A few shorts for February 22/23

I have to admith that Give Us the Earth, airing overnight at about 1:08 AM, or just after Hamlet (which starts at 10:00 PM tonight and runs 154 minutes plus the intro and outro from Robert Osborne), is a new one to me. Apparently, Hollywood was still engaging in the "Good Neighbor" policy towards Latin America that had been the de facto policy of the Roosevelt administration; but, with the Cold War beginning and Roosevelt dead, US policy toward the region was about to change. This 20-minute short has a couple of Americans going down to Mexico to teach the locals about using their farmland more efficiently to achieve higher yields. It seems to be available on a DVD of The Sea of Grass, at least according to the TCM SHop. (Ooh, I see that DVD also has the classic Tom and Jerry short The Cat Concerto, in which Tom tries to play the piano arrangement of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, except that it interferes with Jerry's nest on the piano strings.) I would have guessed that a short like this might be more appropriate on a DVD of Border Incident

Tomorrow afternoon at about 1:13 PM, or just after King Solomon's Mines (11:30 AM, 103 min), is a short listed on the TCM daily schedule as "King Solomon's Mines Featurette". However, actually clicking on that title for more information sends one to a page saying the short is called Jungle Safari. I would have guessed that's what this was, and it's mildly interesting, even if it is pretty much just an ad for the Dodge trucks that MGM used to schlep everybody across the parts of Africa where the movie was filmed. It's in color and probably ought to be on a DVD of King Solomon's Mines, although the DVD that the TCM shop is selling doesn't mention it. Nor does Amazon, which seems to be selling the same DVD.