I’ve wanted to see this movie for years. When I was a kid, we had a record that told the story of the film, illustreated with stills from the film. But the movie was never on TV, or at matinees. When VHS tapes came out, and later DVDs, this movie never surfaced, I never saw it pulled out of the vaults to fill the bottomless maw of cable TV programming. Finally, it has appeared on YouTube, in its entirety, only interrupted by three oddly-placed advertisements.
This is a movie made with a cast of birds (along with a few alligators, guinea pigs, dogs, kittens, opossums, and the like). It was made to showcase siome Vegas guy’s trained parrots. It came out in lavish color in 19448. As far as I know, it was not until 1973’s abominably awful [Jonathan Livingston Seagull** that we again had a film in which almost all the performers were birds. Aside from animated films and CGI movies, I can’t think of a third one that did.
This film won an academy award, according to Wikipedia, apparently for coaxing the birds to perform. JLS didn’t.