Shorts report for March 14, 2015

Those of you who like the old Traveltalks shorts are in luck, as there are a pair of them that I don't think have shown up on TCM in some time. First, at 1:45 PM is Ancient Egypt. This one was filmed in 1938, presumably on the same trip that had James A. FitzPatrick go to the Paris World's Fair and several other places in Europe. Of course, when filming ancient Egypt, it's almost beside the point what year you did the filming, except when it would have come to saving the treasures that would have been under threat of flooding from the building of the Aswan High Dam.

The other Traveltalks short is City of Brigham Young, at 7:48 PM. I haven't seen this one, which focuses on Salt Lake City and presumably didn't have to be sanitized to show only the nice parts of the place, since the bland but polite Mormons would have put on a nice face and kept the weird parts like the secret handshakes and magic undies and buying up land in Missouri out of FitzPatrick's view. (I probably shouldn't be that snarky to the Mormons.) I haven't actually seen this one; there are two other shorts on the rest of Utah in the series, not being shown any time soon: Monumental Utah looks at the natural scenes, while Salt Lake Diversions looks at the a resort on one of the salt lakes that has people being served on floating trays as they float do the lake's high salt content. (I think; there's a scene in one of FitzPatrick's Utak shorts showing this and I think this is the short.)

For those who like the Crime Does Not Pay shorts, TCM is running Soak the Poor, one of the earlier entries in the series focuses on racketeers going after recipients of government relief. Leon Ames plays the federal agent sent to investigate. This one airs overnight at 1:36 AM.

A short that I mentioned just about two years ago is Ups and Downs, which is getting another airing tomorrow morning at 7:38 AM. This one is only intreesting for the presence of a young June Allyson, together here with the bland actor Hal LeRoy. The other short I mentioned in that post, The Knight Is Young, doesn't seem to be on the schedule any time soon.