The “Vitaphone Color Parade” was a series of documentary

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

s produced by

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

Overview

The majority of these one-reel (under 10 minutes) short subjects were produced by Edward Newman of the

E. M. Newman Travelogues Edward M. Newman (1870–1953) was a film producer of many documentary film shorts released by Warner Brothers and edited at Vitaphone studios in Brooklyn, New York in the 1930s. These were mostly of the travelogue (films), travelogue genre. He ...

and co-directed by Ira Genet in New York at the

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 from 1926 to 1931. Vitaphone was the last major analog sound-on-disc system and the only one ...

studios, but a few later entries were completed in California. These were directed by Del Frazier with

Gordon Hollingshead Gordon Hollingshead (January 8, 1892 in Garfield, New Jersey – July 8, 1952 in Balboa Island, California) was an American film producer, associate producer and assistant director. Career Hollingshead began his career as an assistant di ...

as producer.

Mechanix Illustrated ''Mechanix Illustrated'' was an American printed magazine that was originally published by Fawcett Publications. Its title was founded in 1928 to compete against the older ''Popular Science'' and ''Popular Mechanics''. Billed as "The How-To-Do Ma ...

backed a series that resembled, in part, the

Jerry Fairbanks Gerald Bertram Fairbanks (November 1, 1904, San Francisco — June 21, 1995, Santa Barbara, California) was a producer and director in the Hollywood motion picture and television industry. Biography Fairbanks survived the 1906 San Francisco eart ...

Popular Science (film) ''Popular Science'' (1935–1949) is a series of short films, produced by Jerry Fairbanks and released by Paramount Pictures. The ''Popular Science'' film series is a Hollywood entertainment production – the only attempt by the movie ind ...

series made for rival studio

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...

. These consisted of individual segments spotlighting technical marvels and took cameras “behind the scenes” to show how popular household items were manufactured. A few were shot in full

Technicolor Technicolor is a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films running through a special ...

, but the majority edited in New York utilized the more economical

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 ...

. By 1940, these were replaced by the

Sports Parade The Sports Parade (a.k.a. “The Sport Parade”) was a short film series of Warner Bros. that was regularly shown before the main studio feature, along with another Warner- Vitaphone short, Joe McDoakes comedy and/or Looney Tunes and Merrie M ...

List of titles

Notes

{{reflist

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
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Vitaphone short films Warner Bros. short films Documentary film series

Overview

List of titles

See also

Notes

References