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Poster for Forty Boys and a Song
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Released
1941 · FILM

Forty Boys and a Song

Directed by
Runtime
10 min
Documentary

Synopsis

Forty Boys and a Song is a 1941 short documentary film directed by Irving Allen. It focuses on the Robert Mitchell Boy Choir, composed entirely of boys aged 8 to 14. The choir, led by organist Robert Mitchell, participated in Hollywood productions for more than thirty years. As part of their involvement, the boys attended a special school where they received regular classroom instruction until 1 PM, followed by choir practice. The film also shows the boys performing in a church on Sundays and camping, as they were all members of the same Boy Scouts troop. Forty Boys and a Song was nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, One-Reel.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 5

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Shot by Lester Shorr

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