Movies: Pete Smith

The friendship between two orphans endures even though they grow up on opposite sides of the law and fall in love with the same woman....

Romance of Radium is a 1937 American short film directed by Jacques Tourneur, and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This short film tells the story of the discovery of radium and how it is used in medicine. In 1937, it was nominated for an Academy Awa...

La Fiesta de Santa Barbara is a 1935 American comedy short film directed by Louis Lewyn. It was nominated for an Academy Award at the 9th Academy Awards in 1936 for Best Short Subject (Color). It features a young, pre-stardom 13-year-old Judy Garland...

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are stopped by narrator Pete Smith for the purpose of showing the audience how much wood and wood by-products the average person carries....

This short film presents several athletes preparing for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California....

Trader Hound, a dog who walks upright, wears human clothes, and speaks English, is in darkest Africa with a young sheik who is looking for adventure. With their native guides, they are searching for a lost princess, Nina T-Bone. After sleepless mosqu...

This Pete Smith Sports Champion short visits Southern California where it quickly moves from orange orchards to the mountain snow playground at Big Pines L.A. County Camp for some winter sports including sledding, skating, and ski jumping....

An examination of the history of anesthesia, from ancient Egyptian times to contemporary times....

This Pete Smith Specialty shows newsreel footage events that live up to the title. They include, among others, a diaper derby (the father who puts a diaper on his child fastest wins), a fireman's ball (two teams of fire fighters use high-pressure wat...

Pete Smith tells the story of 'Sparky', a German shepherd dog trained to lead his blind master, a country doctor who lost his sight in a fire, and now has to depend upon the dog to lead him in his daily rounds. 'Sparky" was the dog who was responsibl...

The story of the short film from the beginning of the movies in the 1890s, when all movies were shorts, through the 1950s when short subjects virtually disappeared from theaters....

This short film showcases water sports activities such as sailboat racing and surfboard riding, including Christian Peterson doing a human surfboard at 45 mph....

A chef helps a housewife cook a duck dinner that will not give her husband indigestion....

A short film where viewers are given 10 or 15 seconds to answer questions about the United States and its involvement in World War II....

A humorous history of the bicycle since 1819....

This humorous short film shows how carelessness and accidents can harm the war effort, and steps on how to avoid them....

In this Pete Smith Specialty, cameraman Charles T. Trego films water skiing champion Preston Petersen, as he and two unnamed female skiers perform various tricks and feats of skill in their sport....

In this final entry in the Pete Smith Specialty series, Smith pays tribute to actor and stuntman Dave O'Brien, who took many falls and spills (and upon whom objects fell) when he played hapless characters throughout the series. Under the pseudonym "D...

With Pete Smith providing dry off-screen commentary, we watch some serious fishing: a marlin caught near Catalina, a hammerhead shark caught then wrestled in a small rowboat near Baja, the largest (721 pounds) great white shark caught to date in Cali...

It's Thanksgiving. Newlywed husband Abner Poodlebean faces the turkey his wife has prepared: she wants him to carve it at the table in front of her scowling family, and Abner has no idea how to proceed. The film's narrator has us cut away to the kitc...