Warner Featurettes

A featurette is a motion picture with a running time between a half hour and 50 minutes in length, too short to be labeled a feature and often considered too long to be labelled a film short.

Warner Brothers released several of these between 1953 and 1964. Although the trade periodicals like Film Daily and BoxOffice (magazine) occasionally listed the two-reel “Warner Specials” (actually Technicolor Specials and Broadway Brevities) as “featurettes”, the term usually applied to Warner shorts lasting a full half hour or longer.

Overview

A decade earlier, the studio cut down a Technicolor documentary, Pledge to Bataan, initially shown at 54 minutes in 1943, and released it as a 20 minute Technicolor Special on February 3, 1945.[1] At the time, theater exhibitors preferred receiving their short films packaged by series.

By the 1950s, however, the success of Walt Disney and others with such series as the True-Life Adventures made the “extra length” short subject fashionable as a double bill presentation. The terms varied according to references, with a longer than usual Deep Adventure occasionally labeled a feature.[2]

Two titles hosted by Jack Webb of Dragnet (series) fame, 24 Hour Alert and The John Glenn Story, were Academy Award nominees.

Also between 1958 and 1961, Warner Brothers produced four of The Bell Laboratory Science Series for television, but utilizing longtime short film director/writer Owen Crump.

List of titles

TitleMajor creditsRunning timeRelease, copyright or review dateNotes
Black Fury Ted & Vincent Saizis (directors); music: Howard Jackson & William Lava; narrators: John Brown & Marvin Miller 32 minutes September 9, 1953 Profile of David Da Lie, naturalist and vet in Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia.
Production Report by Jack Warner 25 minutes March 1955 Technically a promotional
You in Italy about 40 minutes [3] June 1955 Made for the U.S. Signal Corps
24 Hour Alert Mark VII co-production, Cedric Francis (producer); Robert Leeds (director); music: William Lava; hosted by Jack Webb & Art Balinger 31 minutes December 22, 1955 Profiles jet operations with the US Air Force. Nominee for Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film
Chasing the Sun producer: Cedric Francis; André de la Varre (director); Owen Crump & Charles Tedford (writers); music: Howard Jackson 31 minutes February 1956 Tour of Miami and Silver Springs, Florida
Deep Adventure producer: Cedric Francis; Scotty Wellbourn (director); Ross Allen, William Fuller & Dottie Lee Phillips; story: Owen Crump (writer); narrator: Johnny Jacobs 46 minutes May 1957 sunken treasure adventure shot in Florida
Forbidden Desert producer: Cedric Francis; Jackson Winter (director); narrator: Marvin Miller; Rafik Shammas 45 minutes December 21, 1957 travelogue of Saudi Arabia and biography of John Lewis Burckhardt
Israel Leon Uris (producer); Sam Zebba (director); music: Elmer Bernstein; narrator: Edward G. Robinson 30 minutes February 20, 1959 CinemaScope travelogue sponsored by the Israel Bond Organization
A Force of Readiness William L. Hendricks (producer); narrator: Jack Webb 26 minutes May 25, 1961 co-produced by the U.S. Marines
The Misery Merchants Cedric Francis (producer); story: William K. Wells 29 minutes December 1961 shot in black & white, documentary for the Arthritis & Rheumatism Foundation
The John Glenn Story co-produced by National Aeronautics & Space Administration; William L. Hendricks (producer); narrator: Jack Webb 30 minutes December 1962 Nominee for Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film
Sea Power William L. Hendricks (producer) 25 minutes September 1964 made for the U.S. Marines

See also

References

Notes

  1. ↑ BoxOffice, July 21, 1945, p.7
  2. ↑ Blume, Daniel. Screen World Vol. 9, 1958. Biblo & Tannen Publishers, p.166
  3. ↑ Liebman, Roy. Vitaphone Films – A Catalogue of the Features and Shorts. 2003. McFarland & Company, p. 318 states four reels
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