The other book I got today at the library, off the discard table, is called The Great Movie Shorts -- Those Wonderful One- and Two-Reelers of the Thirties and Forties by Leonard Maltin.It was published in 1972, Bonanza Books, hardback, 236 pages.
This was before videos were available, just TV, and some of the episodes -- maybe most of them -- were seen there whenever they happened to come on.
I remember on one of our channels at the time, Sunday mornings I believe it was, they featured Laurel and Hardy films, the shorts, which were very enjoyable. We made a point of watching it.
The biggies for me that are in this book are The Little Rascals and The Three Stooges. The Rascals were on TV once in a while, and it seems like they had a dedicated time for them too, but I don't remember seeing them in an orderly way, like, "Hey, let's watch the Rascals." I remember later on there was a time they were on and I saw them occasionally. The Three Stooges are the real biggies. And still are. At my grandpa's place we had two basic shows to watch, the news and the Stooges. Now I have an assortment of Stooges from over the years, videos taped off TV, a few videos purchased, and more recently, the collected, in-order sets that present the shorts in remastered form. These are fantastic. Vol. 2 just came out in the last month, and I finished watching them (the first time through) this morning.
But back to the book. The book tells of the various studios making short films. Then it gets into the various actors and acts, in a section called "The Series." These include, and my list is not exhaustive by far, Charley Chase, W.C. Fields, Buster Keaton, and others. W.C. Fields, I was surprised to see, only had five short films, talkies that is.
A real good thing about the book is that it gives a little synopses of each film from the actors and acts. The episodes are numbered, etc. Also there's lots of good black and white photos, and a good index.
