Canadian Lancers

I've been recording some of the shorts in TCM's Saturday Matinee blocks, as I mentioned a month or two ago when I did a post on a Barney Bear cartoon. Now, those have been starting the block at 8:00 AM, so they record just fine. Stuff later in the block, not necessarily, as I found when I tried to record the one-reel RKO Sportscope short Canadian Lancers. Thankfully, it was available elsewhere, so I was able to watch it anyway.

The piece nominally focuses on the Halifax Junior Bengal Lancers, a group based in Nova Scotia dedicated to teaching the traditions of the original Bengal Lancers to young people. They train, eventually perform in the Nova Scotia town of Annapolis.

It's not much for a one-reeler, but that's only the half of this short's problems. One of the things mentioned in the short is that the group has an age limit of eight: younger than that, and you're going to have to wait until you turn eight. But poor little Heather is only six! She'd like to join and ride the horsies, but no, she's not old enough. Well, eventually they make her the mascot even though she's not yet eight.

For a short that runs only eight minutes, spending all this time on poor little Heather is a travesty. One would really rather see the horsemanship from the kids actually doing the stuff like using your lance to pick up a ring. Instead, we get lots and lots of that little girl. The other thing that would have been nice is if they could have filmed in color. But this was the dying days of RKO, and one couldn't expect that from the shorts department. Never mind that none of the other studios would be keeping their shorts deparments much longer. This is all stuff that would have decamped to TV. Nowadays, something like this would be a feature on one of those cable or FAST shows.

And in doing a bit of research, today I learned that, totally unrelated to the short, Lancers rosé wine is still produced. Remember them?