Taking a Long, Loving Look at Short Films

Audiences today plunk down their $9 at the theater to see commercials, a barrage of previews and a movie. That wasn’t the case in the first half of the 20th century, when the short film was an integral part of the moviegoing experience.

In fact, short films were so popular they often shared marquee billing with features.

Frequently, patrons would go to the movies just to see the latest Laurel and Hardy or Three Stooges short.

Turner Classic Movies pays tribute to movie shorts with a new 90-minute documentary, “Added Attractions: The Hollywood Shorts Story,” premiering on the cable network today.

Produced by Peter Jones (“Sam Goldwyn”) and adapted by Leonard Maltin from his book of the same name, “Added Attractions” takes a lighthearted look at the history of the medium.

Narrated by Chevy Chase, the documentary features historians, newscasters and Hollywood personalities who were either influenced by or appeared in these shorts, including Walter Cronkite, Gregory Hines, Howie Mandel, Branford Marsalis, Tim Conway and Bob Newhart.

The documentary also kicks off a festival of 125 vintage shorts that will air every Tuesday in February on TCM.

Maltin, who describes himself as a “child of the first TV generation,” grew up watching classic Laurel and Hardy, Little Rascals and Three Stooges shorts on TV.

“They even used to show silent comedy shorts,” he says.

“I was weaned on this stuff, and it just made me want to see more and made me want to know more about the people and the films.”

The short films ran the gamut from musicals featuring Broadway and vaudeville performers to Technicolor travelogues, newsreels, sports, comedies, histories, dramas, serials and war propaganda.

Such stars as Robert Taylor, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, Shirley Temple and Deanna Durbin appeared in short films before making the leap to features. Short films were also a training ground for up-and-coming directors. Fred Zinnemann, who won Oscars for directing “From Here to Eternity” and “A Man for All Seasons,” got his start in short films

Audiences today, Maltin says, can’t grasp the importance of these shorts. “It was such a commonplace part of moviegoing,” he says.

“I used to teach a class in the history of animation, and cartoons are such an irrevocable part of TV now, it is hard to get young people to fully understand that they were never shown just to kids. They were part of the movies.”

One of the most popular series of shorts from the early sound era featured legendary golfer Bobby Jones demonstrating how to play the sport, sometimes with stars such as W.C. Fields.

“They are gorgeous,” Peter Jones says. “They used really great high-speed photography. It looks very, very advanced for its time, which it was.”

The musical shorts that Warner Bros. and Paramount produced in New York are in some cases the only filmed records of seminal Broadway and vaudeville performers.

The singers and comics were at home in front of the camera because they knew their routines and when to pause for a joke.

“[Producer] Hal Roach told me [that] when he did previews of Laurel and Hardy films, he would sit with a timer to time the laughs,” Jones says. “Then they would go back and edit the take longer, so they wouldn’t step on the next laugh. So it was almost as if it were a live performance.”

The Dogville Comedies from the early 1930s were perhaps the most surreal of all the movie shorts.

Created and produced by Jules White, who later produced all of the Three Stooges shorts, they featured dogs dressed in clothing spoofing various movies of the day. The dogs looked like they were talking because the directors gave them peanut butter to eat. Wires kept the pooches in place.

Screenwriter Robert Lees points out in the documentary that the quality of the MGM short films was just as high as that of its features: “What was wonderful about the shorts department was [that] everybody who was under contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had to work,” he says.

“So if they weren’t on a feature, they were on a short. Which meant we had the best set directors, we had the best cutters, we had everything.”

Maltin is an unabashed Laurel and Hardy fan. But he also has a soft spot in his heart for the MGM comedy shorts starring acerbic humorist Robert Benchley.

“Robert Benchley was a real hero of mine long before I knew he had ever appeared in films,” says Maltin.

“When I was in school, back in the Cro-Magnon era, we studied humor. We read James Thurber and Robert Benchley. That is when I first came to Benchley, and when I learned he had done these shorts, I finally got to see some of them.

“That was a wonderful discovery,” he said. “He just makes me laugh. He almost doesn’t have to do anything.”

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“Added Attractions: The Hollywood Story” can be seen at 5 and 8 p.m. today on Turner Classic Movies. “Robert Benchley Shorts” will be shown at 6:30 p.m.; Dogville Comedy Shorts at 9:30 p.m. and Bobby Jones Golf Shorts at midnight.