Strikes and Spares

Strikes and Spares (1934)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar nominated short from MGM has Pete Smith showing us (at the time) the greatest bowler in the country and various trick shots. We also see a bowling newbie and all the mistakes he makes. If you're a fan of bowling then you'll probably get a kick out of this film, which contains several hard laughs and some great trick shots.

Warner has released this short on DVD and you can also finding it playing on Turner Classic Movies quite often. They do a very good job at showing the Pete Smith shorts.

A Smith called Pete shows us Andy Varipapa, "the World's Greatest Bowling Fixture" and the toast of Brooklyn, in the first of three short subjects. Oh boy! True, Mr. Varipapa uses two balls to clear the 7-10 combination, but the balls cut didoes while he does so.

While bowling is not considered a major sport these days, it still has its supporters, and when I was growing up, everyone played it at least a few times. This short shows its audience the game as it existed before automatic pin setters came into being; besides, Pete Smith's forced joviality is always good for a laugh.

Like so many of the wonderful released from Turner Entertainment, the MGM classic "Treasure Island" is accompanied by several short films from MGM from the same year--1934. Many old MGM and Warner Brothers films are packaged this way on DVD--making them great values for the money.

While you'd think that a short film from the 1930s about bowling sounds pretty awful, amazingly "Strikes and Spares" is pretty watchable--mostly because of the terrific bowling demonstration by Andy Varipapa. The is one of a very long series of shorts narrated by Pete Smith--though this one is a lot less comedic than many of his later films. It consists of an explanation of how to improve your bowling and what techniques to avoid (by watching a dorky guy doing it all wrong)--as well as trick bowling by Varipapa. As for Varipapa, I'd never heard of him before but still cannot believe the crazy things he was able to do in this film without trick cinematography! You just have to see him in action to know what I mean--trust me, he was incredible! I particularly liked the crazy stunt involving two lanes during the same roll of the ball!

Did you know that ten pin bowling shoes have one rubber sole and one leather one? Well that's just one of the plethora of explanatory comments we learn from Pete Smith in this idiots guide to the intricacies of the bowling alley. Thanks to the assistance of local expert Andy Varipapa, we learn a little of the technique involved in keeping the ball out of the gutter as it hurtles along towards the pins, too. Realising, thankfully, that this might make for quite a boringly repetitious feature, we now see one poor hapless fellow who couldn't hit a barn door with a shovel have a go before the accomplished Mr. Varipapa demonstrates some quite impressive, if perhaps a little chauvinistic, trick shots that marry precision with a bit of flair. This production is also a little more sophisticated with a little more on-screen animation and even some slo-motion replays to guild it a little. There's plenty of pith from Smith and it's an easy watch.

This short was nominated for an Oscar as a novelty short. It's basically showing a very good bowler doing the trick shots he was well-known for at the time. Andy Varipapa was a professional bowler who made a decent living doing shows from town to town performing trick shots in front of audiences and this features some of his better ones. Pete Smith's narration is well-suited here. This runs on Turner Classic Movies periodically and almost always in March as filler between movies. Recommended.