Radio Hams (1939)

• 64%
• 1939
• Comedy
• Documentary
• Felix E. Feist
• Pete Smith
• Barbara Bedford
• Robert Homans

Cliffhanger proves truth stranger than fiction. Rarely does a top movie cameraman become a film's central figure portrayed by an actor. But in this little MGM short, actor Alonzo Price plays the role of real-life cameraman, world traveler, and adventurer Clyde DeVinna. One of his round-the-world trips took DeVinna to film scenes for "Eskimo" in Alaska, where he "camped out" in an igloo-like hut. Inside that closed space, DeVinna's gasoline heater emits carbon monoxide fumes that begin to overcome the cameraman. As he is losing consciousness, he uses his amateur short-wave radio to call for help -- all the way to a fellow "ham" in New Zealand. The latter radios the SOS to a second "ham" in Hawaii, who relays the call to a 3d "ham" elsewhere in Alaska. That ham desperately attempts to contact police near the location of DeVinna's hut, in hopes that somehow a doctor could be found to get to DeVinna before it's too late...