Animals in Action

This is one of the last Pete Smith specials. After a quarter of a century of the ex-publicity man producing and narrating silly shorts for MGM, the company was starting to shut down its shorts department This one shows a series of newsreel clips, ranging from exciting (a parachuting dog; the running of bulls at Pamplona) to cute (a goat kid playing with ducks) to silly (a chimpanzee washing a kitten in a sink).

There would be a couple more Pete Smith specials issued, but the contraction of movie profits due to the rise of television was squeezing the majors. Short subjects, which had once comprised the entirety of a movie program, had become an expense that no longer justified their inclusion. A feature received a percentage of the the total receipts of ticket sales. Shorts were rented for a flat fee. Exhibitors, anxious to get in more showings, were renting fewer of them and they were no longer economically justified. Cartoons would survive a bit longer, and so would newsreels, to be finally wiped out by their TV counterparts, but the shorts production were in their end game phrase. So when Pete Smith speaks his signature close, "Goodbye now" he meant forever.

Animals in Action (1955)

*** (out of 4)

This Pete Smith short is pretty much exactly what you'd expect it to be as the narrator gives his comments over some footage of various animals doing various tricks. Some of these include a dog race, a dog jumping out of a plane with a parachute, a monkey giving a cat a bath and we see a couple baby chimps fighting with a dog. I think PETA members will probably want to stay away from this as I'm sure some animal lovers might object to some of this material. There isn't anything real damaging and there's certainly no deaths but the scene with the dog landing from the plane jump even made me cringe as did a scene where a racing dog runs into a board. With that said, I still found the film entertaining and extremely cute from start to finish. This includes a very cute scene where a bear is trying to teach its cub to swim. The footage is mostly rough footage and there's certainly no "direction" going on here but at just 9-minutes it's worth watching.