Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies: Leonard Maltin's Short Film Showcase

Tomorrow, our friends at Turner Classic Movies present Leonard Maltin's Short Film Showcase, three dozen short subjects covering a wide variety of subjects and genres. Roger Fristoe has written about the 36 film collection on the TCM website.



First remember reading about a good many of the 36 films TCM shall present Monday in Leonard's terrific book The Great Movie Shorts: Those Wonderful One- and Two-Reelers of the Thirties and Forties.



Have copies of The Great Movie Shorts, first published in 1972, as well as the 1983 trade paperback reissue, Selected Short Subjects. Combined with Leonard's books Movie Comedy Teams, The Disney Films, The Great Movie Comedians and Of Mice & Magic, these formed, along with William K. Everson's books and Clown Princes & Court Jesters by Kalton C. Lahue & Sam Gill, a terrific foundation of classic film education.



Leonard hosts the Short Film Showcase, which will include quite a few unbeatable classic movies - comedies and musicals - near and dear to the diehard film buffs at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog.



Vitaphone cranked out tons of musical short subjects, starting with the Vitaphone Varieties in 1926 and extending through the Melody Masters big band shorts well into the 1940's.




In the 36 movie lineup: two particularly wonderful musical short subjects produced by Vitaphone in the 1930's and featuring outstanding African-American entertainers.

Short Subject Potpourri #1 kicks off with Smash Your Baggage, an exceptional Vitaphone musical short made in 1932. First heard about this from one of the country's top animators and animation historians, who is also a big time classic movie buff and aficionado of musical short subjects. It did not disappoint.



Small's Paradise Entertainers, a super talented troupe of dancers and musicians, were the featured performers at the Harlem nightclub Small's Paradise. In Smash Your Baggage, entertainers whose day jobs are as redcaps and porters in a train station (which looks like Grand Central) give a performance to raise money for an ill member of their group.



There is spectacular singing and dancing throughout the nine minute running time.



In the red-hot Small's Paradise house band: ace trumpeter Roy Eldridge, future Count Basie Orchestra trombonist Dicky Wells and the legendary "Big Sid" Catlett on drums.






Leonard Maltin's Short Film Showcase also includes The Black Network (1936), featuring one of the early silver screen appearances by the incredible Nicholas Brothers. This is just one of many Vitaphone mini-musicals directed by Roy Mack before he started making Soundies in the 1940's.



In The Black Network, the Nicholas Brothers sing "Lucky Number" and show off their near beyond-belief terpsichorean skills. For more info, check out the Fayard Nicholas website and the entry on The Black Network on the Department of Afro American Research, Arts, and Culture.



Vitaphone also made 2-reel comedies in the 1930's - and two are included in Leonard Maltin's Short Film Showcase.



In this writer's opinion, by far the funniest of the "Big V Comedies" are the talkie "comeback" shorts starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.



In Buzzin' Around (1933), the "Prince of Whales" plays a homespun inventor who has developed a substance which keeps china from breaking - at least until a swarm of angry bees and much resultant mayhem intervene. Arbuckle's acrobatic Sennett Comedies and Comique Productions co-star (and nephew) Al St. John and the equally amazing Pete the Pup from Our Gang co-star.



The second Vitaphone comedy short is Ralph Staub's pie-throwing homage to Mack Sennett's silent slapstick comedies, Keystone Hotel (1935). Former Sennett luminaries Ben Turpin, Ford Sterling, Marie Prevost, Hank Mann, Chester Conklin and the Keystone Kops star. Unfortunately, Keystone Comedies stalwart Mack "Ambrose" Swain passed in August 1935 and Roscoe Arbuckle, who would have fit right in and thrown pies with gusto and precision, passed after finishing shooting the last of his six Vitaphone 2-reelers on June 29, 1933.



Not surprisingly, given Mr. Maltin's writings in The Great Movie Shorts and The Great Movie Comedians, there are many films among the 36 chosen produced by Hal Roach in the Short Film Showcase.




There will be a bunch of films starring the great movie comedian who, in addition to Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy, gets the biggest belly laughs from the crew at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, Charley Chase a.k.a Charles Parrott. The lineup will include Whispering Whoopee (1930), Girl Shock (1930), The Pip From Pittsburg (1931), His Silent Racket (1933), Fallen Arches (1933), The Chases of Pimple Street (1934) and Four Parts (1934).



In Four Parts, Charley plays adult quadruplets - a traffic cop, a bus conductor, a taxi driver and a physician - all living under the same roof. He also sings "Auntie's Got Ants In Her Pantry."



Notable in the mix: our favorite of The Charley Chase Talkies here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, The Pip From Pittsburg (1931), the closest Mr. Chase got to replicating the blazing comedy brilliance of his 1924-1926 work, in collaboration with director Leo McCarey, in sound films.

After Thelma and Charley made a wonderful team and worked beautifully together in The Pip From Pittsburg and other short subjects, producer Hal Roach spun Thelma off into her own series. He had been experimenting with female comedy teams for awhile, having teamed comediennes Anita Garvin and Marion "Peanuts" Byron in the silent 2-reelers A Pair Of Tights, Feed 'Em And Weep and Going Ga-Ga, so Thelma was teamed with character actress and comedienne ZaSu Pitts.



The team headlined 17 short subjects, two of which, Asleep in the Feet (1933) and The Bargain of the Century, get the spotlight in the Thelma Todd & Friends segment. The latter, directed and written by Charley Chase, is a brilliant comedy, spotlighting the relationship between ZaSu and Thelma while expressing the duo's character acting mojo.

Patsy Kelly succeeded ZaSu Pitts as Thelma's teammate and foil in 1933, and they would co-star in 21 comedy shorts. One of the very best in this series, Top Flat (1935), will be on the program.

Lesser known Lot Of Fun series are also represented. The Boyfriends comedies were director George Stevens' teenage variation on "Hal Roach's Rascals," featuring the silent era cornerstones of Our Gang, Mary Kornman and Mickey Daniels, as well as the equally prolific silent movie child actress Gertrude Messinger, the future director of Our Gang comedies and Robin & The 7 Hoods Gordon Douglas, and soon to be super-stuntman David Sharpe. Doing much of the comedy heavy lifting throughout the 1930-1932 series: the wonderfully goofy comedian Grady Sutton, known for his stellar work with W.C. Fields. Four entries from The Boyfriends series Air-Tight, Call A Cop, You're Telling Me and Too Many Women will be seen.

Also on hand will be a cross-section further comedy favorites noted at length in The Great Movie Shorts, including Robert Benchley short subjects (How To Sleep, A Night At The Movies), Pete Smith Specialties (the Oscar-nominated Movie Pests) and the musical comedy Apples To You! starring Billy Gilbert as "Pinsky," a flamboyant burlesque impresario hired to add a bit of excitement to a lackluster production of The Barber of Seville.

Bringing the Short Subjects spotlight into the post-World War II era will be two hilarious examples of the Joe McDoakes series, directed by the one, the only Richard L. Bare for Warner Brothers.



George O'Hanlon, known to comedy and animated cartoon fans as the voice of George Jetson, stars as wiseguy regular guy Joe McDoakes. So You Want To Be a Detective (1948) and So You Want to Play the Piano (1956) demonstrate how the Joe McDoakes one-reelers rank among the most consistently funny of movie shorts.



We thank TCM and Leonard Maltin for doing this! Always enjoy re-visiting the terrific musical shorts and very funny comedies of the 1930's and 1940's. We also extend two respectful tips of a Stan & Babe style brown derby to Dave Lord Heath of the extremely informative Another Nice Mess: The Films Of Laurel & Hardy website. We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog much appreciate its many levels of research, reviews and frame grabs regarding all things Hal Roach. Have donated to this worthy website before and shall do it again!