Russell G. Shields

A young Jewish man works in his father's jewelry business, but he doesn't like it at all--he wants to be an entertainer, something he knows that his father would never approve of. He comes up with a scheme to put on his own show in a theater and show his father that he can be a success, but things don't work out quite as well as he planned.

Produced by the Fox Movietone News arm of Fox Film Corporation and based on the book by Lawrence Stallings, this expanded newsreel, using stock-and-archive footage, tells the story of World War I from inception to conclusion. Alternating with scenes of trench warfare and intimate glimpses of European royalty at home, and scenes of conflict at sea combined with sequences of films from the secret archives of many of the involved nations.

Alex St. George, a young RFC pilot, is anxious about fighting in the First World War. He is comforted by sensitive shop assistant Kitty, and the two fall in love, marrying before Alex is sent to the front. But his snobbish mother disapproves of the match, and when Alex returns home paralysed and in a cataleptic state, Mrs. St. George plots to keep him from his wife until she can arrange an annulment. But the determined Kitty has plans of her own....

As if they were showing their film to a few friends in their home, the Johnsons describe their trip across the world, which begins in the South Pacific islands of Hawaii, Samoa, Australia, the Solomons (where they seek and find cannibals), and New Hebrides. Thence on to Africa via the Indian Ocean, Suez Canal, North Africa, and the Nile River to lion country in Tanganyika. (They are briefly joined in Khartum by George Eastman and Dr. Al Kayser.) Taking a safari in the Congo, the Johnsons see animals and pygmies, and travel back to Uganda, British East Africa, and Kenya.

At a Florida hotel, absconding miscreant J. Effingham Bellweather goes slapstick golfing with the house detective's flirtatious wife and an incompetent caddy.

In this all-black cast short, legendary blues singer Bessie Smith finds her gambler lover Jimmy messin' with a pretty, younger woman; he leaves and she sings the blues, with chorus and dancers.

Duke Ellington plays hot jazz in a fictional story that finds him down on his luck; he tries in vain to dissuade his friend, dancer Fredi Washington, from working with heart trouble even though it means work for his band. Sure enough, she collapses on stage...

A short documentary about Thailand, formerly known as Siam.

Soldiers of the Sky is a 1941 American short documentary film, directed by Earl Allvine, about the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. It was part of Adventures of the Newsreel Cameraman, a series of documentary shorts produced by 20th Century Fox. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

1941 Oscar nominated short documentary by Tom Cummiskey

After the matriarch dies, an Italian immigrant family in America disintegrates. The son tries to steal their money, and the father yearns to return to a less stressful existence back in Naples.