All Films

Prophet Without Honor

1939 • 11 min • United States of America

This short film portrays the story of Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873), an American Naval officer who developed the first maps that charted the oceans' winds and currents.

Angel of Mercy

1939 • 10 min • United States of America

This MGM Passing Parade series short tells the story of Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross.

Old Natchez on the Mississippi

1939 • 9 min

This Traveltalks short focuses on the city's preservation of the architecture, apparel, and customs of the antebellum South.

Marian Anderson: The Lincoln Memorial Concert

1939 • 8 min • United States of America

Short film which documents Marian Anderson's singing performance at the Lincoln Memorial.

The Orphan Duck

1939 • 7 min

Dinky Duck wants to belong to someone, but no one wants him until a chicken falls into the water and heads for the waterfall.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

1939 • 11 min

An MGM cartoon adaptation of the classic fairy tale featuring Hugh Harman's Bear Family.

See Your Doctor

1939 • 8 min • United States of America

A lecturer tells the audience that it is National Take Care Week. He tells the story of a man who gets stung in his garden and the problems the man has when he seeks treatment at the doctor's office.

The Pal from Texas

1939 • 56 min

The Pal From Texas features the diminutive screen cowboy attempting to prevent old prospector pal from being swindled by an unscrupulous tavern owner.

The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair

1939 • 55 min • United States of America

"An average American family", the Middletons, visit the 1939 World's Fair and witnesses the advent of future technology, encountering robots and dishwashers for the first time.

Skinny the Moocher

1939 • 20 min • United States of America

Deep in debt, Charley must marry a wealthy society girl, and attends an afternoon party to announce the engagement. Trouble is, he's menaced by two thuggish creditors and must take his kleptomaniac butler along, passing him off as an uncle.

Joy Scouts

1939 • 11 min • United States of America

The Boys Scouts give a demonstration of their camping skills, but Our Gang are excluded from participating because they are not yet old enough. Undeterred, the kids head off on their own unsupervised camping adventure, with comically disastrous results.

Outside These Walls

1939 • 60 min • United States of America

Walen plays Dan Sparling, a convicted embezzler who becomes editor of his prison newspaper. After serving out his sentence, he sets up an independent newspaper devoted to attacking corruption in public life, encountering various difficulties due to his being an ex-con and opposition from the incumbent administration.

Dangerous Dan McFoo

1939 • 8 min • United States of America

An arctic saloon. The tiny dog, Dan McFoo, is playing a pinball-like marble game in the back. His girlfriend, Sue, sounding like Katharine Hepburn, stands by. A stranger comes in with eyes for Sue; he begins a boxing match with Dan. After Dan gets knocked down, he accuses the stranger of having something in the glove; the ref finds four horseshoes and a horse. After the fight goes on a while with no conclusion, the narrator tosses a couple of guns, the lights go out, and Dan is shot or is he?

Mystery of the White Room

1939 • 58 min • United States of America

A doctor and nurse solve an operating-room murder.

The Fresh Vegetable Mystery

1939 • 7 min • United States of America

Crime strikes the vegetable world when Mrs. Mama Carrot awakens and finds her children have been carrot-napped. She summons the Irish-Potato Police and they are soon on the trail of the culprit. But the various suspects they round up, and grill, aren't the criminals. They finally track down the guilty parties, who turn out to be a gang of mice in disguise. Thrown into a third-degree mousetrap, the mice soon confess.

A Ducking They Did Go

1939 • 17 min • United States of America

The stooges, tricked by some con men into selling memberships to a phony duck hunting club, sell all the memberships to the police department. When the crooks skip town, the stooges are stranded at a duck-less lake with a lodge full of cops.

The Adventures of the Masked Phantom

1939 • 60 min • United States of America

Barton's mine foreman is receiving gold bullion from gangsters in the East, putting it through the mine's smelter, and then shipping it out. When Barton finds out, Murdocks men make him a prisoner. Arriving at the same time, Alamo hears the story of the Masked Phantom and then becomes that Phantom fighting Murdock and his men and attempting to find Barton.

Harlem Rides the Range

1939 • 56 min • United States of America

A wandering cowboy and his sidekick try to resolve a murder.

Everybody's Hobby

1939 • 54 min • United States of America

A hobby-mad family makes their obsessions pay off.

Captain Spanky's Show Boat

1939 • 11 min • United States of America

An abandoned old show boat is moored in a lazy creek. The Our Gang put the old vessel back to use when they stage a show featuring "Darla's Dancin' Dandies" and a "meller dramer" entitled "Out in the Snow You Go." All is not smooth sailing however, as Butch seeks revenge for having been excluded from the cast.

A Haunting We Will Go

1939 • 8 min • United States of America

The introduction of Lantz's little black-boy character, L'il Eight Ball, finds him going to bed in his small cabin and being visited by a baby ghost. He avers he is not afraid, and his isn't, so the little ghost transports him to a haunted mill where the adult ghosts hang out. They run the little hero through all the standard ghost tests and, while he is shaken, he still will not admit to being scared.

Colorful Curacao

1939 • 9 min • United States of America

This short film focuses on the sights and sounds of the island of Curacao

Yankee Doodle Goes to Town

1939 • 11 min • United States of America

Made just before America would be forced into the Second World War, this short subject is a brief dramatized history of American democracy. It targets a perceived threat to democracy from board room and soapbox fascists who advocated a government based upon contemporaneous European models.

The Stubborn Mule

1939 • 6 min • United States of America

Mule is useless for Italian fruit seller, so seller gives mule to Lil' Eightball, who also cannot get the mule going.