Technicolor Specials (Warner Bros. series)
These kept the costume and set design departments busy and provided major stars like Claude Rains alternative projects to exercise, develop or diversify their acting skills between features.(stretching from the pilgrim landing on Plymouth Rock through the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor) and My Country 'Tis of Thee (reusing much of the same footage, but continuing through the war years thanks to recent additions like Beachhead to Berlin).Among the most notable from the post-war crop were a pair of prestigious India travelogues, Soap Box Derby (the first of many trips to the mini-car races in Ohio), Down the Nile (showcasing Egypt post-war), Jungle Terror (covering Hassoldt Davis and his wife's Amazon adventure), The Seeing Eye (covering the Morristown, New Jersey training of dogs for the handicapped), Winter Paradise (John Jay's ski adventure down the Austrian slopes), Thar She Blows!Edgar Bergen appeared in a comic-travelogue Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd in Sweden; its director Larry Lansburgh supplied a number of outdoor and animal interest documentary shorts for both Warner Bros. and Walt Disney in the fifties including some Oscar winners.The later documentaries also benefited greatly from energetic narration (i.e. Marvin Miller also voiced popular radio shows and animated cartoons of the period) and orchestra scores that only a major film studio could provide.