Passing Parade

I watched a number of these short films as a little boy in the 1950's. They were invariably fasciinating and hugely educational (and put me in very good stead with my teachers at school, particularly my geography teacher.) It touched just about everything; Mark Carlton's advocating hard red wheat varities suitable for Midwest plains, newspaper fraud detection using scented celephane tape, aptitude tests for job placements etc. My rather stern parents were somewhat surprised that they had no trouble goading me into watching what they thought was a very good learning programme. I would dearly love to see them ALL again.

Passing Parade (1938)

*** (out of 4)

This rightfully titled film is the first in John Nesbitt's Passing Parade series, which would run until 1949 and end up with seventy-one films. This first film features three different stories starting off with the best, which is how millions of Americans have money in banks that they don't know about. The story centers on a man who deposits money into a bank before being shipped off to fight in WWI where he's killed. He puts a name on the bank slip, which leads to a ten year search. The second story is the life of an automobile from its first time on the road and to the various hands that it gets passed down to. Finally we hear about mail order brides and why some people would want to find love that way. This isn't the greatest film that the series ever produced but the first story was actually so good that one wishes it would have gotten the entire 10-minute running time. It does get the majority of the time but this leads very little for them to do on the second and third story so these here could have either been cut all together or simply saved for a different episode. The first movie contains some nice drama and the mystery of the person the money belongs to was pretty nice.