Bought an original 16mm print of "Shamrock Hill" in 2016, since then I have projected this picture four times every year since I bought it! Tonight December 13, 2020 I will project it yet again! What I loved about this picture are Peggy Ryan and Ray McDonald, two of the best dancers in Hollywood! They were simply the best! The only scene in this picture that I didn't like was the slow-motion dance fantasy scene that happens right after Peggy tells the children the story near the opening of the picture. They should have photographed that scene in real time, it would have made it tolerable! The nice thing about owning a copy of a movie on a film print, is you can cut out a scene that you don't like! And before the third run of the picture I cut out 100 feet of film, of that lame slow-motion scene! And it's not missed at all. That's three minutes of pain that I don't have to endure, the rest of the picture is a gem! Love the Irish family, the Rogan clan! The idea of a television tower build on Shamrock Hill is most interesting, first off when this picture was released in February of 1949, television here in
Los Angeles was only a year and a few months old! KTLA was the first local television station to come on the air, this side west of the Mississippi River! By early 1948 there was still less than one thousand television sets in operation in Los Angeles! Imagine that, there are probably a thousand television sets in operation on a typical neighborhood city block now in 2020! Love the scenes with Mr. Rogan as he tries to figure out the new "analog oscilloscope" when a magnet is accidentally placed next to the device the waveform straightens out and Mr. Rogan makes his discovery! All of the cast members are great! Trudy Marshall was a babe in her time! Rick Vallin breezes through his scenes in his typical fashion! The Leprechauns are great! I knew they were real! At only 70 minutes (less the three minutes I cut out of my print) it's a perfect picture! We all need a place to go and imagine and dream like Shamrock Hill! It's a shame that television would soon take over our lives! But this was 1949 and the world was still good! America was still the best place on earth! Best of all there are no dumb female idiots with different colored hair, stupid guys covered with tattoos, loud horrible recorded rap, rock, country music! Computers, cell phones, I-phones, dumb-phones! Car chases, people yelling at each other for no good reason! NO Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden! NO Covid-19! It was the best time ever! Vinson Pictures made only two films, "Shamrock Hill" and "An Old Fashioned Girl" both released
one month apart from each other in the first two months of 1949! Who knows what happened to the 35mm cut nitrate camera originals and soundtracks? I bet they are lost to careless decay! But tonight Shamrock Hill lives on our movie screen and Bell & Howell projector! Bought some beer, and we're ready to roll! Now where did that Leprechaun put my Covid-19 mask?
