Dive-Hi Champs

Dive-Hi Champs is a 1946 short documentary film, a Grantland Rice Sportlight segment from Paramount Studios and Jack Eaton featuring a cavalcade of diving highlights, from youngsters at the local swimming hole to athletes jumping from giant earth-moving equipment in the Panama Canal. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film, One-Reel.

Well it does pretty much what it says on the can, repetitively, and to be honest once you’ve seen some scantily clad beauty leap from a 33 foot diving board replete with some sexist commentary, then you’ve seen them all. Perhaps the most remarkable things here are: a fella diving onto a trampoline suspended over the pool then on for a splash; some fairly stable slo-motion coverage as they leap off an huge dock gate and into the Panama Canal and then the three year old Duncan - replete with his own monogrammed swimming trunks, who takes to the board and the water like a natural. There is room here for a quirkier comedy, maybe even a Pete Smith, because otherwise it’s all a bit wet.