. No kidding? - So yeah, so that was also, so early on in the earlier wars, influenza, or infection, those were big killers. And so they were in danger of that as well. Did any of these women die while they were over there, either through something like illness, or wartime death, any of them? Two, two of them did. Cora Bartlett and Inez Crittenden died overseas. No kidding. And Cora was buried there for a while, and then she was repatriated back home. Okay, so, I watched the film twice. First, I go through and I pick out clips in it. The first time I watched it, I did not notice the music so much. So I think that's a good thing, it kind of complements the picture. The second time I watched it, I was kind of blown away by it, and I could tell, in watching, that you're very meticulous about the music you pick. Like when we meet Merle, the music pops, she just pops. She's got this great smile. I would remember that shot no matter who she was, if I was related to her, didn't know her. Talk about your music choices, and how you go about that. Yeah, so what I wanted to do in the film is I wanted to take the audience, the viewer, back 100 years. So that's why you'll hear some French language in the film, that's why you hear the music that you do. So you mentioned particularly Merle's. That's a French song called "Je Cherche Aprs Titine." So when we show it in France, the French people are just gonna go nuts.

Pete chuckles

Pete

So that's what I wanted to do with the film. We had the old footage, so I wanted folks to be taken back 100 years. So I particularly looked for songs from that era. Well, it's funny, because she's kind of the charismatic one and the leader, and you picked this great music just that exemplifies that. It's like a perfect complement to who we're meeting at that moment, so hat's off to the music. I thought it was very well done. Let's see another clip from The Hello Girls.

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Pete

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Narrator

Pete

As we sailed out of the New York Harbor, a young aviator asked me, "Why are you in that uniform?" I looked him straight in the eye. "Same as you. "I'm on my way to France to help win the war." Well, she's a flamboyant person. She had to be. She had a lot of energy, a lot of energy. She didn't speak French, and so she didn't join the Hello Girls until July, but they needed her by that time, because she was a highly experienced trainer, and especially on those little magneto switchboards that were gonna go up into the trenches. And so she trained 60 men one time, in three days, and the man said, in the group, as they were assembling, "Well, when do we get our skirt?" "You're not going to get one, "But think about this, that when you're in the trench "with your rifle, you have a rifle. "When you go into the trench with your little magneto, "you could save a whole battalion." -

Narrator

Pete

I finally went to see the Army doctor. The infection in my toe was severe. He took one look and prescribed cold steel, lanced it without anesthesia. I think he was surprised when I didn't squeal. I got to France a week late. So what made Merle such a great leader, and so charismatic? Why was she the one that was sort of front and center in your film? You know, part of it was she was from Montana, so she was, you know, kind of-- Did she jump out? Of all the girls you read about, was she kind of, was it instant, like, oh this is? Especially after the war. You know, when she came home, she knew what she had done, and she knew what the rest of the girls had done, that they were there. So the different was, is that, there was about 13,000 women that were in the Navy and Marines, that never left our shores. But they got their veteran benefits. Wow. And the 223 women that went in harm's way, didn't. And had air raids, yeah, right, wow. So when she came back, she said this isn't right, and that's what drove her to make that right. You have great transitions in the film, with this field shot in black and white, and then the flowers kind of getting their color. Talk a little bit about that. Where did that come from? Well, I knew we couldn't tell the story of all 223 women, so we picked four. We picked those four. So when they originally come up, one flower will come up, and two, then three, then four, and then when we get to the end and we show, we run the list of names of all the women, that's when we populate the field, and the audience, 'cause I've asked that question at screenings, Did you get that piece? They said, absolutely. They were now part of the entire group. Where is that, where did you film that? That's Flanders Field. That we had to purchase. That was purchased online, That's Flanders Field, and that's the song in Flanders Field from World War I. So you got these different locations. I assume all these people didn't live close to each other. Talk a little bit about the locations you had to go to. How much travel was involved in the locations where you filmed? I filmed in Kansas City, in Marine City, Michigan, Lafayette, California, and we'll save the best two, D.C. and Bethesda, but the best two for last. I filmed Carolyn Timby in Lake Winnipesaukee, from What About Bob? fame. Oh, yeah. - Remember that movie? I'm sailing. - Right, right there. So they have a beautiful cabin that her grandmother built there. And then I also went to Chaumont, France to interview one of the daughters, which is where her mother was stationed 100 years ago, right across from General Pershing's headquarters. That's great. Okay, so you're the director. You obviously have the finally say in everything. It's your baby, it's your project. As a director, do you take a lot of input from people? Do you have a producer you work with, or did you go to Elizabeth and say look at this for me? Where do you get input to help you make decisions? I had a really great editor, a young guy, and it was very collaborative. So that was kind of important, and so when I selected him as the editor, that's what I told him. I said, look, I've got a lot of this in my head, but there's gonna be times when I'm gonna get stuck. And there were times. I remember a Saturday, sitting, staring at the ground for eight hours because we couldn't get past a scene. So I just said, look, I need you to watch this film, too. I need you to get into the story and listen to the music, and then we need to be collaborative. And it worked out well. That's great. I would imagine, with the editing process in a documentary, where you've got a lot of people sitting and talking, you've gotta keep that exciting and the pace moving along, so that's why I was asking. It's gotta be hard to make those, 'cause you watch it so much. You see the film and the cuts over and over. You have to ask other people for their input. Absolutely, and we started with the concept, I told the editor and the supervising editor that these women were on a roller coaster ride their entire life, and I said "That's what I want to take the audience on." When suddenly things are going well, and everyone's laughing and exciting, boom! Then something else happens, like the fire or the air raid. They're so happy to be there, then they go into an air raid. So they were on a roller coaster ride their entire life during the war and then trying to get their recognition. So I said, "We've gotta make the audience feel that ride." Well, I think you definitely did that, because you are surprised. You're not expecting to see telephone operators in harm's way, so when that air raid hit, it's like, oh, wow, they were right there.

Jim

Right there. - Yeah, very well done. Do you like the editing process better or the prep time and the shooting? Yeah, that's, you know, editing-- - A lot of filmers like the editing because they're done and they can sit back. So far, I like 'em both kind of equally 'cause that way during the direction piece, and I'm the one doing the interviews as well, so I'm really heavily involved, but I don't take the footage or the story and then hand it someplace else. So the editor's sitting here, and I'm sitting right over his shoulder to the left, and we're just going through it all. Yeah, great. All right, let's see another clip from The Hello Girls. So when she was elected to Congress, one of the women who had been involved with Hello Girls got in touch with her, got in touch with the two new female members of Congress, my mother and Marjorie Holt, and said, "Here's what's going on. "Help us." She realized, as do many women who go to Congress, that not only was she representing the second district of Louisiana, she was representing, unbeknownst to her, the women of America. And women came to her with their problems and concerns, and among them were military women throughout the 20th century. So women from World War I, women from World War II, came to her and told her of their stories, and she was appalled. She couldn't believe that these women had served so nobly and been treated so badly. We convinced them to expand that legislation ever-so-slightly to include-- The WASPs of World War II and the Signal Corps women of World War I. -

Narrator

Jim

Today, the few Signal Corps telephone operators of World War I who are still living can celebrate our victory. The Army has finally admitted we are legitimate. In 1917, General Pershing called for American women to enlist to operate the Army switchboards, but when the job was finished, we were told we hadn't been in the Army. More than 50 bills were introduced in Congress without success. In November 1977, a package bill was sent through Congress. We were finally in the Army. On November 23, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed the legislation. The Signal Corps women of World War I will have their place in history! That's great. I noticed you have a band there that says... You brought some swag with ya? I did, I brought some swag for you and the crew. You brought one for me? - Yeah, I did. I've got it right here, and on the back, I'm gonna show you this, it says, "You had me at hello." "You had me at hello," look at that. And the Hello Girls on the front. - Oh, that's great. I don't think they can see that. Well, that's fantastic, well, thank you. I don't get much swag on the show. Not enough, actually. - Right I think we should get more of it, though. That's great, thank you very much. You're welcome. Now we're hello buddies. Hello buddies for the Hello Girls. You just said something while we were watching that last clip about keeping the film darker in the darker times. Talk about that because I didn't even notice the lighting in the film. Tell us about that. So, the 60-year struggle, you can only imagine the women feeling down about it and been rejected. I think it was 55 bills in Congress to help them, over 50, for sure. So when we got to the point, where right before they got their recognition, we kept the footage deliberately dark to give that feeling that this was a dark period for them, and then you notice right at the end, when they get recognition, Jimmy Carter, and I think Tip O'Neill is in the background, and he looks up. He's not looking at them, but we just found that footage, where he's standing there giving a speech, and he's looking up at somebody else, but it fit really perfect, so it was kind of like victory at the end. Talk a little bit about the work you do at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C.? I started out right here in Wisconsin at the Tomah VA Medical Center in 2000 as a public affairs officer, and then I moved down to Jackson, Mississippi, public affairs officer there, and then I switched agencies, still with the VA, but now I'm a speech writer for the National Cemetery Administration. I saw that in your file. How do you make that leap, from those two to film? Was it natural? Did you have a film background somewhere? No, I didn't have a film background. What helped me make that leap is I went back, older, at 47 years old, to get a master's degree in history, and that's when I found my first story, and I just decided to film it. I knew an editor, I said, well, now let's make a film. Judging how fast you work, I'm guessing you're 48 right now. Yeah, right

laughing

Jim

. So your film is sort of hypnotic, in a way. You've got all this old footage. It's so great. You've got these people who are very articulate and they speak so well about history. My question is what kind of a crew do you carry around when you're doing that? Is it just you and one other person? Some documentaries have a bigger crew. What kind of crew were you working with? It was always me and just one other person, and a two-camera setup. Wow. - Yeah. And everybody was receptive to being on camera? Was there anybody that was camera-shy, or could they not wait to talk about the Hello Girls? They couldn't wait to tell their story, and their grandmother's mother's story. Funny story about Cokie Roberts, if I can tell it real quick? Yeah, sure. So we go over to her house, Elizabeth Cobbs helped set that one up, but Cokie had just come back in from Jamaica, so you see her right there, a little bit tan, and it was snowing out in Maryland. So we go into her house, we sit down. She's such a pro. She knew exactly what she wanted to say, she miked herself up.

Pete

Wow. Yeah, and sat down in that chair, and just, almost, I didn't even have to ask the questions, 'cause she knew what she wanted to say, and we were out of her home in 35 minutes. She offered us red beans and rice, but we said no thank you. That's a pro, huh? - Yeah, that's a pro. We got about 30 seconds left. Biggest challenge making this film, 'cause it seems like its' a pretty easy ride, but it's a film. You had to have hit some stumbling blocks somewhere. As always in the editing process, I think, is where you hit the stumbling blocks, and one in particular, I thought, I had gone all the way to Chaumont, France, and I didn't get the footage that I wanted. I didn't get her to say what I wanted her to say, but then we found it, so that's the deal. Still seems like pretty smooth sailing, considering everything. - Yeah, it went good. Jim, thanks a lot for being here today. Oh, thank you so much. It was great talking to you, I really enjoyed the film. Hey, and thank you for watching Director's Cut. For more information on The Hello Girls, please go to WPT.ORG and click on Director's Cut. While you're there, send us an email or find out how to submit a film. I'm Pete Schwaba. We'll see you next time on Director's Cut. Now sit back, because The Hello Girls on Director's Cut Presents starts right now.