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In the early 1930s, dogs briefly became Hollywood royalty. Here is the story of the Dogville shorts.
At the dawn of the sound era, MGM produced a set of shorts spoofing popular film genres of the day. All the delights of the audacious Pre-Code days were ripe for lampooning in these 15-minute shakedowns of the backstage musical, the gangster flick, the college comedy, and even the war epic. What made these mini-movies really distinctive is that they weren’t just talkies, they were “all-barkie productions”, and the stars were all performing pooches.
The are the perfect Pre-Code curio – risqué, bizarre and scandalous. Performing animals, especially dogs, had been popular in silent movies, from the hit British chase film in 1905 to
