December 1, 2024 – This is a movie about a mysterious woman whose image appeared on a popular educational game software package called Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. I had never heard of it, but I had heard of someone connected with the software, and I'll get into that later.

From the discussion in the movie, I gather that the black woman in question, Renée L'Esperance, an immigrant from Haiti, served as an inspiration to many blacks, who had never seen a black woman associated with software before.

The movie compares L'Esperance to the late Nichelle Nichols, the actress who played communications officer Nyota Uhura in the original Star Trek series and several Star Trek movies. Nichols worked with NASA to inspire a number of people to enter science fields, including some of the first black astronauts.

Finding Renée L'Esperance and learning how she became the face of the typing software became a passion project for film director Jazmin Jones, and her assistant, Olivia McKayla Ross, who are both on screen for most of this documentary.

Their method for tracking down L'Esperance and her story is highly unusual, including what appears to be a Tarot card reading and a seance. They distributed wanted posters and set up a web site and phone number to solicit information about L'Esperance. They visited the houses and neighborhoods where she used to live and asked people there what happened to her.

They also contacted the surviving creators of the program, owners and operators of Software Toolworks. The company released this typing program in 1987, and it is still being sold. The company was founded in 1980 by Walt Bilofsky in his garage. In 1987, Bilofsky, Les Crane and Mike Duffy were running the company when it released Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.

According to interviews in the movie, some companies refused to carry the product because of Renée L'Esperance's image on the package. She was beautiful, but she was also black. That all changed when the program's popularity soared after a positive review in the New York Times. The program flourished and Renée L'Esperance's photo remained on the cover for years, despite the racism.

The more people that Jazmin Jones, and Olivia McKayla Ross interviewed, the more different versions of the story they hear about Renée L'Esperance and how she was discovered at a department store. Sondra Blake, ex-fiancé of the late Les Crane tells a story of the discovery of Renée L'Esperance and how she became the face of Mavis Beacon. She seems the most credible, but there are other stories about this.

Les Crane, that is one of the few names I recognized in this whole story, because I used to listen to his pioneering radio talk show on KGO, and later saw his short-lived ABC network talk show. According to at least one account in the movie, Crane had the idea for the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing program. He also had the idea for the cover photo of Renée L'Esperance.

But what happened to Renée L'Esperance? Jones and Ross finally did track her down, and they also discovered there had been a lawsuit concerning the use of her image on the typing program. Jones and Ross encounter difficulties in dealing with L'Esperance, her son, and even had problems with the studio they had been using for a movie production headquarters.

They somehow powered through and got the film finished after several years (some of it was evidently shot during the pandemic). This movie is more about the personal journey of Jones and Ross than anything else, and it is a meandering, strange and wild ride. I think this movie is suited mainly for people who are interested in Renée L'Esperance and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. The movie didn't spark my interest in those subjects, so it was a chore for me to sit through it.

For me, the process of making the movie, the difficulties encountered by the filmmakers, and the strange way they went about it is more interesting than the central mysteries being investigated. Good journalists perhaps could have made this a fuller, more satisfying and compelling movie. Instead, it seems more of an inward gazing art project. The movie also could have been tightened up if the many superfluous utterances of the word “like” could have somehow been removed from the soundtrack. This movie rates a C.

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