[Hallicrafters] Ham radio short film on TCM

[Richard Knoppow]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <W4AWM at aol.com>
To: <k5wms at centurytel.net>; <National at mailman.qth.net>; 
<hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 7:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Hallicrafters] Ham radio short film on TCM


> TCM frequently runs a Pete Smith Specialty called RADIO 
> HAMS on  its One
> Reel Wonders segment. Smith produced these one and 
> sometimes two  reelers for
> theatres in the 50s. Some were very funny, others just 
> plain camp.  The
> theatres would run these before features. They were called 
> one reelers  because
> they were usually on a single reel which had a maximum of 
> 20 minutes of
> 35mm film.
>
> Here is a ling to the Pete Smith Speciality:
> _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBGIdf0VjQ4_ 
> (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBGIdf0VjQ4)
>
> enjoy.
>
> 73,
>
> John,  W4AWM
>
     Pete Smith produced his "Specialties" for 
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for many years. Smith was actually an 
exectutive in the M-G-M publicity department but began 
making a series of short subjects for the studio around 1935 
and continued for about twenty years. These were distributed 
with M-G-M feature films. Before the break-up of the big 
studios due to the "consent decree" anti-trust action of 
1948 all studios engaged in "block booking" where theaters 
and theater chains had to agree to take the comple output of 
a studio for a calendar quarter. This included whole 
programs, i.e., an A feature, a B feature, and some shorts, 
typically a newsreel, a cartoon, and some specialty. The 
exception was "road show" distribution of new, high budget, 
films which were shown alone, at least they were not paired 
with a  second feature.
     The Pete Smith series were often very funny and are 
worth seeing. TMC has them because they bought rights to the 
M-G-M library. M-G-M was unique in not selling its library 
for TV or to some outside distributor so this package has 
some 5000 items in it.
     I am old enough to remember seeing Pete Smith 
Specialties in the theater when I was a kid.


--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL
dickburk at ix.netcom.com