Trailers for shorts?

[silentfilm]

I've never seen a trailer for a short film before, but Ray Faiola recently restored a trailer for Beau Hunks (1931)with Laurel & Hardy. This was a four reeler, so maybe not technically a short, but I have never seen or heard of a trailer for a non-feature.

[FrankFay]

I'd say Beau Hunks qualifies as a short feature- a Hal Roach "Streamliner" before he thought of the term.

[Jack Theakston]

Apparently, some were made for Hal Roach shorts according to the pressbooks/press sheets.

Also, during the '40s, there were snipes for Stooge shorts and cartoons, but I don't think these were sanctioned by the studio, and were made custom for theaters by outfits like Filmack.

[boblipton]

Some random thoughts.... well, my usual random thoughts, randomly arranged

1: it was not unknown for short subjects to be more of a draw than the feature: Chaplin, certainly, L&H almost certainly and I know that at least a couple of Jack White's short subjects were advertised as the draw for at least one theater in San Francisco -- my apologies for not being able to state the details, although I think it's from that long interview White did that we got photocopies of for the MOMA extreme slapstick course. Which might, of course, be simple self-aggrandisement.

Forty minutes is not really a short. Certainly Chase's three-reelers were cut back about this time to two-reelers, in part.... well, I suspect they cost at least 50% more to make than wo-reelers and didn't bring in that much more money. We're getting into the thread of how to define a feature, but I suspect that during this period -- when the term would have its 'classical' meaning, that this would establish two reels as a short and anything much above 30 as a B .... which might actually be the real draw if shown alongside one of MGM's programmers.


BEAU HUNKS was originally to be a two-reeler, but the gags got out of hand, and when that happened with PERFECT DAY, they simply dumped the second part. But Roach had already been packaging the foreign-language versions of L&H as FIVE-reelers (NOCHES DE DUENDES) and wanted to see if his biggest team -- although not his most profitable -- could be moved up into the big dollars of features.

Thus, I suspect, while most of Roach's products were limited to glass slides or a generic sort of "Coming soon to this theater!", he went rather whole hog on this one.

So my argument is that this was not a short, but a feature, and a trailer would be perfectly appropriate.

Bob

[Hal Erickson]

According to Maltin and Bann's book on OUR GANG, Pathe released trailers for both the Our Gang two-reelers from Roach and the Ben Turpin shorts from Sennett--evidently the only short subjects of the 1920s thus honored.

[Richard M Roberts]

According to Maltin and Bann's book on OUR GANG, Pathe released trailers for both the Our Gang two-reelers from Roach and the Ben Turpin shorts from Sennett--evidently the only short subjects of the 1920s thus honored.

Keaton shorts as well. I have one from THE GOAT and one for THE BALLOONATIC


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[boblipton]

Would those be from the original release?

Bob

[Richard M Roberts]

Would those be from the original release?

Bob

Yeah, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned them.

RICHARD M ROBERTS