So This Is Harris!

So This Is Harris!
	Title card
Directed by	Mark Sandrich
Produced by	Lou Brock
Written by	Ben Holmes ; Mark Sandrich
Starring	Phil Harris ; Walter Catlett
Music by	Will Jason; Val Burton
Cinematography	Bert Glennon
Edited by	John Lockert
Distributed by	RKO Radio Pictures
Release date	August 13, 1933;
Running time	28 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Last updated May 22, 2019

So This Is Harris! is a 1933 American Pre-Code short comedy film directed by Mark Sandrich. It won an Oscar in 1934 for Best Short Subject (Comedy).^[1]^[2] The Academy Film Archive preserved So This Is Harris! in 2012.^[3]

A short film is any motion picture not long enough to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits". In the United States, short films were generally termed short subjects from the 1920s into the 1970s when confined to two 35mm reels or less, and featurettes for a film of three or four reels. "Short" was an abbreviation for either term.

Comedy is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement and most often work by exaggerating characteristics for humorous effect. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending. One of the oldest genres in film, some of the very first silent movies were comedies, as slapstick comedy often relies on visual depictions, without requiring sound. When sound films became more prevalent during the 1920s, comedy films took another swing, as laughter could result from burlesque situations but also dialogue.

Mark Sandrich was an American film director, writer, and producer.

Plot

The film is a series of comical musical numbers and skits following Phil Harris around, starting with him performing at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, which is listened to by Dorothy on the radio whose homebrewing husband Walter hates Harris. The action then moves to the country club where Walter unknowingly encounters Harris while being aggravated by his music. Walter then pretends to be Phil to meet a woman while Harris "entertains" her friend, Dorothy.

The Ambassador Hotel was a hotel in Los Angeles, California, and location of the Cocoanut Grove nightclub until it was demolished in 2005. The hotel began operation formally on January 1, 1921. It was the site of the Academy Awards six times and the June 1968 assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. The hotel closed to guests in 1989.

Homebrewing is the brewing of beer, mead, and ciders on a small scale for personal, non-commercial purposes. Supplies, such as kits and fermentation tanks, can be purchased locally at specialty stores or online. Alcohol has been brewed on the domestic level since its advent, thousands of years prior to its commercial production, although its legality has varied according to local regulation. In the United States, a permit is required to distill spirits such as moonshine.

Cast

Phil Harris as Himself
Walter Catlett as Himself
Helen Collins as Dorothy
June Brewster as Lillian
James Finlayson as Golf Pro

Wonga Philip Harris was an American comedian, actor, singer, and jazz musician. He was an orchestra leader and a pioneer in radio situation comedy, first with Jack Benny, then in a series in which he co-starred with his wife, singer-actress Alice Faye, for eight years. Harris is also noted for his voice acting in animated films. He played Baloo the bear in The Jungle Book (1967), Thomas O'Malley in The Aristocats (1970), and Little John in Robin Hood (1973). In 1981, he sang "Back Home Again in Indiana" before the Indianapolis 500.

Walter Catlett was an American actor. He made a career of playing excitable, meddlesome, temperamental, and officious blowhards.

James Finlayson was a Scottish-born American actor who worked in both silent and sound comedies. Bald, with a fake moustache, Finlayson had many trademark comic mannerisms and is known for his squinting, outraged, "double take and fade away" head reaction, and characteristic expression "d'ooooooh", and as the best remembered comic foil of Laurel and Hardy.

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References

↑ "The 6th Academy Awards (1934) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved February 4, 2012.
↑ "New York Times: So This Is Harris!". NY Times. Retrieved May 11, 2008.
↑ "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.

External links

So This Is Harris! on IMDb
So This Is Harris! on YouTube

IMDb is an online database of information related to films, television programs, home videos and video games, and internet streams, including cast, production crew and personnel biographies, plot summaries, trivia, and fan reviews and ratings. An additional fan feature, message boards, was abandoned in February 2017. Originally a fan-operated website, the database is owned and operated by IMDb.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon.

YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. Three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—created the service in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.

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[Oscars1934-1] "The 6th Academy Awards (1934) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved February 4, 2012.

[NY_Times-2] "New York Times: So This Is Harris!". NY Times. Retrieved May 11, 2008.

[3] "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.