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Greenbriar Picture Shows has a post on a one-reel Vitaphone melodrama, which got me thinking about this forgotten mini genre. As another commenter asks:

Those early one-act melodramas are truly odd. Were audiences really hungry for a reel of tears and depression between the cartoon and the feature?

Which as I noted there, has been my question too ever since seeing that little vaudeville playlet about the immigrant in Godfather II. Could you get audiences worked up in a melodrama and its characters that quickly— basically, one reel? I mean, sure, if you're D.W. Griffith making The New York Hat you could. But by the early 1930s? Did anyone successfully make standout examples of the speed-drama? Are there great ones with great performances? The only one I can think of is A Star in the Night, the Don Siegel Christmas short (which besides being a decade later is also, one should note, 22 minutes long, which is almost as long as, say, an episode of Twilight Zone or the old religious TV drama series Insight).

Anyone want to make a case for a genuinely great one or two reel talkie-era drama, or at least performance?

"The Hard Guy" maybe--although its twist ending seems a little pat after what went before. I recall another 1930 Vitaphone drama, "Five Minutes from the Station", as being pretty good.

Roscoe Karns shows his acting chops in "Copy", a 1929 MGM drama in Warners' latest collection of shorts. He starts gleefully writing about a tragic story--until he realises that his own wife and daughter might be dead.

"The Spectacle Maker" (1934), while more of a musical than a drama, is one of John Farrow's earliest directoral efforts and has interesting religious symbolism in view of Farrow's later Catholicism.

There's also "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1941) with Joseph Schildkraut. Some of Warners' Technicolor historical shorts are quite good, including the one about Clara Barton, "The Flag of Humanity" (1940).

-HA

Yeah, the MGM Miniatures and Warner Historicals are the best. SONS OF LIBERTY with Claude Rains, directed by Michael Curtiz. It doesn't get much better than that!

Then there are the Warner western shorts with Robert Shayne. One was a remake of DODGE CITY, with Shayne lost in Errol Flynn's wardrobe. Some theaters played it on the same bill as the reissue of DODGE CITY!!

There were some good shorts in the MGM Crime Does Not Pay series.

I can't vouch for its quality as I have never been able to track down a copy, but MGM's The Woman in the House (1942) fits the bill. A wartime bombing forces an agoraphobic woman to leave her house for the first time in 40 years. A dramatic story to wedge into ten minutes of screen time! It was pretty much a one-hander, and it was on the basis of her performance in it that Ann Richards won a contract with MGM.

It's interesting that the Passing Parade series (of which The Woman in the House was one) originally came from radio, because that kind of very short, intensely dramatic vignette was not uncommon on radio. I recall a particularly good one from the MGM-backed Good News, - a sort of Amelia Earhart story starring Joan Crawford (and written by Patsy Ruth Miller, by coincidence). Well written, quite the emotional roller coaster, and less than twelve minutes long.

I rather enjoy Henry B. Walthall's talkie debut in the one-reel drama RETRIBUTION (1928), which has a clever twist at the end. And of course there's the Oscar-winning AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE (1962), a three-reeler that showed up two years later as a "Twilight Zone" episode, the only episode not filmed specifically for the series. There are plenty of notable modern one-reel to two-reel dramas made primarily for festivals and building a reputation and resume. The Oscar-winning TOYLAND (2008) and THE NEW TENANTS (2009) are good examples.

THE WOMAN IN THE HOUSE is on YouTube as well as other 'Passing Parade' shorts. It appears to be in the wrong ratio, but that may rectify itself when downloaded. I remember seeing a few of these shorts on TNT in the 1990s when we had cable tv so it will be interesting to see a few more as well as reacquaint myself with ones I've seen,,,

It's amusing to see Peter Cushing at the very beginning of "The Woman in the House" - probably a stock-shot from DREAMS, another "Passing Parade" featurette.