Added Attractions: The Hollywood Shorts Story

Added Attractions: The Hollywood Shorts Story (2002)

**** (out of 4)

This documentary, taken from Leonard Maltin's book, tells the story of how short films were a major force behind the studios from 1926 until the late 50s. The movie takes its time in showing all of the studio and what films they were working on. We see clips from Laurel and Hardy, Charley Chase, Three Stooges, Pete Smith, Joe McDoakes, Traveltalk, Crime Does Not Pay and various other popular series. This documentary does a great job at telling the story of these films and we also get all kinds of information that I didn't really think about before. There's also talk of how many of the shorts are what drew people to the theaters instead of the actual feature. There's a lot of stories being told and I'm sure each of these series could have gotten their own documentaries but this film is a good place for people to start. You get audio interviews from Harold Lloyd and Hal Roach as well as live interviews from various members of the Our Gang series as well as current stars. Chevy Chase narrates.

Fun documentary on short subjects--they used to play before movies in theatres. They explain how it started and show Hal Roach as the first man who started comedy shorts with the Our Gang (later Little Rascels) and Laurel and Hardy and such. We see early vitophone shorts; vaudeville and novelty acts; 3D shorts (as early as the 1940s!); the Three Stooges; famous actors and directors who started in shorts; travelogues; serials and cartoons. It seems television killed them in the 1950s. The film primarily focuses on the MGM short studio (no surprise--TCM co produced this and they own the library of all MGM movies). There's some incredible stuff here but it's too short (no pun intended). They also just focus on MGM and almost entirely ignore the other studios. Still, within its limits, this is fun and entertaining. I give it an 8.

Of course a documentary about short subject films can only skim the topic--and that is the biggest reason the film only gets a 7. It's a well-made film for TCM but so many important things are just too quickly glossed over. I could easily have seen this made into a series instead of one show. In particular, I would have loved to have seen more emphasis on the short comedies--and this COULD make up an entire documentary by itself or a series of documentaries. Also, some shorts such as travelogues and early appearances by later stars might have been handled but weren't. I'm not complaining about what this is--it is done well. It's just that too much can't be crammed into a single documentary.

Just watched this fascinating documentary on the "TCM Archives: Laurel & Hardy Collection" DVD. It tells of the short film from the silent era to the '50s when television phased them out. We get glimpses of Mack Sennett and the way he made his silent comedies leading to Hal Roach and his founding of Our Gang and later Laurel & Hardy. We see many of the musical acts of vaudeville make their way to the Vitaphone studios of Brooklyn. We see some classic scenes of The Three Stooges. And then there's the various series of short subjects from M-G-M like Dogville, Pete Smith Specialties, Robert Benchley, the Travelogues, and Crime Does Not Pay. Finally, there's the Joe McDoakes shorts from Warner Bros. that starred George O'Hanlon as Joe. He would later become George Jetson's voice on "The Jetsons". Chevy Chase narrated with much of the info provided by Leonard Maltin, expert movie historian. In summary, Added Attractions: The Hollywood Shorts Story is well worth a look for anyone interested in this sort of thing.