While there is some heavily gendered blather juxtaposed with some entertaining and atmosphere filling late-1960s jazz, the star of the short film is Mr. Typewriter who incessantly “sells” him self to a contemporaneous mannequin secretary.
This commercial for a 1966 Royal 660 electric typewriter predates Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey by two years. But based on the scripting, pacing, composition, and even some of the character, it seems like Kubrick was heavily inspired by this short film.
HAL 9000’s tone in 2001 seems to have come straight from Mr. Typewriter and even some of the typewriter/computer personification particularly in the camera angles on the machines seems stark and heavily familiar. One can’t help but notice how Mr. Typewriter looms over the viewer at the 7 minute mark as it delivers it’s “helpful” advice.
“I think you’ll like the half sheet better. It is faster.” —Mr. Typewriter, [timestamp 6:59]
Litton Business Systems, Inc. was a subsidiary of Litton Industries, Inc., an American defense contractor that specialized in shipbuilding, aerospace, electronic components, and information technology. They had bought out Royal Typewriters and had created the electric Royal 660 (released in 1966) specifically to compete with the IBM Selectric (introduced July 1961). Given the time period Litton would have been a potentially more ominous corporate parent than IBM.
Movie buffs have often speculated that the letters of H.A.L.’s name were a one letter increment from I.B.M. Kubrick was known to have corresponded with IBM in relation to the film, but perhaps this was a macguffin to cover up the inspiration from Royal and Litton?
Stanley Kubrick was known to have used an IBM Model C electric typewriter which was manufactured between 1958 and 1967.
Here, Mr. Typewriter in a calm voice makes suggestions to a secretary about his usefulness while HAL does it for a male astronaut (a heroic figure of the space race in that time period). Suddenly the populace feels the more mysterious computer might be a bad actor compared to the typewriter which was slowly being supplanted.
With any luck, Mr. Typewriter wasn’t sexually harassing anyone in the office, but it’s highly unlikely any of the audience at the time was dwelling on such issues until Colin Higgins’ 9 to 5 (Twentieth Century Fox, 1980) which uncoincidentally featured a row of Royal electric typewriters in it’s trailer.
Intriguingly it bears mentioning that the voice over on the 9 to 5 trailer sounds like William Schallert, who portrayed the avuncular Professor Quigley in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (Walt Disney Productions, 1969), another film of the period which has something to say about personifying information systems and the coming era of artificial intelligence, though this time as embedded into the brain of a young Kurt Russell.
While the gendered roles portrayed at the time are atrocious (a male machine represented by a male voice is now directing the woman’s work in the office instead of her too-busy, jet-setting male boss), you have to love the techno-utopianism engendered by Successful Secretary:
“We’re living in an electric world, more speed and less effort.”—Mr. Typewriter
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