Our Gang

Our Gang
"The Little Rascals" redirects here. For other uses, see The Little Rascals (disambiguation).
For other uses, see Our Gang (disambiguation).
Our Gang (a.k.a. The Little Rascals)

Title card for the 1937 Our Gang comedy Rushin' Ballet.
Directed by Robert McGowan
Anthony Mack
Gus Meins
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Produced by Hal Roach
Starring Mickey Daniels
Jackie Cooper
George McFarland
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Music by Leroy Shield
Marvin Hatley
Cinematography Art Lloyd
Ernest "Hap" Depew
Francis Corby
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Editing by Richard Currier
Ray Snyder
Bert Jordan
Louis McManus
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Distributed by Pathé, MGM
Warner Bros. (DVD sets)
Release date(s) 1922–1944
Running time 30 to 10 (depending on length of reel)
Country United States
Language English

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, the series is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively natural way, as Roach and original director Robert F. McGowan worked to film the unaffected, raw nuances apparent in regular children rather than have them imitate adult acting styles.

In addition, Our Gang notably put boys, girls, whites and blacks together in a group as equals, something that "broke new ground," according to film historian Leonard Maltin.[1] Such a thing had never been done before in cinema but has since been repeated after the success of Our Gang.

Our Gang's first production at the Roach studio was in 1922 as a silent short subject series. Roach changed distributors from Pathé to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1927, and converted the series to sound in 1929. Production continued at the Roach studio until the series was sold in 1938 to MGM, who 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 owned the rights to the Our Gang trademark. The series has remained in syndication since then, with periodic new productions based on the shorts surfacing over the years, including a 1994 Little Rascals feature film released by Universal Pictures.

Contents

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 children 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.[citation needed]

Directorial approach

Senior director Robert F. McGowan helmed most of the Our Gang shorts until 1933, assisted by his nephew Anthony Mack. McGowan worked hard to develop a style that allowed the children 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.[2] The children, some of them too young to read, very rarely saw the scripts; instead McGowan would explain the scene to be filmed to each child immediately before it was shot, directing the children using a megaphone and encouraging improvisation.[2] 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.[2] 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).[2]

Finding and replacing the cast

As the children grew too old to be in the series, they were replaced by new children, usually from the Los Angeles area. Eventually, Our Gang talent scouting was done using large-scale national contests, where thousands of children (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, none of whom made it past the audition stage.

An original theatrical poster for the Our Gang comedy Baby Brother. The premise of this short has Allen "Farina" Hoskins (center) paint a black baby with white shoe polish so that he can sell him to lonely rich boy Joe Cobb (right) as a baby brother.

African-American cast members

The Our Gang series is notable for being one of the first times in cinema history that blacks and whites were portrayed as equals. The four African-American 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 African-American actor signed to a long-term contract in Hollywood history,[3] and was the first major African-American star in Hollywood history as well.[4] In the 1940s he was the only black cast member in the popular East Side Kids film series.

In their adult years, Morrison, Beard and 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.[5] Ernie Morrison stated that "when it came to race, Hal Roach was color-blind".[6] 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

(From left to right) Ernie "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison, Andy Samuel, Allen "Farina" Hoskins, Mickey Daniels and Joe Cobb in a 1923 still from one of the earliest Our Gang comedies.

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 child had taken the biggest stick, and the others were trying to force him to give it to the biggest child. After realizing that he had been watching the children bicker for 15 minutes, Roach thought a short film series about children just being themselves might be a success.[7]

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 C. 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 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 children's 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 children 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,[8] and the most popular black child star of the 1920s.[9] Mickey and Mary were also very popular, and were often paired 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 children 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.[10] 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 children 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.

Jackie Cooper in the 1930 short School's Out.

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 25 minute 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 prominently in three 1930/1931 Our Gang films: 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. Many also appeared in a group cameo appearance in the all-star comedy short The Stolen Jools (1931).

Musical scores

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.

The gang races rich-kid Jerry Tucker in their makeshift fire engine in the 1934 short Hi'-Neighbor!

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 children 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 actor 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!"[11]

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 Moore'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 children's 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 Seabrook and Emerson Treacy. After a four-month hiatus in production,[12] German-born Gus Meins assumed directing duties starting with 1934's Hi'-Neighbor!. Gordon Douglas served as Meins's assistant director, and Fred Newmeyer alternated directorial duties with Meins for a handful of shorts. Meins's Our Gang shorts were less improvisational than McGowan's, and featured a heavier reliance on dialogue.[13]

Scotty Beckett and Wally Albright joined the gang at the start of Meins's 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 Carlena Beard for one short, and by Willie Mae Taylor in three others, before the part became Thomas's. Also, semi-regular actors such as Jackie Lynn Taylor, Marianne 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 (20-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.[14] 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 (One Reel) 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.[14] Directed by Gordon Douglas and Fred Newmeyer, General Spanky featured 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 children, and was a box office disappointment.[15] No further Our Gang features were made.

George "Spanky" McFarland, Darla Hood, and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer in the "Club Spanky" dream sequence from the 1937 short Our Gang Follies of 1938.

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,[16] 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 (equal to $389,692 today).[17] 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.

Our Gang Comics #1. Cartoon versions of (l to r) Robert Blake (a.k.a. Mickey Gubitosi), Janet Burston, Spanky, Billy "Froggy" Laughlin, and Buckwheat appeared in the comic series, which also featured animated MGM stars Tom and Jerry and Barney Bear.

The MGM era

Initially, the series appeared to continue where they left off at Hal Roach Studios. The first change was that the series would be set in a fictitious town called Greenpoint. There would be slightly more continuity in the flims as well. The entire unit would move there and Spanky would also return on the third episode, Aladan's Lantern. The early MGM-produced Our Gang shorts were considered well made but gradually they went downhill. Overall, they 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.[18] 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 children themselves, to be lesser films than the Roach entries.[19] The children's 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.[20]

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,[21] 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 children's 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 and 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 was deleted for dealing with the subject of divorce. The early talkie Railroadin' was never part of the television package 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 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.[22] The Little Rascals was a moderate success for Universal, bringing in $51,764,950 at the box office.[23]

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 children were subsequently typecast and had trouble outgrowing their Our Gang images.

Several Our Gang alumni, among them Carl Switzer, Scotty Beckett, Norman Chaney, Billy Laughlin, Donald Haines and Bobby 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.[24] 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.[25]

The children's 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 children ever received 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.[8]

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 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. There is also evidence[26] that Our Gang-style productions were filmed in small towns and cities around the country using local children as actors during the 1920s and 1930s. These productions did not appear to be affiliated with Hal Roach, but often used storylines from the shorts of the period, and sometimes even went so far as to identify themselves as being Our Gang productions.

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[27] have all claimed to be or have been publicly called former Our Gang children.[28] Bracken's official biography was once altered[citation needed] to state that he appeared in Our Gang instead of The Kiddie Troupers, although he himself had no knowledge of the change.[citation needed]

Among the most notable Our Gang impostors is Jack Bothwell, who claimed to have portrayed a character named "Freckles",[29] and went so far as to appear on the game show To Tell The Truth in the fall of 1957 perpetuating this fraud.[citation needed] In 2008, a Darla Hood impostor, Mollie Barron, died claiming to be one of the "Darla" actresses cast in the Our Gang series. Her AP obituary[citation needed] reported her as an Our Gang cast member. 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,[citation needed] and in December, William Thomas, Jr. (son of Billie Thomas, the actual actor who played Buckwheat) filed a lawsuit against ABC for negligence.[citation needed]

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 centers 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

For more details on this topic, see Our Gang filmography.

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 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 DVDs 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.[30][31] This set includes all 80 Hal Roach-produced Our Gang sound short films. Most of the collection uses the Cabin Fever restorations, while 16 of the shorts are presented with older Blackhawk Films transfers.[32]

On June 14, 2011, Vivendi Entertainment re-released 7 of the 8 DVD's from RHI/Genius Products' The Little Rascals - The Entire Collection. This would include all 79 episodes but would exclude the disc featuring the extras. Each of the volumes would be in chronological order and sold individually. Unlike the box set, these discs featured all of the Cabin Fever MGM restorations, eliminating the older Blackhawk Films transfers. Each featured about 10 episodes, while the 7th disc featured more episodes due to the fact the later episodes were shorter.

MGM/Warner Bros. 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 The Our Gang Collection: 1938–1942 (though it contains the 1943-44 shorts as well) for DVD and digital download. The set is available by mail order only as part of the 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.

CBS Television Distribution, formed by the merger of King World Entertainment with CBS Paramount Domestic Television, owns the rights to the Little Rascals trademark and the Little Rascals television package. CBS offers both original black-and-white and colorized prints for syndication. The King World/CBS 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. As part of a month-long tribute to Hal Roach Studios, Turner Classic Movies televised a 24-hour marathon of Roach Our Gang shorts - both sound films and silents - on January 4–5, 2011.[33]

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.[34]

Our Gang child actors, pets, and personnel

For a detailed listing of the Our Gang child actors, recurring adult actors, directors, and writers, see Our Gang personnel.

The following is a listing of the main child actors in the Our Gang comedies. They are grouped by the era during which they joined the series.

Roach silent period

Roach talkie period

MGM period

As of May 2011, surviving cast members include Dickie Moore, Marianne Edwards, Jean Darling, Mildred Kornman, Robert Blake, Jerry Tucker, Sidney Kibrick and Jackie Lynn Taylor.

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.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Maltin, Leonard (1994). The Little Rascals: Remastered and Uncut, Volume 22 (Introduction) [Videorecording]. New York: Cabin Fever Entertainment/Hallmark Entertainment
  2. ^ a b c d Maltin & Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life & Times of Our Gang, pp. 1, 128, 134, 172.
  3. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 243.
  4. ^ Burns, Linda. (2005, April 8). Life & Times (interview with Donald Bogle) [Television broadcast]. Los Angeles: KCET.Transcript available here [1]. Excerpt: "[The] interesting thing is the first real kind of African-American 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 African-American 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."
  5. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 181.
  6. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 245.
  7. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 9.
  8. ^ a b Maltin & Bann, p. 246.
  9. ^ Bogle, Donald (1973, rev. 2001). Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Continuum), p. 21. ISBN 082-641267-X.
  10. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 4-5.
  11. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 262.
  12. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 119.
  13. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 140.
  14. ^ a b Maltin & Bann, pp. 169-170.
  15. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 175.
  16. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 195.
  17. ^ Ward, Richard Lewis (2005). A History of Hal Roach Studios. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Pg. 116, 225. ISBN 080-932637-X.
  18. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 197.
  19. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 202.
  20. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 211.
  21. ^ Maltin & Bann, pp. 235-236. Financial data for negative costs, revenue, and profits/losses are provided for all 52 MGM Our Gang shorts.
  22. ^ The Little Rascals (1994). Imdb.com. Retrieved May 26, 2005.
  23. ^ "Business Data for The Little Rascals (1994)". IMDb. Retrieved May 30, 2005.
  24. ^ "E! True Hollywood Story: The Curse of the Little Rascals". IMDb.com. Retrieved April 19, 2007.
  25. ^ Mikkelson, Barbara and Mikkelson, David. "Urban Legends References Page: 'Our Gang' Curse." Snopes.com. Retrieved April 19, 2007.
  26. ^ Streible, Dan. (2003) Itinerant Filmakers and Amateur Casts: A Homemade Our Gang, 1926, Film History, An International Journal, Vol. 15, No. 2, p. 177-92.
  27. ^ NY Times obit, August 1, 1993
  28. ^ Maltin & Bann, p. 241-242.
  29. ^ Contemporary sources variously identify Mickey Daniels, Harry Spear, and Jay R. Smith as being called "Freckles"
  30. ^ "The Little Rascals DVD news: Little Rascals Box Set Announced". TVShowsOnDVD.com. http://tvshowsondvd.com/news/Little-Rascals-Our-Gang-Shorts-Set/10081. Retrieved 2011-02-06. 
  31. ^ "The Little Rascals DVD news: Box Art for The Little Rascals – The Complete Collection". TVShowsOnDVD.com. http://tvshowsondvd.com/news/Little-Rascals-Complete-Collection-Box-Art/10146. Retrieved 2011-02-06. 
  32. ^ "DVD Talk Review: The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection". Google.com. http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/35178/little-rascals-the-complete-collection-the/. Retrieved 2011-02-06. 
  33. ^ Kevin McDonough. "Can Paula Abdul make another comeback?". SouthCoastToday.com. http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110104/ENTERTAIN/101239993. Retrieved 2011-02-06. 
  34. ^ Sept. 17, 1999. "Urban Legends: The Little Rascals". Snopes.com. Retrieved June 24, 2005.

References

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