Why did O'Donnell need the switchboard operator Margaret?

My opinion is this over the past ten years or so it seems almost mandatory to put females in war movies.Atonement,Pearl Harbor, Avatar etc. I guess the movie had too many male charaters and not enough females in it.Also it added to the time setting of this movie.Back in the 60's operators for Ma Bell were nasally voiced house wifes with thick East Coast accents...think Lily Tomlin from Laugh-In.Nowadays operators tend to be young men from India or Pakistan.So that just gave you another remindeder that this was a different period of time.

O.K., she was plain-spoken, brisk, and a little sarcastic when dealing with callers while working on the Whitehouse switchboard. But so what? Why did she have to be the one to inform Commander Ecker that he had a phone call from O'Donnell? Did O'Donnell think that Ecker was going to refuse a call from the Special Assistant to the President unless some bossy lady patched him through?

It was O'Donnell who was speaking to the man; his words had to impress upon him the gravity of the situation and the urgency of his request. Any one of his assistants could have introduced the call by saying to Ecker, "You have an urgent/important call from Special Assistant to the President Kenneth O'Donnell. It's a matter of National Security."

Besides, is someone as high-up as O'Donnell actually going to be aware of the telephone mannerisms of a Whitehouse switchboard operator? As long as he gets his calls, why would he even notice?

He was telling - ordering - pilots to disregard their chains of command at the behest of the president. He wanted every advantage, and he thought that the operator's tone would provide a good introduction to the tone of his conversation. He knew that an in-person interrogation was likely (which is what happened), and he wanted to ensure that he had the pilots on his side.

I always thought that maybe he wanted her because he knew her attitude might be required to get to the guy who was going to fly the mission. He couldn't really inquire through the normal channels for Ecker's name or phone number because the last thing he wanted was that kook Lemay or other Air Force brass knowing he was calling, bypassing the chain of command totally, and what would O'Donnell tell Lemay if Lemay asked why he wanted that number? So he thought the pushy lady would succeed in getting the number without letting the brass know it.

That's the only reason I can think of.

That scene doesn't make sense to me. There's too much of a setup and no payoff. If they were trying to suggest that her tone would convey something to the pilot before he spoke to O'Donnell, they didn't give her enough to say to make it meaningful. My guess is that she probably did say more to the pilot but they cut it for some reason.

Since the phone call never happened, she wasn't needed.

I guess being on the brink of nuclear armageddon wasn't exciting enough for Hollywood, it had to invent things to spice it up.