User Reviews

"Strikes and Spares" is an American 9-minute documentary short film from 1934, so this means that at almost 85 years, it is in black-and-white of course, but sound is already there. Directed by Felix E. Feist, this was another Oscar nomination for Pete Smith and it focuses on bowling professional Andy Varipapa showing us some of his finest shots and I wonder how long they had to record until he made them as planned. For more comedic reasons, in-between we see a player who may be closer to us talent-wise, hopefully below us. I think this was a solid little watch and enjoyable at under 10 minutes, even could have run for twice the time and it would still have been fun. Some of the stuff you see in here is pretty swell. The narrator did fine too. Nice to see it was nominated for an Oscar where it lost by the way to a lesser known really old documentary on bees. Good stuff we have here and I recommend checking it out.

. . . as lurking in the background--often sitting atop the pin-setting mechanism--is an uncredited SECOND African-American "pin boy" doing market research for a Hollywood film studio intent upon raking in Big Bucks from 1930s America's deplorable "Jim Crow" South by acquiring the "rights" to any vile, racist project that came along. Pin Boy #2 is wearing (pretty much redundant) BLACKFACE, including giant, painted-on cartoonish white lips! For several decades, EVERY motion picture beginning with the groaning Lyin' Fat Cat oozed demeaning caricatures, dehumanizing stereotypes, and patronizing put-downs of the formerly Enslaved People at the source of ALL Southern (or traitorous Confederate) Wealth. The USA's Fat Cat Studio saw profit potential in the Blood Money promised for egging on the mint julep sipping miscreants enjoying this ill-gotten wealth and their cash-strapped dim bulb pale henchmen with STRIKES AND SPARES images worthy of the Third Reich. Any legitimate Democracy would have revoked the Business License of an outfit capable of propagating STRIKES AND SPARES. However, because of a Suicide Pact Constitution written by Racist Slave "Owners," this did not happen, resulting in the devilishly egregious GWTW fiasco a few years after this STRIKES AND SPARES "trial balloon" was unleashed against American Ideals.