Kinda OT- Short Subjects

[Jack]

Other than cartoons, are there any other classic short subject series you like?

I'm a bit of a fan of "Popular Science," "Unusual Occupations," and "The Three Stooges" (or were the Three Stooge shorts technically "featurettes"?)

People sure had some wierd occupations back them, like the guy who could make pumpkins that were shaped like sculls...


Jack :D

[Argus Sventon]

I'm a fan of the Popular Science shorts. I wish AMC would tell us when they would appear.

[Nelson]

Here's my list of favorite short subjects....
The Dogville Comedies
The Boyfriends
Chester Conklin
Laurel & Hardy
Our Gang
Three Stooges
Burns & Allen
Charley Chase
Harry Langdon
Ripley's Believe It Or Not
Pete Smith Specials
The Taxi Boys
Fox Movietone Newsreels
Thelma Todd & Zasu Pitts
Buster Keaton
Fatty Arbuckle
Harold Lloyd
Mermaid Comedies
Ben Turpin
Popular Science
MGM Colortone Revues
Our Gang
Keystone Comedies
W.C.Fields
Al St. John
Edgar Kennedy
Will Rogers
Charlie Chaplin

Those are all my all time favorite short subjects, outside of cartoons.

[PorkyandDaffy]

Three Stooges

[BobChief]

Gosh, 'Nellie', you ain't particular, are ya? :p

I also enjoy the Jerry Fairbanks shorts (Occupations, Popular Science), and the J. A. Fitzpatrick color travelogues made at MGM (TCM shows them between flicks now and then).

Are Speaking of Animals shorts seen much on TCM anymore?

[Mibbitmaker]

Mainly the Three Stooges and Laurel & Hardy are my favorites.

...And the types of shorts ripe for MST3K! (for just such a purpose :D )

[Blacklight]

I've been trying to track down the animated shorts they used to show on "The Great Space Coaster" (remember that?). There was a segment where Roy used some wrist TV to introduce the clips, and they weren't just your standard kiddie stuff. So far I've identified:

"The Butterfly Ball" (a British short, intended to be a pilot for a kid's show, but abandoned. This is available on enhanced CD under "Roger Glover and Guests".) This is the only short in this post I actually own.

"It's So Nice to Have a Wolf Around the House" by Paul Fierlinger. This was about a wolf who gets hired as a housekeeper by an old couple, and they find out he used to be part of a gang, but the wolf really has changed his ways, and he's in poor health. It ends happily with all three moving to Arizona. This was an Oscar nominee in '78 or so.

"La Linea" by Osvaldo Cavandoli. This was an Italian series of shorts, where the animator draws a line onscreen and there's a little guy in silhouette who does funny things. I understand this was only released long ago in PAL format.

[Geezil]

Originally posted by Nelson
Here's my list of favorite short subjects....
The Dogville Comedies, The Boyfriends, Chester Conklin,
Laurel & Hardy, Our Gang, Three Stooges, Burns & Allen,
Charley Chase, Harry Langdon, Ripley's Believe It Or Not,
Pete Smith Specials, The Taxi Boys, Fox Movietone Newsreels,
Thelma Todd & Zasu Pitts, Buster Keaton, Fatty Arbuckle,
Harold Lloyd, Mermaid Comedies, Ben Turpin, Popular Science,
MGM Colortone Revues, Our Gang, Keystone Comedies,
W.C. Fields, Al St. John, Edgar Kennedy, Will Rogers,
Charlie Chaplin
Those are all my all time favorite short subjects, outside of cartoons.

(Hey, if CN can time-compress, why can't we space-compress? Anyway...)

Buster Keaton, yea! W.C. Fields, double yea!! And when & if AMC or TCM will give him his due, Fatty Arbuckle, triple yea!!!

(BTW, if you already know of Arbuckle's history, you'll likely agree that Hollywood will never be able to atone for its near-total silence as the American public killed him by degrees, even after the courts found him clearly innocent of murder. And especially considering that in later years, no one knew how many other such "stars" were likely saved by hidden politics because the movie studios considered them indispensible. Some lovely hypocrisy there, and food for thought...)

[Geezil]

Originally posted by Blacklight
I've been trying to track down the animated shorts they used to show on "The Great Space Coaster" [...]

Ah, yes, there was one of the few bright spots in late '70s kidvid! And here's one more short that popped up there: UPA's "A Unicorn in the Garden," very faithfully based on one of James Thurber's slightly eccentric short stories. (See the chapter on UPA in Leonard Maltin's Of Mice and Magic for the full skinny on how that team kept it so faithful.)

[Gossamer]

Originally posted by Geezil


Ah, yes, there was one of the few bright spots in late '70s kidvid! And here's one more short that popped up there: UPA's "A Unicorn in the Garden," very faithfully based on one of James Thurber's slightly eccentric short stories. (See the chapter on UPA in Leonard Maltin's Of Mice and Magic for the full skinny on how that team kept it so faithful.)

Unicorn In the Garden is on at least one of the Columbia Classics series. Also, if anyone knows where It's So Nice To Have a Wolf Around the House can be found, I'd really appreciate the information. It's great!

[Blacklight]

"We were wolves! We were wild! We were *wonderful*!" :D

I must have missed that Thurber short. As unicorn-crazy as I was in grade school, that would have stood out! I also recall one that was an instrumental-only music video with an astronaut, it looked airbrushed. The others that come to mind are a short where a Pinocchio puppet goes to school, however it hadn't been brought to life yet so it got F's in everything except Classroom Behavior ;) , Carole King's "Chicken Soup with Rice" which can be found from time to time on Ebay, "Munro", about a four-year-old who gets accidentally drafted into the army, and what I think is another Fierlinger short about a boy named Louie James who drops out of school at age eight or so and finds out how difficult it is to keep a job when you haven't learned to read.
Whoever it was at Sunbow that decided to add this segment really did a nice job.

[PlopKat]

Speaking of short subjects, on Turner Classic Movies tonight, there are four classic Charlie Chaplin silents starting at Midnight EST/11 pm CST. They are:
The Immigrant
The Adventurer
The Cure
Easy Street


My list of favorite shorts looks very much like Nelson's. The tip top would be Laurel & Hardy, Our Gang/Little Rascals, and Edgar Kennedy.

-PlopKat

[J Lee]

Back in the 1970s, WNEW in New York used to show the Edgar Kennedy and Leon Errol RKO shorts as fillers when the late night movie ran short. The Kennedy comedies, with the shrill wife (sometimes played by The Beverly Hillbillies' Irene Ryan), shrewish mother-in-law and weasly slacker brother-in-law is pretty much the grandfather of most modern sticom plots.

[Blacklight]

Correction to my last post - the Carole King cartoon was called "Really Rosie".
Another one I remember was "Witch's Night Out", with that weird 70's stylized look to the kids and their babysitter.

[Bobby B]

Originally posted by Blacklight
The others that come to mind are a short where a Pinocchio puppet goes to school, however it hadn't been brought to life yet so it got F's in everything except Classroom Behavior ;)


That sounds like the National Film Board of Canada short "Spinnochio".

[Matthew Hunter]

I like the Three Stooges myself. I also enjoy some of those Vitaphone concert musicals that show up on TCM occasionally...there was one with Cab Calloway that was really good. It's too bad so many artists like these haven't stood the test of time.
-Matthew

[SloppyMoe]

My favorite live-action shorts:

* Buster Keaton (aka "the master")
* Our Gang (all except the fairly worthless post-Hal Roach shorts from MGM)
* Joe McDoakes
* W.C. Fields
* Three Stooges
* Harold Lloyd
* Roscoe Arbuckle
* Laurel & Hardy
* Thelma Todd & Zasu Pitts (I've only seen a few of these, but they're great stuff)
* Charley Chase (ditto)
* Unusual Occupations
* Popular Science
* MGM Passing Parade

By the way, it looks like Turner Classic Movies will be saluting the Hollywood short subject on Monday nights in February '02. Here's what is listed on TCM's February schedule:

(2/5)
08:00 PM - Added Attractions --this must be a new retrospective documentary program
09:30 PM - Robert Benchley Shorts
11:00 PM - Added Attractions
12:30 AM - Dogville Comedy Shorts
03:00 AM - Bobby Jones Golf Shorts
04:00 AM - Sports Shorts

(2/12)
08:00 PM - Before They Were Stars
10:00 PM - Directors in the Making
12:30 AM - Western Shorts
02:30 AM - World War II Propaganda Shorts
04:30 AM - Fitzpatrick Travel Talks

(2/19)
08:00 PM - Jazz/Swing Shorts
09:00 PM - Big Band Dance Shorts
11:30 PM - Academy Award Winning Shorts
01:00 AM - Technicolor Shorts
03:00 AM - Joe McDoakes Shorts***
04:30 AM - Early Sound Shorts

(2/26)
08:00 PM - Hollywood on Hollywood
10:00 PM - Added Attractions
11:30 PM - Classic Comedy Shorts
01:00 AM - Warner Brothers Historical Shorts
02:30 AM - Crime Does Not Pay Shorts
04:00 AM - Pete Smith Specialty Shorts
05:00 AM - MGM Passing Parade Shorts

--Hmmmm... I wonder if a few classic, uncut cartoons will be slipped into any of the generic categories?

*** I particularly recommend the McDoakes shorts. They were made by WB in the 1940s & 1950s, and starred George Jetson...er, George O'Hanlon as an amiable dope who manages to screw up every possible endeavor. They're often surreal & quite hilarious. I'm not sure if Carl Stalling and/or Treg Brown worked on them, but it sure sounds like their work.

[The Dork Knight]

1. Laural and Hardy
2. Our Gang
3. Three Stooges

[Sogturtle]

My two cents worth. My list would run like this:

Charlie Chaplin
Buster Keaton
Laurel & Hardy
The Three Stooges (aka "The Three Hooges" when they performed live in Ireland!!)
W.C. Fields
Speaking Of Animals (that Avery tie ya know...)

A lot of us would include the great Buster Keaton in such a list. But I suspect most such listings are a reference to his magnificent SILENT shorts and not to his almost never seen sound shorts... Those were made for Educational Pictures (same people that released the early Terrytoons), and later on for Columbia. The notion of Buster Keaton working alongside the Three Stooges for several years blows my everlovin' mind...!!!
(Course if Walter Lantz could work as a gagman for Laurel & Hardy and Mack Sennett...)

Recently got a complete collection of all Keaton's sound shorts from a gentleman in the South. Interesting and funny (not even close to being done watching them).

[Thad Komorowski]

Definitly the THREE STOOGES.


-Thad

[Argus Sventon]

Originally posted by Sogturtle
My two cents worth. My list would run like this:

Charlie Chaplin
Buster Keaton
Laurel & Hardy
The Three Stooges (aka "The Three Hooges" when they Those were made for Educational Pictures (same people that released the early Terrytoons)

Educational Pictures, aka Educational Film Exchanges, was headed by Earl W. Hammons. They eventually became short subject providers to Fox in the mid 30s.

[Nelson]

Febuary will be a VCR ALERT on TCM....

On 2/5/02 that will be an hour long documentary special on the history of"Short Subjects" at 8pm to 9pm EST....

Let me tell you guys, that this is going to be very good series
and it is worth setting your vcr's for this great event.Some of the shorts are newly restored from the Vitaphone Project and the UCLA Film And Televison Archive, that haven't been seen in many decades.

I do plan on recording the entire month long "Short Subjects" festival and try not to miss and tape the 2 1/2 hour "Dogville Comedies Marathon" which I think they'll be showing all nine shorts.This is one the funniest two reel comedies ever made and I highly recomend you tape this series. :D