As a kid–this would be back in the summer of 1965–I went to the New York World’s Fair with my family. One day my mother and older sister went to Macy’s to shop and my dad, my older brother and I watched an old black and white movie on a display television while we waited for them.
Maybe it was just because I was on vacation and with my brother and dad, but the film seemed like the most riotously funny thing I had ever seen. I recall my father, now long deceased, remembered it with affection as well.
It looked to have been made in the 1930s. It was set in a penitentiary and concerned a football game with another prison. One team had a zebra as its mascot, and the other was called The Tigers (this was when prisoners wore stripes, at least in the movies). A con man wrote plays for one of the teams, and had one play where balloons were used which looked like footballs. I recall that the movie had an integrated cast and there was a scene where a black convict, assigned to sweep up, did an elaborate tap dance up and down a staircase.
The movie is not “Hold 'Em Jail”, a 1930s comedy with Wheeler and Woolsey which also concerned a football game in a prison.
So, what movie is it?
