User Reviews

Five years after he narrated STRIKES AND SPARES, Pete Smith returns to the subject of bowling with two pros: Andy Varipapa, who threw some trick shots in the earlier movie and Ned Day, who demonstrates proper form and technique. Pete enlivens the proceedings with some of his customary snark, but this is not a terribly strong effort in his long-running series of shorts for MGM, although he does come up with a lovely phrase: "as unhappy as a duck in a blizzard.

Director Felix Feist, who spent most of his career in shorts, with occasional rises to programmers, does his usual competent job, but unless you enjoy bowling this won't interest you, and if you do enjoy bowling you won't find much in it.

Being an activity (I don't really count it as a sport) that I think doesn't get discussed often enough, I chose a short focused on bowling to serve as the short for this week. Anyone who's watched shorts from MGM dating from the 30s or 40s will have probably heard Pete Smith's voice before, as he was the studio's main narrator for things of this nature for many years. Set Em Up focuses on a family who goes to a bowling alley which happens to be frequented by Ned Day, a real life champion who demonstrates that getting the perfect form, ball, and ultimately strike is a lot of hard work. When selecting his ball of choice, Ned does so by seeing which one has the hole in line with the middle joint on his middle finger (this was before balls had 3 holes). The film explains that crouching is a common error and your posture needs to be completely straight with your shoulders aligned with the pins as you start your approach. Each pin is 4 and 3 quarter inches wide. Another prevalent issue is the tendency of new players to turn their palms upward as their hand releases the ball, which often results in an off-center trajectory that knocks over the pins on one side but leave the other side untouched. Ned shows how in addition to turning your palm inward right before letting go of the ball, you also need to start your approach correctly: starting with a right step forward, the ball is pushed away from yourself. On the second step, your arm swings back so that the ball is now about a foot to the rear of your right leg. As you prepare to release, the ball should now be on the high point of the backward swing, i.e. About as far backward as you can bend your arm when it's perfectly straight. Finally, you slide forward on your left foot and release the ball with your left knee bent slightly. As expected, Ned gets a strike. One of the family members gets frustrated at his show of skill and hurls the ball as hard as his one hand will allow, resulting in it bouncing loudly right over the pins. Brute force in a game like this isn't everything, and as a small kid later shows, even lightly thrown balls can achieve strikes if they are done accurately. The grandmother also gets a strike. After this, Ned again shows everyone how it's done with a unique trick shot called the one, seven and ten. In this incredibly hard shot, there's only 3 pins to hit; the frontal one, and one behind it on either side. Problem is, they're spaced so far apart that it seems impossible anyone can hit them simultaneously, but Ned manages to do it. He also manages to get a strike with a retractable board deployed in front of his face to block his entire vision of any of the pins. A great bowler will be able to get strikes just by looking at the lane and knowing the laws of physics. Finally, we see Andy Varipapa in action, a talented bowler from Brooklyn but born in Italy. Using unerring precision, he is able to use two balls to knock down the outermost pins from the left and right sides while leaving the center ones standing. Andy attempts a first in bowling history and successfully throws two balls at once on separate lanes and gets two strikes at the same time. Finally, we see another nearly impossible shot from Andy when he successfully knocks over three pins on two separate lanes. The ball hits into the first one at a slight angle, sending it flying across the middle lane and into the right lane, knocking over the one there. The ball then rolls on to strike the two pins in its own lane. There's a humorous ending where the frustrated guy from earlier tries to score a difficult shot featuring only two pins on the far sides of the lane with none in between, and simply uses a bowling ball attached to an axle so there's no chance he won't hit them. While many of these Pete Smith shorts are nondescript, I really like this one since it sheds light on an activity most people don't seem to partake in anymore. While bowling has been around for at least 500 years, its popularity until relatively recently shows how once again the simple things are the best things. An easy to grasp idea, and enjoyable when you're able to trust physics and your muscles to such a degree that you'll hit a strike every time you throw the ball. People have done it before, but even such a simple game is super hard to be a pro at.