User Reviews

This is one of, I don't know, possibly thousands of short films Pete Smith narrated for MGM. For many movie goers of the period, this could have been their introduction to a rodeo (pronounced Roe-Day-O, the "e" in that word is pronounced as in "spinach").

There are many "broncos" who are trying to escape small fenced in areas (gates) and quite a few people today would be offended as animal cruelty.

Smith's humor is pretty dated, although his comments while one rider was getting bucked off of a bronco was fairly humorous. "It's as simple of rolling off a log, from the top of the Chrysler Building", which was briefly the tallest building in the world.

There were also some scenes of "bulldogging" which is where the cowboy tries to wrestle a bull to the ground. Some other scenes of bull riding. It appears that they were using something that would truly be considered animal cruelty - rope tied around the bull's testicles to make the bull buck more violently.

Cowboys who needed to make a fast buck traveled from rodeo to rodeo doing their daredevil stunts, the main requirement being to stay in the saddle as long as possible no matter how wild the ride.

Most of those shown here managed to stay astride whatever wild horse they chose, for at least a few seconds, sometimes more. Whatever, many of them must have needed plaster casts after a day's work.

The stunts include bronco busting, bull riding (unbelievable how some of these guys managed to ride these critters) and bull-dogging steers, all pretty detrimental to one's health if you ask me.

You have to wonder how hard up these guys were to want to risk life and limb the way they do--looks pretty reckless to the casual observer.

Seeing this one once was enough. Wild and woolly is an apt description.

This is one of the earliest films narrated by Pete Smith--a guy who made TONS of shorts for MGM over several decades. I have never understood why, however. After all, MGM was the top studio on the planet--you'd think they could have done a lot better than these limp films.

This installment was the only film directed by Charles Dorian. It features lots of footage of a rodeo--and much of it is in slow motion. During all this, as usual, Smith drones on and on and makes lots of supposedly droll comments--most of which were not funny or were slightly offensive. Not only is it bad, but the film also shows a lot of animals being tormented. So why would you want to watch it? I have no idea.

A Smith called Pete sounds off his feed as he narrates this film about a rodeo, particularly the bucking bronco and bull-riding competition. He sounds listless as he overennunciates what will become his trademark snarky delivery.

It was still his first year of narrating these shorts, even before they became "Pete Smith Specials" and Smith is clearly not up to delivering his copy, even though he had been writing it for a decade and a half, as a publicity man for Paramount, Marshall Neilan and MGM.

Although the narration is not up to Pete's usual standards, the pictures are pretty good. The camera is greatly overcranked, so you get to see the events in slow motion, and they look darned dangerous.

Wild and Woolley (1931)

*** (out of 4)

Early Pete Smith short shows us what goes on at a rodeo where we see cowboys trying to break wild horses as well as trying to stay on the bulls. As far as information goes, this film offers some nice trivia but I think most will be shocked or turned off by some of the violence in the movie. There are some pretty ugly scenes involving the horses that I'm sure PETA members would throw a fit about. I'm certainly not a member but a few of these scenes struck me as cruel especially one where a horse gets caught on the gate and pretty violently hurts itself. What really sticks out in this short is the brilliant cinematography that captures all the action. A lot of slow motion is used so you can really see what's going on and the filming is downright brilliant and contains some of the best work I've seen from an early film.