Summary
In the smoke-filled backrooms of a pre-war Washington D.C., William C. de Mille’s 'The Woman' unfolds as a biting critique of the Machiavellian maneuvers inherent in American legislative architecture. The narrative centers on the precarious ascent of Matthew Standish, a reformist 'insurgent' whose burgeoning popularity threatens the hegemony of the Mullins bill—a corrupt legislative vehicle designed to enrich railroad interests at the public's expense. Orchestrating the opposition are Jim Blake, a formidable party boss, and his cynical son-in-law, Mark Robertson. Desperate to dismantle Standish’s reputation for unimpeachable virtue, the duo deploys a private investigator to unearth a long-buried indiscretion: a clandestine liaison with an unidentified woman of high social standing. The film’s tension crystallizes around a telephonic trap intended to force Standish into revealing the woman’s identity. The nexus of this intrigue is Wanda Kelly, a sharp-witted telephone operator at the Hotel Keswick. When Standish desperately dials 'Plaza 1001' to warn his former paramour, Wanda becomes the unwitting custodian of a secret that could shatter the very foundations of the political machine. In a twist of Greek tragic proportions, the 'anonymous' woman is revealed to be none other than Blake’s own daughter and Robertson’s wife. As the political ring attempts to bypass the truth to release a hollowed-out scandal, Wanda’s steadfast refusal to betray her switchboard becomes an act of heroic defiance, ultimately forcing a confrontation that pits familial loyalty against the ruthless pursuit of power.
Synopsis
The story relates the attempt of a group of machine politicians at Washington to ruin Matthew Standish, an insurgent who has made himself so strong with the people that he is in a position to defeat the Mullins bill, fostered by a corrupt ring in Washington, in favor of certain railroads. The leaders of this ring are Jim Blake, the boss of the party machine, and his son-in-law Mark Robertson. Standish is being hailed throughout the country as the exponent of morals and virtue, and Blake realizes that the only way to defeat him is to find some blot on his record in the past. He puts a detective to work, who, by bribing Standish's former secretary, finds out that some years ago Standish became involved with a young woman of good family, but for some reason he did not marry her. Blake realizes that skillfully handled, this story could be made to ruin Standish's career, but without the woman's name it will look like a campaign lie. So the entire machine bends its energy to discovering the woman's identity to prove the story. To accomplish this, they lay a trap that they think will make Standish try to warn the woman by telephone. He is deceived and does telephone the woman to be on her guard, calling the number Plaza 1001. Wanda Kelly, telephone girl at the Keswick, has been told of the plan by Blake, who believes that she can be bribed to give him the telephone number. After Standish telephones, Blake's son-in-law Robertson comes in to 'phone his home in New York, calling the same number that Standish has just called. Wanda, the operator, sees that the woman in the case is really Blake's daughter and Robertson's wife, and besides refusing to give the number, destroys her record sheet. Mrs. Robertson arrives from New York and is driven to desperation when Standish informs her that, though he has tried to protect her, he needs to give her name to Blake and Robertson if they continue striving to ruin him by this story. The subsequent events leading to the conclusion of the drama and the defeat of the offensive Mullins bill in Congress are stirring in the extreme. Once again the telephone girl interferes in the plot by disconnecting the wires when the "ring'' politicians, driven to their last ditch, are trying to telephone a newspaper to release the story even without the woman's name. She keeps her courage after this, even when threatened with arrest and criminal prosecution. It is the woman herself who finally comes to the rescue and refuses to see the little telephone girl made to suffer further on her behalf. This terrible revelation makes Blake and Robertson see what a veritable heroine she has been and even leads to the happy consummation of a romance between the telephone operator and Jim Blake's son.
Review Excerpt
"
The Telephonic Panopticon: Power and Privacy in De Mille’s 1915 Opus
William C. de Mille, often overshadowed by the bombastic spectacle of his brother Cecil, possessed a far more surgical understanding of the human condition and the evolving sociopolitical landscape of early 20th-century America. In The Woman (1915), based on the play by William C. de Mille himself, we find a cinematic tapestry woven with threads of institutional rot and individual integrity. Unlike the visceral urban grittin..."
