Film Vodvil By the early 1940s, however, Columbia was ready to produce its musical fare “in-house,” and in September 1943 a “niche series” dubbed Film Vodvil was premiered nationwide. Richard Bann comments, “Moe Howard, or maybe Jules White, made the point that Harry Cohn left the short subject companies and units alone. As long as they met budgets, they could do what they wanted .... however they wanted to do it. Cohn was only concerned with delivering film shorts to fill out diversified programs for theaters which offered double bills.” Columbia turned once again to Benny Blake to produce the series. Blake, in turn, utilized the good services of veteran editor Leonard Weiss. Harry Foster was called upon to direct at least some of the films. Three separate series of Film Vodvil shorts were distributed between September 1943 and September 1946: series 1 - five one-reel shorts released between ca. September 1943 and ca. April 1944 series 2 - five one-reel shorts released between ca. September 1944 and ca. August 1945 series 3 - eight one-reel shorts released between ca. August 1945 and September 1946