List of American live-action shorts


This is a list of short subject film series released by Hollywood studios.

Columbia

Educational Pictures

First National

Fox Film and 20th Century Fox

Hal Roach

Mack Sennett

Metro Pictures

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

  • Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences – 3 one-reelers in black and white
  • Around the World with Burton Holmes – 12 one-reel travelogues
  • CinemaScope Specials – approximately 8, early ones were orchestra performances led by Johnny Green. Also The Battle of Gettysburg (1955 film)
  • Colortone Musical - 17 one and two reel musicals in Technicolor, utilizing the full rainbow process from mid-1934.
  • Colortone Revue – 5 black and white comedies, two with Jack Benny.
  • Crime Does Not Pay - 49 two-reel dramatic shorts
  • Dogville Comedies - nine short parodies of feature films enacted by dogs, also known as All-Barkies.
  • FitzPatrick Traveltalks – travelogues initially released independently in the late twenties, but approximately 221 one-reelers for MGM. In full Technicolor starting in 1934.
  • Hal Roach Comedies
  • Herbert Kalmus Great Events – 12 two-reelers produced in 2-color Technicolor, costumed recreations of famous events from Betsy Ross to Cleopatra.
  • Historical Mysteries – 11 one reel docu-shorts narrated by Carey Wilson and John Nesbitt
  • Louis Lewyn Galaxy of Stars – 7 Technicolor two-reelers featuring many familiar faces. Also a few “MGM Miniatures” in black & white later followed the same model.
  • MGM Movietone Acts - 82 one-reelers spotlighting various comedy and musical acts in sound
  • MGM Oddities / MGM Miniatures – about 115+ documentaries and comedy shorts running less than 11 minutes in length. Term “Oddity” replaced by “Miniature” by 1935. Early “Oddities” narrated by Pete Smith and later Carey Wilson. Charles "Chic" Sale appeared in some mid-thirties entries. Also a series profiling Nostradamus.
  • MGM Musical Revue – 9 two-reelers including some Three Stooges in early Technicolor
  • MGM 2-Reel Special - includes a documentary 24 Dollar Island directed by Robert Flaherty, also Jackie Cooper special, followed by a more consistently released series starting in 1935, often musicals.
  • Martin Block Musical Merry-Go-Round – 6 total
  • Office of War Information & War Activities Committee Specials
  • Our Gang 52 shorts; taken over from Hal Roach.
  • The Passing Parade - 73 strange-but-true stories narrated by John Nesbitt.
  • Pete Smith series
  • * Fisherman's Paradise
  • * Sports Champions / Sports Parade
  • * Goofy Movies
  • * 3D film Specials
  • * Specialties
  • Robert Benchley Comedies – 30 one reelers
  • Romance of Celluloid – behind the scenes documentaries
  • Spotlight on the World We Live In – newsreel series made by Gordon Films
  • Stop Look and Listen (film)
  • Tabloid Musical – 7 one-reelers, including the famous Every Sunday
  • Theater of Life – 4 two-reel documentaries co-produced by the Associated Press
  • UFA “Oddity” – 43 imported from Germany silent documentaries

Paramount

Pathé Exchange

Company merged with RKO in 1931.

Republic

RKO

United Artists

Universal

Sound films

  • Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences one-reel special 1949
  • America Speaks – 3 one-reel documentaries
  • Answer Man – 15 one-reel documentaries
  • Arthur Lake comedies, initially the silent “Horace in Hollywood” two-reel comedies
  • Basketball Sports-reels
  • Benny Rubin – approximately 7 sound one-reel comedies
  • Charlie Murray & George Sidney Comedies – 11 two-reelers
  • Christy Walsh All-America Sportreel – 15 sports-reels
  • Daphne Pollard Comedies – 4 two-reelers
  • Earth and Its People – 35 two-reel travelogues initially released to schools in 16mm format, theatrically in 35mm in 1952-53.
  • Going Places - 92 travelogues with Lowell Thomas and Graham McNamee narrating. Produced/directed by Allyn Butterfield and Charles E. Ford
  • Junior Jewel Comedies with Snappy and “The Sporting Youth”, including Ann Christy, Sumner Getchell & Joan McCoy
  • Juvenile Jury – 4 quiz novelty reels with Jack Barry (game show host)
  • Laemmle Novelties – first sound series with musical and stage performances. Vernon Dent and Lou Archer appeared together in one.
  • Lloyd Hamilton Comedies – 4 two-reelers
  • Louis Sobol – 4 one and two-reelers
  • Mentone Brevity – 77 variety shorts shot in New York City with many stage performers like Ethel Barrymore, Bill Robinson, Bob Hope, among others.
  • Morton Downey in “America's Greatest Composers” – trio of shorts
  • Name Band Musical – 214 California filmed 15–20 minute shorts showcasing the best in jazz and big band
  • Northwest Mounted Police – two-reelers with Ted Carson
  • Pat Rooney – 6 two-reel comedies
  • Person-Oddity – 48 human interest documentaries produced by Thomas Mead & Joseph O'Brien
  • Pioneer Kid – two-reel westerns with Bobby Nelson, some initially filmed silent with sound dubbed in.
  • Red Star Comedy – approximately 12 two-reelers with an assortment
  • Robert Benchley – one short “Your Technocracy And Mine”
  • The Shadow – 6 two-reel fantasy-dramas adapted from the radio show with Arthur Aylesworth
  • Sing & Be Happy – 29 musical one-reelers
  • Slim Summerville – 20 two-reel comedies
  • Strange as it Seems – 39 newsreel oddity-reels much like Believe It Or Not produced by Jerry Fairbanks and Manny Nathan Hahn, adapted from John Hix comics and shown in Multicolor during the first two seasons.
  • Stranger Than Fiction – 110 documentary shorts, successor to Strange As It Seems covering animals, travel and peculiar items of interest. Production by Allyn Butterfield, Thomas Mead and Joseph O’Brien with Charles E. Ford and later Henry Clay Bate as key directors.
  • Sunny Jim McKee – two-reel juvenile comedies
  • SuperSpecial Featurettes – 23 running 20–30 minutes in color
  • Syd Saylor Comedies – 5 two-reelers
  • Thalians Club Comedies – 5 two-reelers with Franklyn Pangborn and others.
  • Universal Brevities & Novelties – 16 documentary one-reelers
  • Universal Color Adventures – approximately 57 assorted one and two-reel documentaries
  • Universal-International Color Parade – approximately 72 one and two-reel documentaries.
  • Universal-International Musical Westerns - 19 two-reelers featuring Tex Williams and other country singers
  • Universal Specials – 45 comedy and documentary two-reelers not part of any series, in color by the ‘50s.
  • Universal Newsreel, also including a group of annual “Football Highlights” specials
  • Van Ronkel Comedies – 6 two-reelers mostly with Sterling Holloway
  • Variety View – 260 documentary one-reelers replacing “Going Places” and produced by Thomas Mead and initially Joseph O'Brien. All in black and white.
  • Vernon Dent – pair of comedies
  • Victory Shorts – 7 documentary one-reelers
  • Vistarama Specials – 9 widescreen Eastmancolor travelogues produced by Carl Dudley
  • Warren Doane Comedies – 46 two-reelers with James Gleason, Louise Fazenda, Sterling Holloway, Henry Armetta and others.
  • William Rowland & Monty Brice Featurettes - 6 two-reel musicals, featuring such acts as Ruth Etting and the Boswell Sisters

Silent films (pre-1928)

Walt Disney

Films distributed by RKO. Launched Buena Vista Distribution in 1953.

Warner Bros.

Other series

The Perils of Our Girl Reporters
  • # A Long Lane
  • # Ace High
  • # Birds of Prey
  • # Misjudged
  • # Outwitted
  • # Taking Chances
  • # The Black Door
  • # The Jade Necklace
  • # The Meeting
  • # The Schemers
  • # The Smite of Conscience
  • # The White Trail
  • # Many a Slip
  • # The Counterfeiters
  • # Kidnapped Lieutenant Rose
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Robbers of Fingall's Creek
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Foreign Spy
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Gunrunners
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Stolen Submarine
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Chinese Pirates
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Stolen Code
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Boxers
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Royal Visit
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Stolen Ship
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Moorish Raiders
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Hidden Treasure
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Train Wreckers
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Patent Aeroplane
  • # Lieutenant Rose in the China Seas
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Stolen Bullion
  • # Lieutenant Rose and the Sealed Orders
  • # How Lieutenant Rose RN Spiked the Enemy's Guns Terry Kelly
  • # Glove Slingers
  • # Pleased to Mitt You
  • # Fresh as a Freshman
  • # Glove Affair
  • # Mitt Me Tonight
  • # The Kink of the Campus
  • # Glove Birds
  • # A Study in Socks
  • # College Belles
  • # The Great Glover
  • # Socks Appeal
  • # His Girl's Worst Friend Lieutenant Daring
  • # The Adventures of Lieutenant Daring R.N.: In a South American Port
  • # Lieutenant Daring R.N. and the Secret Service Agents
  • # Lieutenant Daring Avenges an Insult to the Union Jack
  • # Lieutenant Daring and the Ship's Mascot
  • # Lieutenant Daring Defeats the Middleweight Champion
  • # Lieutenant Daring Quells a Rebellion
  • # Lieutenant Daring and the Plans of the Mine Fields
  • # Lieutenant Daring and the Photographing Pigeon
  • # Lieutenant Daring and the Labour Riots
  • # Lieutenant Daring and the Dancing Girl
  • # Lieutenant Daring and the Mystery of Room 41
  • # Lieutenant Daring, Aerial Scout
  • # Lieutenant Daring and the Stolen Invention
  • # Lieutenant Daring RN and the Water Rats
  • # Lieutenant Daring R.N. Sexton Blake
  • # The Clue of the Second Goblet
  • # Blake the Lawbreaker
  • # Sexton Blake, Gambler
  • # Silken Threads
  • # The Great Office Mystery
  • # The Mystery of the Silent Death Sherlock Holmes
  • # Sherlock Holmes
  • # Sherlock Holmes II
  • # Sherlock Holmes III
  • # Sherlock Holmes IV
  • # Sherlock Holmes V
  • # Sherlock Holmes VI Sexton Blake
  • # The Mystery of the Diamond Belt
  • # The Stolen Heirlooms
  • # The Counterfeiters
  • # The Great Cheque Fraud
  • # The Thornton Jewel Mystery The Wizard of Oz
  • # The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
  • # Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz
  • # The Land of Oz
  • # John Dough and the Cherub Jack Moran
  • # OHMS: Our Helpless Millions Saved
  • # Britain's Naval Secret
  • # Parted by the Sword The Adventures of François Villon
  • # The Oubliette
  • # The Higher Law
  • # Monsieur Bluebeard
  • # The Ninety Black Boxes Nick Carter
  • # Nick Carter, le roi des détectives
  • # Les nouveaux exploits de Nick Carter
  • # Nick Carter acrobate
  • # Nick Carter - Le mystère du lit blanc
  • Winnie Winkle
  • # Working Winnie
  • # Happy Days
  • # Winnie's Birthday
  • # Oh! Winnie Behave
  • # Winnie's Vacation
  • # Winnie Wakes Up
  • # Winnie Steps Out
  • # Winnie Be Good
  • # Winning Winnie
  • # Winnie's Winning Ways
  • The Lincoln Cycle
  • #My Mother
  • #My Father
  • #Myself
  • #''Her Country's Call''