Catching Trouble (1936)

With his faithful Indian sidekick, a so-called nature-lover trees a bobcat, bags rattlesnakes, and ties up two bear cubs. What a man!

Stars:

Ted Husing, Ross Allen

Cast

Cast overview:
Ted Husing	...	Himself, Narrator
Ross Allen	...	Himself

Storyline

This short follows a day of work for an Everglades wildlife trapper catching animals for zoos around America. In this film, his assignment is to go out into the swamp with his Indian assistant and find a bobcat, 2 black bear cubs and six rattlesnakes.

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Plot Keywords:

rattlesnake | bobcat | bear cub | bear | zoo | 

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Genres:

Documentary | Short

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

8 May 1936 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Grantland Rice Sportlight, Paramount Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

10 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Quotes

Narrator: So this is where my boyfriend knows his stuff.

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Connections

Featured in Mystery Science Theatre 3000: Teenage Caveman (1991)

User Reviews

Quit applying your 21st century sensibilities to 1936

I am a huge MST3k fan... In fact, what sent me here tonight was a 2am viewing of Teenage Caveman, the episode which contains this short subject. I almost always hate reading the comments of MST source material because 90% are filled with people who regurgitate the mst jokes and try to pass the viewpoints of the mst crew as their own.

Let's take a step back from our hypersensitivity to political correctness and go back in time 80+ years to the spring/summer of 1936. The Baseball hall of fame opened with it's first inductees including Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. Ferdinand Porche's new Volkswagen hit the streets. Jesse Owens set the 100 meter record. "Gone With the Wind" is first published. The Nazis run the Olympic torch through the US in preparation for the 1936 Summer Olympics. Hitler violates the treaty of Versailles by invading Rhineland. Cars were in the cities, but in rural America, people rode horses, used outhouses and read by candlelight. Women had only been voting for 18 years by this point, but race restrictions would remain for another 10. The elderly were children during the civil war and had first hand knowledge of slavery. TV was only a few years old. Most listened to the radio for entertainment. For an American male, seeing another country probably meant that you fought in the great war 20 years ago. The way most people saw the world, or even distant parts of the country like the Everglades, was by watching short subjects like this in a movie theater.

The point of this history lesson is that the world was a different place.

In 1936, kids played cowboys and Indians. Husing introduced Ross and "his faithful Seminole Indian guide", which he later abbreviated to "his Semanole" in a bid to play into the cool factor of the guy being a "real" American Indian. For the period, that wasn't a racist remark any more than "my boyfriend Ross" was a homosexual remark.

So, please, park your white guilt and just take this short for what it is. An interesting slice of the 1930s that didn't age well.