MGM Shorts Story

Here’s something you may not have seen. During the 1930s, MGM published a bi-monthly in-house magazine, MGM Shorts Story devoted to its numerous short subjects. Distributed primarily to its exhibitors and Loews Theatre managers, the oversized slick magazine devoted many of its pages to its latest cartoons and occasionally featured a cover story related to its animation studio. The November-December 1939 issue took a closer look at Harman Ising with this article below.

This is basically a studio publicity piece, but its interesting to note Harman and Ising defending their use of animal characters (over humans) and the spin that having no “star characters” frees them to experiment with different ideas. (Click thumbnails below to read):