The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939)

Actors: Don Ameche (actor), Davison Clark (actor), Tyler Brooke (actor), Harry Davenport (actor), Dick Elliott (actor), John Elliott (actor), Charles Coburn (actor), Henry Fonda (actor), George Guhl (actor), Jonathan Hale (actor), Russell Hicks (actor), Otto Hoffman (actor), Warren Jackson (actor), Frank Jaquet (actor), Sheldon Jett (actor),

Plot: Alexander Graham Bell falls in love with deaf girl Mabel Hubbard while teaching the deaf and trying to invent means for telegraphing the human voice. She urges him to put off thoughts of marriage until his experiments are complete. He invents the telephone, marries and becomes rich and famous, though his happiness is threatened when a rival company sets out to ruin him.

Keywords: 1870s, alexander-graham-bell, boardinghouse, boston-massachusetts, business-competition, businessman, character-name-in-title, christmas, deaf-mute, deafness
Genres: Biography, Drama, History,
Taglines: Darryl F. Zanuck's Entertainment gem will take its place in the Hall of Fame !

Quotes:

Alexander Graham Bell: Your honor... Have I committed some offense by starving in an attic? by spending sleepless nights at my work? by being too poor to own a decent scrap of paper, on which to tell her of my love? I have sat here for days and heard myself called liar, thief, fraud and cheat. I've seen my friends humiliated, my invention belittled, just as I have seen my business destroyed by methods which must leave every honest man appalled.

Alexander Graham Bell: Mr. Watson, come here, I want you!

Mrs. Hubbard: Mr. Watson, please eat something. You must have the appetite of a bird.::Thomas Watson: Yes, Ma'am, a vulture.

Alexander Graham Bell: ...shall the lonely scientist, the man who dreams, and out of his dreams benefits the world, is he, that often half-starved, lonely little man, to be told the world has no need of him the moment his work is done?::Alexander Graham Bell: Is he to be told that others, less gifted, but stronger, men with money and power behind them, are waiting to take the product of his genius and turn it to their own uses? -leaving him with liar and thief branded on his brow as his only reward? Do that, and you stop the clock of progress. You smother the spark of genius that lies hidden here and there throughout the world. Do that, and the world stands still.