The Movie Which Haunts Me

Back in 1964 my family went to the World’s Fair in New York. I was eight. There are doubtless many, many wonderful things I saw and have long since forgotten, but there is one thing I can’t forget.

One afternoon while my mother and sister were shopping at Macy’s my older brother, my father and I watched an old B-movie on a demonstration TV. It was just a cheap little black-and-white comedy with no well-known stars, but we remembered it later as one of the funniest things we have ever seen in our lives.

It was set in a penitentiary and concerned a football game between the convicts of two different prisons. One team had a zebra as their mascot (this was back in the days when prison uniforms were striped). A con man thought up their plays, and for one he had ten of the players running around with balloons which looked like footballs.

Very likely I would think this movie was dreadful if I saw it today, but I would still like to know what the title was, who was in it, when it was released, and whether it is available anywhere. From what I recall, it appeared to have been made in the early 1930s. It is not “Hold 'Em Jail”, an old Wheeler and Woolsey comedy on the same subject.

Any information will be greatly appreciated.

The only other comedy from that period that the IMDB lists with keywords “football” and “prison” is the 1934 Gridiron Flash, though a separate plot description on E! Online doesn’t sound right:

Good Luck!