The Sports Parade (a.k.a. “The Sport Parade”) was a

short film A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...

series of

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bro ...

that was regularly shown before the main studio feature, along with another Warner-

Vitaphone Vitaphone was a sound film system used for feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects made by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National Pictures, First National from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone is the last major analog sound-on-disc sys ...

short,

Joe McDoakes ''Joe McDoakes'' is an American Short film, short-film comedy series produced and directed by Richard L. Bare for Warner Bros. A total of 63 black and white, black-and-white, live action, live-action, reel#Motion picture terminology, one-reel fil ...

comedy and/or

Looney Tunes ''Looney Tunes'' is an American media franchise produced and distributed by Warner Bros. The franchise began as a series of animated short films that originally ran from 1930 to 1969, alongside its spin-off series ''Merrie Melodies'', during t ...

and

Merrie Melodies ''Merrie Melodies'' is an American animated comedy short film series distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was part of the ''Looney Tunes'' franchise and featured many of the same characters. Originally running from August 2, 1931, to Septem ...

cartoons. The average running time of each film was between nine and eleven minutes.

Overview

Virtually all of these were filmed in

Technicolor Technicolor is a family of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes. The first version, Process 1, was introduced in 1916, and improved versions followed over several decades. Definitive Technicolor movies using three black-and ...

. (A few early ones used

Cinecolor Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two-color motion picture process that was based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and the 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel an ...

as it gradually replaced the Vitaphone Color Parade on Warner’s short subject program.) This gave them an advantage over rival series like

Paramount Paramount (from the word ''paramount'' meaning "above all others") may refer to: Entertainment and music companies * Paramount Global, also known simply as Paramount, an American mass media company formerly known as ViacomCBS. **Paramount Picture ...

Sportlights with

Grantland Rice Henry Grantland Rice (November 1, 1880 – July 13, 1954) was an American sportswriter and poet known as the "Dean of American Sports Writers". He coined the famous phrase that it was not important whether you “won or lost, but how you playe ...

, Columbia World of Sports, RKO

Pathé Pathé SAS (; styled as PATHÉ!) is a French major film production and distribution company, owning a number of cinema chains through its subsidiary Pathé Cinémas and television networks across Europe. It is the name of a network of Fren ...

Sportscopes, Universal Variety Views, and

MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, commonly shortened to MGM or MGM Studios) is an American Film production, film and television production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered ...

Pete Smith “Football Thrills”, which used color sparingly for special entries. Warner’s most prolific competitor in Technicolor live-action shorts,

20th Century-Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc., formerly 20th Century Fox, is an American film production and distribution company owned by the Walt Disney Studios, the film studios division of the Disney Entertainment business segment of the Walt Disney Com ...

, produced only 20 out of 100+ Movietone Sports Reviews from the late thirties through early fifties in color. In the era before television, it was considered more economical to shoot in black and white like the

newsreel A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news, news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a Movie theater, cinema, newsreels were a source of cu ...

s. Although Warner Bros. separated this series from its less sports-oriented series Technicolor Adventure (film series) during the later 1940s, many post-war Sports Parades resembled high quality color travelogues of the period, showcasing a variety of recreational pursuits in the Caribbean, South America, Europe, Egypt, India and Australia.

André de la Varre André de la Varre (September 14, 1904 – December 19, 1987) was a leading American travelogue filmmaker from a prominent family who started as a 17-year-old visiting Europe with a recently acquired movie camera at the end of World War I. Born ...

supervised many of the best international productions, while Edwin E. Olsen and ski expert Dick Durrance were particularly skilled at using hand-held cameras for up-front action shots.

Howard Hill Howard Hill (born Lemuel Howard Hill and later cited Howard H. Hill;"Lemuel" is verified as Hill's first name in th"Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910" image of original census page for John F. Hill family, "Wilsonville Town", Shelby C ...

specialized in archery and Van Campen Heilner handled many fishing and camping reels for both Warner and studio rival RKO. Despite lacking high profile sports news commentators, key radio veterans like Art Gilmore and Marvin Miller put a lot of energy and enthusiasm into their narration. The series won three

Academy Awards The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence in ...

and was nominated three other times. Despite being phased out in 1956, they were successfully reissued throughout the sixties since many of the topics had a timeless appeal and were always popular at the box office.

List of titles

Below is a listing of titles by year of release, listed by title / major credits / release date / notes of interest. Only a few have made DVD release.

1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

1946

1947

1948

1949

1950

1951

1952

1953

1954

1955

1956

References

* Liebman, Roy ''Vitaphone Films – A Catalogue of the Features and Shorts'' 2003 McFarland & Company * ''Motion Pictures 1912-1939 Catalog of Copyright Entries'' 1951 Library of Congress * ''Motion Pictures 1940-1949 Catalog of Copyright Entries'' 1953 Library of Congress * ''Motion Pictures 1950-1959 Catalog of Copyright Entries'' 1960 Library of Congress
BoxOffice back issue scans
Warner Bros. short films Documentary film series