The ep27 Sport Films

This is Jimmy Powers and happy to be coming your way with another Grantlin Rice Story. This is Jimmy Powers transcribed with another chapter from the Grantlin Rice story, the Tumal Den the Shouting.

Today we're going to hear about television and sports. Granny called it Sport Light Films and I'll narrate in first person. Whatever identity I've enjoyed from my byline, the Sport Light title board on movie shorts has given me contact with countless moviegoers who may not know a nining from a goal post and care less. Women particularly have been entertained by sporting action on the screen, and I believe

these experiences they have shared have given them a keen appreciation of sport in general. It was back in 1920 that I ran into Jack Fenton in New York. Jack was a motion picture man with ideas. I was a sports writer with a solid twenty years of background in my field.

Jack suggested we make a series of one real sport motion pictures with John Hockenson, a fine cameraman and a hard worker. The films would be called the Sportlight after the column I had been syndicating since 1913.

Right here I want to say we were fortunate in that we could count on the friendship of Bob Jones, Jack Dempsey, Bill Tilden and other famous members of the Golden Age. The films had the authentic flavor.

We were moving along full steam ahead when the first sound picture, the jazz singer with Al Jolson hit the country. However, the transition to sound didn't take place overnight, and by 1932, when we joined Paramount Pictures on a contract of one picture per month, we were geared for most anything.