Standard original title card for a 1937
Our Gang
comedy.
Our Gang, also known as
The
Little Rascals or
Hal Roach's
Rascals, was a series of American
comedy short films about a
group of poor neighborhood
children and the
adventures they had together. Created by comedy
producer Hal Roach,
Our Gang was produced at the Roach studio starting in 1922
as a silent short subject series. Roach changed distributors from
Pathé to
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1927, went
to sound in 1929 and continued production until 1938, when he sold
the series to MGM. MGM in turn continued producing the comedies
until 1944. A total of 220 shorts and one feature film,
General Spanky, were
eventually produced, featuring over forty-one
child actors. In the mid-1950s, the 80
Roach-produced shorts with sound were syndicated for
television under the title
The Little
Rascals, as MGM retained the rights to the
Our Gang
trademark.
The series is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively
natural way. While child actors are often groomed to imitate adult
acting styles, steal scenes, or deliver "cute" performances, Hal
Roach and original
director Robert F. McGowan worked to film the unaffected, raw
nuances apparent in regular kids.
Our Gang also notably
put
boys,
girls,
whites and
black
together in a group as equals, something that "broke new ground,"
according to film historian
Leonard
Maltin. Such a thing had never been done before in cinema but
was commonplace after the success of
Our Gang.
About the series
Unlike many other motion pictures featuring children that are based
in
fantasy, producer/creator
Hal Roach rooted
Our Gang in real life: the majority of
the kids were poor, and the gang was often put at odds with
snobbish rich kids, officious adults and parents, and other such
adversaries. The series was notable in that the gang included both
African-Americans and
females in leading parts at a time when
discrimination against both groups was
commonplace.
Directorial approach
Senior
director Robert F. McGowan helmed most of the
Our
Gang shorts until 1933, assisted by his nephew
Anthony Mack. He worked hard to develop a
style that allowed the kids to be as natural as possible,
downplaying the importance of the filmmaking equipment.
Scripts were written for the shorts by the Hal
Roach comedy writing staff, which included at various times
Leo McCarey,
Frank Capra,
Walter
Lantz and
Frank Tashlin, among
others. The kids, some of them too young to read, very rarely saw
the scripts; instead McGowan would explain the scene to be filmed
to each kid right before it was shot, directing the children using
a
megaphone and encouraging
improvisation. Of course, when sound came in
at the end of the 1920s, McGowan was forced to modify his approach
slightly, but scripts were not adhered to until McGowan left the
series. Later
Our Gang directors such as
Gus Meins and
Gordon Douglas used a more
streamlined approach to McGowan's methods, in order to meet the
demands of the increasingly sophisticated movie industry of the mid
to late 1930s. Douglas in particular was forced to streamline his
films, as he directed
Our Gang after Roach was forced to
halve the running times of the shorts from two reels (20 minutes)
to one reel (10 minutes).
Finding and replacing the cast
As the
children grew too old to be in the series, they were replaced by
new kids, usually from the Los Angeles
area. Eventually,
Our Gang talent
scouting was done using large-scale national contests, where
thousands of kids (often at the behest of their parents) tried out
for one open role.
Norman "Chubby" Chaney
(who replaced
Joe Cobb),
Matthew "Stymie" Beard (who replaced
Allen "Farina" Hoskins) and
Billie
"Buckwheat" Thomas (who replaced Stymie) all won major contests
to become members of the gang. Even when there was not a massive
talent search going on, the Roach studio was bombarded by requests
from parents who were certain their children were perfect for the
series. Among these were future child stars
Mickey Rooney,
Judy
Garland and
Shirley Temple, all
of whom never made it past the audition stage.
African Americans in Our Gang
The
Our Gang series is notable for being one of the first
times in cinema history that blacks and whites were portrayed as
equals, though a number of people, including members of the Black
community, do not look favorably upon the characters of the black
children today. The four black child actors who held main-character
roles in the series were
Ernie "Sunshine Sammy"
Morrison,
Allen "Farina" Hoskins,
Matthew "Stymie" Beard, and
Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas.
Ernie Morrison was, in
fact, the first black actor signed to a long-term contract in
Hollywood
history, and was the first major black star in
Hollywood history as well.
In their adult years, Ernie Morrison, Matthew Beard and Billie
Thomas became some of
Our Gang's staunchest defenders,
maintaining that its integrated cast and innocent story lines were
far from
racist. They explained that the
white children's characters in the series were similarly
stereotyped: the "freckle-faced kid," the "fat
kid," the "neighborhood bully", the "pretty blond girl," and the
"mischievous toddler." "We were just a group of kids who were
having
fun," Stymie Beard recalled. Ernie Morrison stated
that "when it came to race, Hal Roach was
color-blind". Other minorities,
including
Asian Americans (Sing Joy,
Allen Tong, and Edward Zoo Hoo) and
Italian Americans (
Mickey Gubitosi), were also depicted in
the series, with varying levels of "stereotyping" - commonplace in
the stylized,
slapstick comedy tradition
in which the
Our Gang films are firmly rooted.
History
Early years
According to Roach, the idea for
Our Gang came to him in
1921, when he was auditioning a child actress to appear in one of
his films. The girl was, in his opinion, overly made up and overly
rehearsed, and Roach patiently waited for the audition to be over.
After the girl and her mother left the office, Roach looked out of
his window to a lumberyard across the street, where he saw a group
of children having an argument. The children had all taken sticks
from the lumberyard to play with, but the smallest kid had taken
the biggest stick, and the others were trying to force him to give
it to the biggest kid. After realizing that he had been watching
the kids bicker for 15 minutes, Roach thought a short film series
about kids just being themselves might be a success.
Under the supervision of
Charley
Chase, work began on the first two-reel shorts in the new
"kids-and-pets" series, which was to be called
Hal Roach's
Rascals, later that year. Director
Fred Newmeyer helmed the first version of the
pilot film, entitled
Our
Gang, but Roach scrapped Newmeyer's work and had former
fireman Robert F. McGowan re-shoot the short. Roach tested it at
various theaters around Hollywood. The attendees were very
receptive, and the press clamored for "lots more of those 'Our
Gang' comedies." The colloquial usage of the term
Our Gang
led to its becoming the series' second (yet more popular) official
title, with the title cards reading "
Our Gang Comedies:
Hal Roach presents
His Rascals in..." The series was
officially called both
Our Gang and
Hal Roach's
Rascals until 1932, when
Our Gang became the sole
title of the series.
The first cast of
Our Gang kids was recruited primarily
from children recommended to Roach by studio employees, including
photographer Gene Kornman's daughter
Mary
Kornman, their friends' son
Mickey
Daniels, Roach child actor
Ernie "Sunshine
Sammy" Morrison and family friends
Allen
"Farina" Hoskins,
Jack Davis,
Jackie Condon and
Joe Cobb. Most of the early shorts were shot
outdoors and on location, and also featured a menagerie of comic
animal characters, such as Dinah the Mule.
Roach's distributor
Pathé released
One Terrible Day, the fourth short to be produced for the
series, as the first
Our Gang short on September 10, 1922;
the pilot
Our Gang was not released until November 5. The
Our Gang series was a success from the start, with the
kids' naturalism, the funny animal actors, and McGowan's direction
making a successful combination. The shorts did well at the box
office, and by the end of the decade the
Our Gang kids
were pictured on numerous product endorsements.
The biggest
Our Gang stars in this period were Sunshine
Sammy around whom the series was structured; Mickey Daniels; Mary
Kornman; and little Farina who eventually became both the most
popular member of the 1920s gang and the most popular
African-American child star of the 1920s. Mickey and Mary were also
very popular, and were often paired together in both
Our
Gang and a later teenaged version of the series called
The Boy Friends, which
Roach produced from 1930 to 1932. Other early
Our Gang
kids were
Eugene "Pineapple" Jackson,
Scooter Lowry,
Andy Samuel,
Johnny Downs, and
Jay
R. Smith.
Changing distributors
After Sammy, Mickey and Mary left the series in the mid-1920s, the
Our Gang series entered a transitional period. McGowan was
often sick and unable to work on the series, leaving nephew
Robert A. McGowan (credited as Anthony Mack) to
direct many of the shorts from this period. The Mack-directed
shorts are considered to be among the lesser entries in the series.
New faces included
Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins,
Harry Spear,
Jean Darling and
Mary Ann Jackson, while stalwart Farina
served as the series' anchor.
Also at this time, the
Our Gang kids acquired an
American Pit Bull Terrier with a
ring around his eye; originally named "Pansy", the dog soon became
known as
Pete the Pup, the most famous
Our Gang pet. During this period, Hal Roach ended his
distribution arrangement with the Pathé company, instead releasing
future products through newly formed
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. MGM released its
first
Our Gang comedy in September 1927. The move to MGM
offered Roach larger budgets, and the chance to have his films
packaged with MGM features to the
Loews
Theatres chain.
Some of the shorts around this time, particularly
Spook
Spoofing (1928, one of only two three-reelers in the
Our
Gang canon) contained extended scenes of the gang tormenting
and teasing Farina, scenes which helped spur the claims of racism
which many other shorts did not warrant. These shorts marked the
departure of
Jackie Condon, who had
been with the group from the beginning of the series.
The sound era
Starting in 1928,
Our Gang comedies were distributed with
phonographic discs that contained
synchronized music-and-sound-effect tracks for the shorts. In
spring 1929, the Roach sound stages were converted for sound
recording, and
Our Gang made its "
all-talking" debut in April 1929 with the
three-reel
Small Talk. It
took a year for McGowan and the gang to fully adjust to talking
pictures, during which time they lost Joe, Jean and Harry, and
added
Norman "Chubby" Chaney,
Dorothy DeBorba,
Matthew
"Stymie" Beard,
Donald Haines and
Jackie Cooper. Jackie proved to be the
personality the series had been missing since Mickey left, and he
was featured in three 1930/1931
Our Gang shorts,
Teacher's Pet,
School's Out, and
Love Business.These three
shorts explored Jackie's crush on the new schoolteacher Miss
Crabtree, played by
June Marlowe.
Jackie soon won the lead role in
Paramount's feature film
Skippy, and Roach sold Jackie's
contract to MGM in 1931. Other
Our Gang members appearing
in the early sound shorts included
Buddy
McDonald,
Bobby "Bonedust" Young,
and
Shirley Jean Rickert.
Beginning with
When
the Wind Blows, background music scores were added to the
soundtracks of most of the
Our Gang films. Initially, the
music consisted of orchestral versions of then popular tunes.
Marvin Hatley had served as the music
director of Hal Roach Studios since 1929, and
RCA employee
Leroy Shield
joined the company as a part-time musical director in mid 1930.
Hatley and Shield's
jazz-influenced scores,
first featured in
Our Gang with 1930's
Pups is Pups, became recognizable
trademarks of
Our Gang,
Laurel and Hardy, and the other Roach
series and films. Another 1930 short,
Teacher's Pet marked the first use of the
Our Gang theme song, "Good Old
Days", composed by Leroy Shield and featuring a notable
saxophone solo. Shield and Hatley's scores would
support
Our Gang's on-screen action regularly through
1934, after which series entries with background scores became less
frequent.
In 1930, Roach began production on
The Boy Friends, a short-subject series
which was essentially a teenaged version of
Our Gang.
Featuring
Our Gang alumni Mickey Daniels and Mary Kornman
among its cast,
The Boy Friends was produced by Roach for
two years, with fifteen installments in total.
Transition
Jackie Cooper left
Our Gang in early 1931 at the cusp of
another major shift in the lineup, as Farina, Chubby, and Mary Ann
all departed a few months afterward.
Our Gang entered
another transitional period, similar to that of the mid-1920s.
Stymie, Wheezer, and Dorothy carried the series during this period,
aided by
Sherwood Bailey and a few
months later by
Kendall "Breezy
Brisbane" McComas. Unlike the mid-20s period, McGowan was able
to sustain the quality of the series with the help of the several
regular kids and the Roach writing staff. Many of these shorts
include early appearances of
Jerry
Tucker and
Wally Albright, who
later became series regulars.
New Roach discovery
George "Spanky"
McFarland joined the gang late in 1931 at the age of three and,
excepting a brief hiatus during the summer of 1938, remained an
Our Gang kid for the next eleven years. At first appearing
as the tag-along toddler of the group, and later finding an
accomplice in
Scotty Beckett in 1934,
Spanky quickly became
Our Gang's biggest child star. He
won parts in a number of outside features, appeared in many of the
now-numerous
Our Gang product endorsements and spin-off
merchandise items, and popularized the expressions "Okey-dokey!"
and "Okey-doke!"
Dickie Moore, a veteran child
actor, joined in the middle of 1932, and remained with the series
for one year. Other members during these years included Mary Ann
Jackson's brother Dickie Jackson,
John
"Uh-huh" Collum, and
Tommy Bond. Upon
Dickie's departure in mid-1933, long-term
Our Gang members
such as Wheezer (who had been with
Our Gang since the late
Pathé silents period) and Dorothy left the series as well.
In late 1933, Robert McGowan, worn out from the stress of working
on the kids' comedies, left the series and the Roach studio, going
over to direct features at Paramount. With the large turnover from
the departures of Dickie, Wheezer, and Dorothy, McGowan's last two
Our Gang comedies,
Bedtime
Worries and
Wild Poses,
focused heavily on Spanky and his parents, played by
Gay Seabrooke and
Emerson Treacy. After a four-month hiatus in
production, German-born
Gus Meins assumed
directing duties starting with 1934's
Hi'-Neighbor!.
Gordon Douglas served as Meins'
assistant director, and Fred Newmeyer alternated directorial duties
with Meins for a handful of shorts. Meins'
Our Gang shorts
were less improvisational than McGowan's, and featured a heavier
reliance on dialogue.
Scotty Beckett and
Wally Albright joined the gang at the start
of Meins' tenure as director, as did
Billie Thomas. Within a few months of joining
the series, Thomas began playing the character of Stymie's sister
"Buckwheat" (even though Thomas was a male). Buckwheat was first
portrayed by Stymie's sister Carletta Beard for one short, and by
Willie Mae Taylor in three others, before the part became Thomas'.
Also, semi-regular actors such as
Jackie Lynn Taylor, Marriane Edwards, and
Leonard Kibrick, as the neighborhood
bully, joined the series at this time. Tommy Bond and Wally
Albright left the gang in the middle of 1934; Jackie Lynn Taylor
and Marriane Edwards would depart by 1935.
Early in 1935,
Carl Switzer and his
brother Harold joined the gang after impressing Roach with an
impromptu performance at the studio commissary, the
Our
Gang Cafe, which was open to the public. While Harold would
eventually be relegated to the role of a background player, Carl,
nicknamed "Alfalfa", eventually became Scotty Beckett's replacement
as Spanky's sidekick. Stymie left shortly after, and the Buckwheat
character morphed subtly into a male. The same year,
Darla Hood and
Eugene "Porky" Lee also joined the gang,
as Scotty Beckett departed for a career in features.
The final Roach years
Our Gang was hugely successful during the 1920s and the
early 1930s. However, by 1934, many movie theater owners were
increasingly dropping two-reel (twenty minute) comedies like
Our Gang and the
Laurel & Hardy series from
their bills, and running
double
feature programs instead. The
Laurel & Hardy
series was switched from film shorts to features exclusively in
mid-1935. By 1936, Hal Roach began debating plans to discontinue
Our Gang until
Louis B.
Mayer, head of Roach's distributor
MGM, convinced Roach to keep the popular series in production.
Roach agreed, and began producing shorter, one-reel
Our
Gang comedies (ten-minutes in length instead of twenty). The
first one-reel
Our Gang short,
Bored of Education (1936), won the
Academy Award
for Best Short Subject in 1937.
Bored of Education
also marked the
Our Gang directorial debut of former
assistant director Gordon Douglas.
As part of the arrangement with MGM to continue
Our Gang,
Roach got the clearance to produce an
Our Gang feature
film,
General Spanky, hoping
that he could possibly move the series to features as he had done
with Laurel & Hardy. Directed by Gordon Douglas and Fred
Newmeyer,
General Spanky starred Spanky, Buckwheat, and
Alfalfa in a sentimental, Shirley Temple-esque story set during the
Civil War. The film focused more
on its adult leads (Phillip Holmes and
Rosina Lawrence) than the kids, and was a
box office disappointment. No further
Our Gang features
were made.
After years of gradual cast changes, the troupe standardized in
1936 with the move to one-reel shorts. Most casual fans of
Our
Gang are particularly familiar with the 1936-1939 incarnation
of the cast: Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla, Buckwheat, and Porky, with
recurring characters such as neighborhood bullies Butch and Woim
and bookworm Waldo.
Tommy Bond, an
off-and-on member of the gang since 1932, returned to the series as
Butch beginning with the 1937 short
Glove
Taps.
Sidney Kibrick played
Butch's crony, The Woim.
Glove Taps also featured the
first appearance of
Darwood Kaye as the
bespectacled Waldo. In later shorts, both Butch and Waldo would
become Alfalfa's main rivals in his pursuit of Darla's affections.
Other familiar situations in these mid-to-late 1930s shorts include
the "He-Man Woman Haters Club" from
Hearts Are Thumps and
Mail and Female (both 1937), the Laurel
and Hardy-ish interaction between Alfalfa and Spanky, and the comic
tag-along team of Porky and Buckwheat.
Roach produced one last two-reel
Our Gang short, a
high-budget musical special entitled
Our Gang Follies of 1938, in
1937 as a
parody of MGM's
Broadway Melody of 1938.
In
Follies of 1938, Alfalfa, who aspires to be an opera singer, falls asleep and dreams that his old pal
Spanky has become the rich owner of a swanky Broadway
nightclub, where Darla and Buckwheat perform and
make "hundreds and thousands of dollars."
As the profit margins continued to decline due to double features,
Roach could no longer afford to continue producing
Our
Gang, and MGM, not wanting the series discontinued, agreed to
take over production. On
May 31,
1938, Roach sold MGM the
Our Gang unit,
including the rights to the name and the contracts for the actors
and writers, for $25,000. After delivering the Laurel & Hardy
feature
Block-Heads, Roach
ended his distribution contract with MGM as well, moving to
United Artists and leaving the short
subjects business. The final Roach-produced short in the
Our
Gang series,
Hide and
Shriek, was also Roach's final short subject
production.
The MGM era
The MGM-produced
Our Gang shorts were not as well-received
as the Roach-produced shorts had been, due to both MGM's
inexperience with the brand of
slapstick comedy Our Gang was
famous for and MGM's insistence on keeping Alfalfa, Spanky, and
Buckwheat in the series until they were in their early teens. On
loan from the Roach studio, a frustrated Gordon Douglas completed
only two
Our Gang shorts for MGM before returning to his
home studio. In replacing him, MGM began using
Our Gang as
a training ground for future feature directors.
George Sidney,
Edward Cahn, and
Cy Endfield all worked on
Our Gang
before moving on to features; another director, Herbert Glazer,
remained a
second-unit director outside
of his work on the series. Nearly all of the 52 MGM-produced
Our Gangs were written by former Roach director Hal Law
and former junior director Robert A. McGowan (also known as Anthony
Mack, nephew of the series' main director back at Roach, Robert F.
McGowan). Robert A. McGowan was credited for these shorts as
"Robert McGowan"; as a result, moviegoers have been confused for
decades about whether this Robert McGowan and the senior director
of the same name back at Roach were two separate people or
not.
The
Our Gang films produced by MGM are considered by many
film historians, and even the
Our Gang kids themselves, to
be lesser films than the Roach entries. The kids' performances are
often stilted, with the fully scripted dialogue now being recited
stiffly instead of spoken naturally. The stories were more
heavy-handed, with adult situations driving the action, and the
films usually incorporated a moral, a civics lesson, or a patriotic
theme.
Porky was replaced in 1939 by Mickey Gubitosi, later better known
by the stage name of
Robert
Blake. Butch, Waldo, and Alfalfa all left the series in 1940,
and
Billy "Froggy" Laughlin (with his
Popeye-esque trick voice) and
Janet Burston were added to the cast. By the
end of 1941, Darla had also departed from the series, and Spanky
followed her within a year. Buckwheat remained in the cast until
the end of the series as the only holdover from the Roach
era.
Exhibitors noticed the drop in quality, and often complained that
the series was slipping. When six of the 13 shorts released between
1942 and 1943 sustained losses rather than turning profits, MGM
discontinued
Our Gang, releasing the final short,
Dancing Romeo, on April 29,
1944.
Since 1937,
Our Gang had been featured as a licensed
comic strip in the UK
comic The
Dandy, drawn by
Dudley D.
Watkins. Starting in 1942, MGM
licensed
Our Gang to
Dell
Comics for the publication of
Our Gang Comics,
featuring the gang,
Barney Bear, and
Tom and Jerry. The strips in
The Dandy ended three years after the demise of the
Our Gang shorts, in 1947.
Our Gang Comics
outlasted the series by five years, finally changing its name to
Tom and Jerry Comics in 1949. In 2006,
Fantagraphics Books began issuing a
series of volumes reprinting the
Our Gang stories, most of
which were written and drawn by
Pogo
creator
Walt Kelly.
Later years and The Little Rascals revival
The Little Rascals television package
When Hal Roach sold
Our Gang to MGM, he had retained the
option to buy back the rights to the
Our Gang trademark,
provided he did not produce any more kids' comedies in the
Our
Gang vein. In the mid-1940s, he decided that he wanted to
create a new film property in the
Our Gang mold, and
forfeited his right to buy back the
Our Gang name in order
to produce two
Cinecolor featurettes,
Curley and
Who Killed Doc Robbin. Neither
film was critically or financially successful, and Roach instead
turned his plans toward re-releasing the original
Our Gang
comedies.
In 1949, MGM sold Hal Roach the rights to the 1927–1938
Our
Gang silent and talking shorts. MGM retained the rights to use
the
Our Gang name, the 52
Our Gang films it
produced, and the rights to the feature
General Spanky. As
per the terms of the sale, Roach was required to remove the
MGM Lion studio logo and all instances of
the names or logos "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer", "Loews Incorporated", and
Our Gang from the reissued film prints. Using a modified
version of the series' original name, Roach packaged the 80 sound
Our Gang shorts as
The Little Rascals.
Monogram Pictures and its successor,
Allied Artists, reissued the films to
theaters beginning in 1951. Allied Artists' television department,
Interstate Television, syndicated the films to TV in 1955.
Under its new name,
The Little Rascals enjoyed renewed
popularity on television, and new
Little Rascals comic
books, toys, and other licensed merchandise was made available for
purchase. Seeing the potential of the property, MGM began
distributing its own
Our Gang shorts to television in
1956, and as a result, the two separate packages of
Our
Gang films competed with each other in
syndication for three decades. Some
stations bought both packages and played them alongside each other
under the
Little Rascals show banner.
The television rights for the original silent
Pathé Our Gang comedies were sold to
National Telepix and other distributors, who distributed the films
under titles such as
The Mischief Makers and
Those
Lovable Scallawags with Their Gangs.
King World's acquisition and edits
In the 1960s a then-new distributor named
King World Entertainment (now
CBS Television
Distribution) returned the films to television, and the success
of
The Little Rascals paved the way for King World to
become one of the biggest television syndicators in the
world.
In 1971, because of controversy over some of the racial humor in
the shorts, as well as other content deemed to be in bad taste,
King World made significant edits to its
Little Rascals TV
prints. Many of the series entries were trimmed by two to four
minutes, while several others (among them
Spanky,
Bargain Day,
The Pinch Singer and
Mush and Milk) were cut down to nearly
half of their original length.
At the same time, eight
Little Rascals shorts were removed
from the King World television package altogether.
Lazy Days,
Moan & Groan, Inc., the
Stepin Fetchit-guest-starred
A Tough Winter,
Little Daddy,
A Lad An' A Lamp,
The Kid From Borneo, and
Little Sinner were all
deleted from the syndication package because of perceived racism,
while
Big Ears (1931) was deleted
for dealing with the subject of
divorce. The
early talkie
Railroadin' (1929)
was never part of the television package, not because of
potentially offensive content, but because its sound tracks
(recorded on phonographic records) could not be found and were
considered lost.
In the early 2000s, the 71 films in the King World package were
re-edited, reinstating many (though not all) of the edits made in
1971 and the original
Our Gang title cards. These new
television prints made their debut on the
American Movie Classics cable
network in 2001.
New Little Rascals productions
In 1977,
Norman Lear tried to revive the
Rascals franchise, taping three pilot episodes of the
The
Little Rascals. The pilots were not bought, but they were
notable for giving an early start to
Gary
Coleman.
1979 brought
The Little Rascals Christmas Special, an
animated
holiday special produced by
Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, written by
Romeo
Muller and featuring voice work from Darla Hood (who died
before the special aired) and Matthew "Stymie" Beard.
Hanna-Barbera brought the animated gang back
from 1982 to 1984 in a series of
Little Rascals
television cartoons for
ABC Saturday Mornings. Many
producers, including
Our Gang alumnus
Jackie Cooper, made pilots for new
Our
Gang TV shows, but none of them ever went into
production.
In 1994,
Amblin Entertainment
and
Universal Pictures released
The Little
Rascals, a feature film based upon the series and
featuring interpretations of classic
Our Gang shorts,
including
Hearts are Thumps,
Rushin' Ballet, and
Hi'-Neighbor! The film, directed by
Penelope Spheeris, starred
Travis Tedford as Spanky,
Bug Hall as Alfalfa, and
Ross Bagley as Buckwheat; and featured cameos by
the Olsen twins,
Whoopi Goldberg,
Mel
Brooks,
Reba McEntire,
Daryl Hannah,
Donald
Trump, and
Raven-Symoné.
The Little Rascals was a moderate success for Universal,
bringing in $51,764,950 at the
box office
Critics and fans alike were quick to note that no surviving members
of the original
Our Gang appeared in the film.
Legacy and influence
The characters in this series became well-known cultural icons, and
could often be identified solely by their first names. The
characters of Alfalfa, Spanky, Buckwheat, Darla, and Froggy were
especially well-known. Like many child actors, the
Our
Gang kids were subsequently
typecast and had trouble outgrowing
their
Our Gang images.
Several
Our Gang alumni, among them
Carl
"Alfalfa" Switzer,
Scotty
Beckett,
Norman "Chubby" Chaney,
Billy "Froggy" Laughlin, and
Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins, met with untimely deaths
before the age of forty. This led to rumors that there was an
Our Gang/Little Rascals "curse", a rumor popularized by a
2002
E!
True Hollywood
Story documentary entitled
The Curse of the Little
Rascals. The
Snopes.com website
debunks the rumor that there is an
Our Gang curse, stating
that there was no evidence of a pattern of unusual deaths when
taking all of the major
Our Gang stars into account,
despite the tragic deaths of a select few.
The kids'
work in the series went largely unrewarded in later years, although
Spanky McFarland received a star on the Hollywood Walk
of Fame
posthumously in 1994. Neither he nor any of
the other
Our Gang kids ever got any
residuals or
royalties from
reruns of the
shorts or licensed products with their likenesses. The only
remittances they received were their weekly salaries during their
time in the gang, which ranged from $40 a week for newcomers to
$200 or more a week for stars like Farina, Spanky, and
Alfalfa.
One notable exception is
Jackie
Cooper, who was later nominated for an
Academy Award and had a full career as an
adult actor. Cooper is best known today for portraying
Perry White in the
Superman movies starring
Christopher Reeve, as well as for
directing episodes of TV series such as
M*A*S*H and
Superboy.
The 1930
Our Gang short Pups is
Pups was deemed "culturally significant" by the United
States Library of
Congress
, and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in
2004.
Imitators, followers, and frauds
Due to the popularity of
Our Gang, a number of imitation
kid
comedy short
film series were created by competing studios. Among the most
notable of these are
The Kiddie Troupers, featuring future
comedian
Eddie Bracken;
Baby Burlesks, featuring
Shirley Temple; the
Buster Brown comedies (from which
Our
Gang received
Pete the Pup and
director
Gus Meins); and
Our
Gang's most successful competitor, the
Toonerville Trolley-based
Mickey McGuire series starring
Mickey Rooney. Some less notable imitations
series include
The McDougall Alley Gang (
Bray Productions, 1927–1928),
The Us
Bunch and
Our Kids.
After its original run was over,
Our Gang continued to
inspire works in various media focusing on children. These include,
but are not limited to, films such as
The Bad News Bears,
The Goonies and
The Sandlot.
In later years, a large number of adults falsely claimed to have
been members of
Our Gang. A long list of people, including
persons famous in other capacities such as
Nanette Fabray,
Eddie Bracken, and gossip columnist
Joyce Haber have all claimed to be or have been
publicly called former
Our Gang kids. Bracken's official
biography was once altered to state that he appeared in
Our
Gang instead of
The Kiddie Troupers, although he
himself had no knowledge of the change. There are many other
persons who have falsely claimed to have been
Our Gang
kids such as Spanky, Alfalfa, Froggy, and often other characters
who never existed.
Among the most notable
Our Gang impostors is Jack
Bothwell, who claimed to have portrayed a character named
"Freckles", and went so far as to appear on the game show
To Tell The Truth in the
fall of 1957 perpetuating this
fraud. Another
is Bill English, a
grocery store
employee who appeared on the October 5, 1990, episode of the
ABC investigative
television newsmagazine 20/20 claiming to have been Buckwheat. Following
the broadcast, Spanky McFarland informed the media of the truth,
and in December, William Thomas, Jr., the son of Billie Thomas, the
actual actor who played Buckwheat, filed a
lawsuit against ABC for negligence.
Another child actor of the era who claimed to have portrayed a
character named "Freckles" in
Our Gang was
Wesley Barry. In the 1979 book
Behind
Japanese Lines: With the OSS in Burma, author Richard Dunlop, a
former OSS member, made this statement about then-OSS member Wes
"Berry." Barry was in fact a child actor of the time who acted in
films similar to the
Our Gang shorts, and was
particularly known for his freckles.
While it does appear likely that Barry did serve in the
OSS in Burma in 1944, there is no evidence that he appeared in
the Our Gang movies apart from this
source.
Persons and entities named after Our Gang
A number of other groups, companies, and entities have been
inspired by or named after
Our Gang. The
folk-rock group
Spanky and Our Gang was named in honor
of the troupe, but had no other connection with it. In addition,
there are a number of (unauthorized)
Little Rascals and
Our Gang restaurants and
day care center in various locations
throughout the United States.
Ren and
Stimpy, the animated stars of
Nickelodeon's
The Ren and Stimpy Show, were
first created as supporting characters on a proposed cartoon show
called
Your Gang about a group of children.
Home video releases and rights to the films
16 mm, VHS, and DVD releases
For many years, Blackhawk Films released 79 of the 80 Roach talkies
on
16 mm film. The sound discs for
Railroading' had been lost since the 1940s, and a silent
print was made available for home movie release until 1982, when
the film's sound discs were located in the MGM vault and the short
was restored with sound. Like the television prints,Blackhawk's
Little Rascals reissues featured custom-created title
cards in place of the original
Our Gang logos, as per
MGM's 1949 arrangement with Hal Roach not to distribute the series
under its original title.The only edits made to the films were the
replacements of the original
Our Gang title cards with
Little Rascals titles. In 1982, MGM found a print of
Railroadin with the soundtrack intact, which was turned
over to Blackhawk and made available in 16 mm format.
In 1983, with the
VHS home video market growing,
Blackhawk began distributing
Little Rascals VHS tapes
available through catalogue only, with three shorts per tape.
Blackhawk Films was acquired in 1983 by
National Telefilm Associates,
later renamed
Republic Pictures.
Republic would release
Little Rascals VHS volumes for
retail purchase in various, non-comprehensive collections through
the rest of the 1980s and early 1990s. By this point, all but 11 of
the Roach-era sound films were available on home video.
Cabin Fever/Hallmark releases
In 1993, Republic sold the home video rights to the 80 sound Roach
shorts and some of the available silent shorts to Cabin Fever
Entertainment. Cabin Fever also acquired the rights to use the
original
Our Gang title cards and MGM logos, and for the
first time in over 50 years, the Roach sound
Our Gang
comedies could be commercially exhibited in their original format.
Twenty-one VHS volumes were released between 1994 and 1995, hosted
by
Leonard Maltin. With four shorts
per tape, Cabin Fever made all 80 Roach sound shorts, and four
silents, available for purchase, uncut and with digitally restored
picture and sound.
Cabin Fever began pressing DVD versions of their first 12
Little Rascals VHS volumes (with the contents of two VHS
volumes included on each DVD), but went out of business in 1998
before their release. The
Little Rascals home video rights
were then sold to
Hallmark
Entertainment in 1999, who released the DVD's without an
official launch while cleaning out their warehouse in early 2000.
Later that year, the first 10 Cabin Fever volumes were re-released
on VHS with new packaging, and the first two volumes were also
released on DVD as
The Little Rascals: Volumes 1-2. Two
further Hallmark collections featured ten shorts apiece, and were
released in 2003 and 2005, respectively.
In 2006,
Legend Films released
colorized versions of fifteen
Our Gang comedies (14 Roach
entries, and the public domain MGM entry
Waldo's Last Stand), which were
released across three
Little Rascals DVDs.
RHI Entertainment and
Genius Products released an eight-disc DVD
set,
The Little Rascals - the Complete Collection, on
October 28,
2008.
This set includes all 80 Hal Roach-produced
Our Gang sound
short films. Most of the collection uses the Cabin Fever
restorations, while a handful of the shorts are presented with
older Blackhawk Films transfers.
MGM releases
Meanwhile, MGM has released several non-comprehensive VHS tapes of
its shorts, as well as the feature
General Spanky. Four of
the MGM
Our Gang shorts have also appeared as bonus
features on Warner Bros.-issued classic film DVD releases. There
are many other unofficial
Our Gang and
Little
Rascals home video collections available from several other
distributors, comprising shorts (both silent and sound) which have
fallen into the
public domain.
On September 1, 2009,
Warner Home
Video released all 52 MGM
Our Gang shorts in a
compilation titled
Our Gang Comedies 1938-1942 for DVD and
digital download. The set is available by mail order only through
the Warner Bros. Studios Online Store's Warner Archive
Collection.
Status of ownership
Currently, the rights to the
Our Gang/
Little
Rascals shorts are scattered.
RHI Entertainment
(successor-in-interest to
Hallmark Entertainment) owns the
copyrights of and holds the theatrical and home video rights to the
Roach-produced
Our Gang shorts. RHI acquired these after
absorbing
Hal Roach Studios,
Roach's estate, and Cabin Fever Entertainment in the late
1990s.
King World (KW) held the rights to the
Little Rascals
trademark and the
Little Rascals television package until
2007. Today, King World's rights are with
CBS Television Distribution
(which was formed by the merger of KW with
CBS Paramount Domestic
Television), which offers both original black-and-white and
colorized prints for syndication.
King World/CBS's
Little Rascals package was featured as
exclusive programming (in the United States) for the
American Movie Classics network from
August 2001 to December 2003, with
Frankie
Muniz as the host.
The MGM-produced
Our Gang shorts,
General Spanky, and the rights to the
Our Gang name became the property of
Turner Entertainment in 1986 when its
founder
Ted Turner bought the classic MGM
library. Today, the MGM
Our Gang shorts are distributed
for Turner by
Warner Bros. Television
Distribution. Turner made a deal with King World in the early
1990s to jointly market the
Little Rascals and
Our
Gang films and properties, instead of competing with one
another. The MGM
Our Gangs now appear regularly on the
AmericanLife TV Network, and
periodically on the
Turner Classic
Movies cable network. Thirty-three of the MGM
Our
Gangs were also available for viewing online at
AOL's
In2TV website during the
mid-2000s.
The widely-circulated rumor that entertainer
Bill Cosby bought up the rights to
Our
Gang to keep the racial stereotypes off of television is
false. Cosby has never owned any rights to the series at any
time.
Our Gang kids, pets, and personnel
For a detailed listing of the Our Gang kids, recurring adult
actors, directors, and writers, please see Our Gang personnel.
The following is a listing of the best-known child actors in the
Our Gang comedies. They are grouped by the era during
which they joined the gang:
Roach silent period
Roach talkie period
MGM period
Notable Our Gang comedies
For a complete filmography, see Our Gang filmography.
The following is a listing of selected
Our Gang comedies,
considered by
Leonard Maltin and
Richard W. Bann (in their book
The Little Rascals: The Life and
Times of Our Gang) to be among the best and most important in
the series.
- 1923: The Champeen and
Derby Day
- 1924: High Society
- 1925: Your Own Back Yard and One Wild
Ride
- 1929: Cat, Dog & Co. and Small Talk
- 1930: The First Seven Years, Pups Is Pups, Teacher's Pet, and
School's Out
- 1931: Love Business, Little Daddy, Fly My
Kite, and Dogs Is Dogs
- 1932: Readin' and Writin', The Pooch,
Hook And Ladder, Free Wheeling, and Birthday
Blues
- 1933: The Kid From Borneo, Mush and Milk, and
Bedtime Worries
- 1934: Hi' Neighbor! and Mama's Little
Pirate
- 1935: Beginner's Luck and Our Gang Follies Of
1936
- 1936: Divot Diggers, Bored of Education, and General Spanky
- 1937: Reunion In Rhythm, Glove Taps,
Hearts Are Thumps, Rushin' Ballet, Night 'N'
Gales, Mail And Female, and Our Gang Follies of 1938
- 1938: Three Men in a Tub and Hide and
Shriek
- 1939: Alfalfa's Aunt and Cousin Wilbur
- 1940: Goin’ Fishin’ and Kiddie Kure
- 1942: Going to Press
Footnotes
- Maltin,
Leonard (1994). The Little Rascals: Remastered and Uncut,
Volume 22 (Introduction) [Videorecording]. New York: Cabin
Fever Entertainment/Hallmark Entertainment
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 1, 128, 134, 172.
- Limbacher, Carl Jr. (July 23, 2001). Civil Rights Leader: Dan Rather Slurred Blacks with
Chandra Comments. NewsMax.com. Retrieved May 26, 2005.
In 2001, Dan
Rather was accused of racism by the Reverend Jesse Lee
Peterson when he stated, on air, that "What happened was they
[CBS management] got the willies, they got the Buckwheats. Their
knees wobbled and we gave it up."
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times of
Our Gang, p. 243.
- Burns, Linda. (2005, April 8). Life & Times (interview with
Donald Bogle) [Television broadcast]. Los Angeles: KCET. Transcript
available here. Excerpt: "[The] interesting thing is the
first real kind of black star in Hollywood was a [child actor]. His
name was Ernest Morrison. He was known as Sunshine Sammy and he
worked with Harold Lloyd. He worked in the early "Our Gang" series.
He was very well-known within the black community in Los Angeles.
People knew him and admired him. But they were the early ones. The
other thing that was also interesting was that, in the very early
days, there were a number who ended up working as servants for
major white stars."
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 181.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 245.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 9.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 246.
- Bogle, Donald (1973, rev. 2001). Toms, Coons, Mulattoes,
Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American
Films. New York: Continuum. Pg. 21. ISBN 082-641267-X.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 4-5.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 262.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 119.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 140.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 169-170.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 175.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 195.
- Ward, Richard Lewis (2005). A History of Hal Roach
Studios. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Pg. 116, 225. ISBN 080-932637-X.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 197.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 202.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 211.
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 235 - 236. Financial data for negative costs,
revenue, and profits/losses are provided for all 52 MGM Our
Gang shorts.
- The Little Rascals (1994). Imdb.com.
Retrieved May 26, 2005.
- " Business Data for The Little Rascals (1994)".
IMDb. Retrieved May 30, 2005.
- " E! True Hollywood Story: The Curse of the Little
Rascals". IMDb.com. Retrieved April 19, 2007.
- Mikkelson, Barbara and Mikkelson, David. " Urban Legends References Page: 'Our Gang' Curse."
Snopes.com. Retrieved April 19, 2007.
- NY Times obit, August 1, 1993
- Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times
of Our Gang, p. 241-242.
- Contemporary sources variously identify Mickey Daniels, Harry
Spear, and Jay R. Smith as being called "Freckles"
- The Little Rascals DVD news: Little Rascals Box Set
Announced | TVShowsOnDVD.com
- The Little Rascals DVD news: Box Art for The Little
Rascals - The Complete Collection | TVShowsOnDVD.com
- DVD Talk Review: The Little Rascals: The Complete
Collection
- Sept. 17, 1999. " Urban Legends: The Little Rascals".
Snopes.com. Retrieved June 24, 2005.
References
- Maltin, Leonard & Bann, Richard W (1977, rev. 1992). The
Little Rascals: The Life & Times of Our Gang. New York: Crown
Publishing/Three Rivers Press. ISBN 051-758325-9.
- Ramsey, Steve. Our Gang Online. Ramseyltd.com (No
longer online). Retrieved version of site as it existed on August 3, 2002
using the Wayback
Machine on March 10, 2005.
Further reading
- Bond, Tommy, w. Genini, Ron (1994).
Darn Right It's Butch: Memories of Our Gang/The Little
Rascals. Delaware: Morgan Printing. ISBN 0-9630976-5-2.
- Cooper, Jackie (1982). Please
Don't Shoot My Dog: The Autobiography of Jackie Cooper. New
York: Penguin Putnam. ISBN 0-425-07483-8.
External links