Usually, the trade magazines like BoxOffice only listed the one-reelers (running about 10 minutes in length) under this heading, with the longer films simply dubbed “specials.” For the most part, this was a handy marketing logo for a wide range of shorts of the documentary genre.
Although the studio sharply curtailed theatrical “live-action” shorts production by 1957, a selective number of featurettes and independent films were distributed along with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated cartoons as material shown before the main feature.
By this time it was more profitable to re-release older films rather than make new ones, but theater owners expected a few “new” offerings each year.
While the bulk were independent travelogues, the in-house producers Cedric Francis and William L. Hendricks (famous for the final cartoons featuring Daffy Duck and Cool Cat) supervised a few themselves.
Despite being largely forgotten over the decades, a handful have enjoyed a second life as “extras” between main features on Turner Classic Movies, particularly such titles as Kingdom of the Saguenay and See Holland Before It Gets Too Big.