Little Rascals

''Our Gang'' (also known as ''The Little Rascals'' or ''Hal Roach's Rascals'') is an American series of comedy short films chronicling a group of poor neighborhood children and their adventures. Created by film producer Hal Roach, also the producer of the Laurel and Hardy films, ''Our Gang'' shorts were produced from 1922 to 1944, spanning the silent film and early sound film periods of American cinema. ''Our Gang'' is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively natural way; 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. The series also broke new ground by portraying white and black children interacting as equals during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the United States. Maltin, Leonard (1994). ''The Little Rascals: Remastered and Uncut'', vol. 22, introduction. Videorecording. New York: Cabin Fever Entertainment/Hallmark Entertainment.

The franchise began in 1922 as a silent short subject series produced by the Roach studio and released by Pathé Exchange. Roach changed distributors from Pathé to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1927, and the series entered its most popular period after converting to sound in 1929. Production continued at Roach until 1938, when the ''Our Gang'' production unit was sold to MGM, where production continued until 1944. Across 220 short films and a feature-film spin-off, ''General Spanky'', the ''Our Gang'' series featured over 41 child actors as regular members of its cast.

As MGM retained the rights to the ''Our Gang'' trademark after buying the series, the Roach-produced sound ''Our Gang'' films were re-released to theaters and syndicated for television under the title ''The Little Rascals''. Roach's ''The Little Rascals'' package, currently owned by CBS Media Ventures, and MGM's ''Our Gang'' package, currently owned by Turner Entertainment and distributed by Warner Bros., have since remained in syndication. New productions based on the shorts have been made over the years, including a 1994 feature film, ''The Little Rascals'', released by Universal Pictures.

Series overview

Unlike many motion pictures featuring children and based in fantasy, producer/creator Hal Roach rooted ''Our Gang'' in real life: most of the children were poor, and the gang was often at odds with snobbish "rich kids," officious adults, parents, and other such adversaries.

Directorial approach

Senior director Robert F. McGowan helmed most of the ''Our Gang'' shorts until 1933, assisted by his nephew Anthony Mack. McGowan worked 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.Maltin and Bann. ''The Little Rascals: The Life & Times of Our Gang''. pp. 1, 128, 134, 172. The children, some too young to read, 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.

When sound came in at the end of the 1920s, McGowan modified 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, streamlined the approach to McGowan's methods to meet the demands of the increasingly sophisticated movie industry of the mid-to-late 1930s. Douglas, in particular, had to streamline his films, as he directed ''Our Gang'' after Roach halved the running times of the shorts from two reels (20 minutes) to one reel (10 minutes).

Finding and replacing the cast

As children aged out of their roles, they were replaced by new children, usually from the Los Angeles area. Eventually ''Our Gang'' talent scouting employed large-scale national contests in which thousands of children tried out for an open role. For example, Norman Chaney ("Chubby"), Matthew Beard ("Stymie"), and Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas all won contests to become members of the gang: Chaney replaced Joe Cobb, Beard replaced Allen Hoskins ("Farina"), and Thomas replaced Beard.

Even when there was no talent search, the studio was bombarded by requests from parents who were sure their children were perfect for the series. Among them were the future child stars Mickey Rooney and Shirley Temple, neither of whom made it past the audition.

Minority cast members

The ''Our Gang'' series produced during the Jim Crow-era is notable for being one of the first in cinema history in which African Americans and White Americans were portrayed as equals. The five black child actors who held main roles in the series were Ernie Morrison, Allen Hoskins, Eugene Jackson, Matthew Beard and Billie Thomas. Ernie Morrison was, in fact, the first black actor signed to a long-term contract in Hollywood history and the first major black star in Hollywood history.

The African-American characters have often been criticized as racial stereotypes. The Black children spoke (or were indicated as speaking via text titles in the case of the silent entries) in a stereotypical " Negro dialect", and several controversial gags revolved directly around their skin color: Matthew Beard's Stymie character sweating jet-black ink, Billie Thomas' Buckwheat character being given fake "white measles" instead of dark ones and supposedly turned into a monkey, and so forth. One early ''Our Gang'' short, '' Lodge Night'' (1924), short revolves around the kids forming a parody club based on the Ku Klux Klan (though the Black children are still allowed to join).

In their adult years, actors Morrison, Beard, and Thomas defended the series, arguing that the white 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". In an interview on Tom Snyder's ''The Tomorrow Show'' in 1974, Matthew Beard said of his time in the series that "I feel it was great. Some of the lines I had to say I didn't like, but I never look at it like that. I just try to look at it as mostly a fun thing. We were just a group of kids who were having fun." In a separate interview, Ernie Morrison stated, "When it came to race, Hal Roach was color-blind."

Despite the stereotyping and racial gags, ''Our Gang's'' integrated cast caused it to be disliked by certain theater owners in the southern United States. Early in the existence of ''Our Gang'', these theater owners complained to Pathé that Morrison and Hoskins had too much screen time and their prominence in the shorts would offend white audiences. A later ''Our Gang'' spin-off film, '' Curley'' (1947), was banned by the Memphis, Tennessee, censor board for showing black and white children in school together, a characteristic common to even the earlier shorts. Other minorities, including Asian Americans Sing Joy, Allen Tong (also known as Alan Dong), and Edward Soo Hoo; and Italian American actor Mickey Gubitosi (later known as Robert Blake), were depicted in the series with varying levels of stereotyping.

History

1922–1925: 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 a film. The girl was, in his opinion, overly made up and overly rehearsed, and Roach 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 some children having an argument. The children had all taken sticks from the lumberyard to play with, but the smallest child had 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.

''Our Gang'' also had its roots in an aborted Roach short-subject series revolving around the adventures of a black boy called "Sunshine Sammy", played by Ernie Morrison. Theater owners then were wary of booking shorts focused on a black boy, and the series ended after just one entry, ''The Pickaninny'', was produced. Morrison's "Sunshine Sammy" instead became one of the foci of the new ''Our Gang'' series.

Under the supervision of Charley Chase, work began on the first two-reel shorts in the new "kids-and-pets" series, to be called ''Hal Roach's Rascals'', later that year. Director Fred C. Newmeyer helmed the first pilot film, entitled '' Our Gang'', but Roach scrapped Newmeyer's work and had former fireman Robert F. McGowan reshoot the short. Roach tested it at several 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 of children recommended to Roach by studio employees, with the exception of Ernie Morrison, under contract to Roach. The other ''Our Gang'' recruits included Roach photographer Gene Kornman's daughter Mary Kornman, their friends' son Mickey Daniels, and family friends Allen Hoskins, Jack Davis, Jackie Condon, and Joe Cobb. Most early shorts were filmed outdoors and on location and featured a menagerie of animal characters, such as Dinah the Mule.

Roach's distributor Pathé released ''One Terrible Day'', the fourth short 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 then were Ernie Morrison as Sunshine Sammy, Mickey Daniels, Mary Kornman, and Allen Hoskins as little Farina, who eventually became the most popular member of the 1920s gangMaltin & Bann, p. 246. and the most popular black child star of the 1920s. A reviewer wrote of the Farina character — depicted as female though played by a male child — in '' Photoplay'': "The honors go to a very young lady of color, billed as 'Little Farina.' Scarcely two years old, she goes through each set like a wee, sombre shadow." Daniels and Kornman were very popular and were often paired in ''Our Gang'' and a later teen version of the series called '' The Boy Friends'', which Roach produced from 1930 to 1932. Other early ''Our Gang'' children were Eugene Jackson as Pineapple, Scooter Lowry, Andy Samuel, Johnny Downs, Winston and Weston Doty, and Jay R. Smith.

1926–1929: New faces and new distributors

After Ernie, Mickey and Mary left the series in the mid 1920s, the ''Our Gang'' series entered a transitional period. The stress of directing child actors forced Robert McGowan to take doctor-mandated sabbaticals for exhaustion, leaving his nephew Robert A. McGowan (credited as Anthony Mack) to direct many shorts in this period. The Mack-directed shorts are considered among the lesser entries in the series. New faces included Bobby Hutchins as Wheezer, Harry Spear, Jean Darling and Mary Ann Jackson, while stalwart Farina served as the series' anchor.

Also at this time, the ''Our Gang'' cast acquired an American Pit Bull Terrier with a ring around one eye, originally named Pansy but soon known as Pete the Pup, the most famous ''Our Gang'' pet. In 1927, Roach ended his distribution arrangement with the Pathé company. He signed on to release future products through the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which 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 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.

1928–1931: Entering 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 film ''Small Talk''. It took a year for McGowan and the gang to fully adjust to talking pictures, during which time they lost Joe Cobb, Jean Darling and Harry Spear and added Norman Chaney, Dorothy DeBorba, Matthew "Stymie" Beard, Donald Haines and Jackie Cooper.

Cooper proved to be the personality the series had been missing since Mickey Daniels left and was featured prominently in three 1930/1931 ''Our Gang'' films: ''Teacher's Pet'', '' School's Out'', and ''Love Business''. These three shorts explored Jackie Cooper's crush on the new schoolteacher Miss Crabtree, played by June Marlowe. Cooper soon won the lead role in Paramount's feature film '' Skippy'', and Roach sold his contract to MGM in 1931. Other ''Our Gang'' members appearing in the early sound shorts included Buddy McDonald, Clifton Young, and Shirley Jean Rickert. Many also appeared in a group cameo appearance in the all-star comedy short ''The Stolen Jools'' (1931).

Beginning with the short '' When the Wind Blows'', in 1930 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 1930s ''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 Shield and featuring a notable saxophone solo. Shield and Hatley's scores supported ''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 for two years, with fifteen installments in total.

1931–1933: Transition

Jackie Cooper left ''Our Gang'' in early 1931 just before another wave of cast changes: Farina Hoskins, Chubby Chaney, and Mary Ann Jackson all departed a few months afterward. ''Our Gang'' entered another transitional period, similar to that of the mid 1920s. Matthew Beard, Wheezer Hutchins, and Dorothy DeBorba carried the series during this period, aided by Sherwood Bailey and Kendall McComas, who would play Breezy Brisbane. Unlike the mid-1920s period, McGowan sustained the quality of the series with the help of the several regular cast members 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 McFarland joined the gang as Spanky late in 1931 at the age of three and remained an ''Our Gang'' actor for eleven years, except for a brief break in summer 1938. 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 in 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.

1933–1936: New directions

Robert McGowan, burned out from the stress of working with the child actors, had as early as 1931 tried to resign as producer/director of ''Our Gang''. Lacking a replacement, Hal Roach persuaded him to stay on for another year. At the start of the 1933–34 season, the ''Our Gang'' series format was significantly altered to accommodate McGowan and persuade him to stay another year. The first two entries of the season in fall 1933, '' Bedtime Worries'' and ''Wild Poses'' (which featured a cameo by Laurel and Hardy), focused on Spanky and his hapless parents, portrayed by Gay Seabrook and Emerson Treacy, in a family-oriented situation comedy format similar to the style later popular on television. A smaller cast of ''Our Gang'' kids—Matthew Beard, Tommy Bond, Jerry Tucker, and Georgie Billings—were featured in supporting roles with reduced screen time.

An unsatisfied McGowan abruptly left after ''Wild Poses''. Coupled with a brief suspension in McFarland's work permit,Maltin & Bann, p. 119. See the article on '' Hi-Neighbor!'' (1934) for more details. ''Our Gang'' went into a four-month hiatus, during which the series was revised to a format similar to its original style and German-born Gus Meins was hired as the new series director.Ward, Richard Lewis (2005). ''A History of Hal Roach Studios''. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Pg. 85–86. .

'' Hi-Neighbor!'', released in March 1934, ended the hiatus and was the first series entry directed by Meins, a veteran of the once-competing '' Buster Brown'' short subject series. 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. McGowan returned two years later to direct his ''Our Gang'' swan song, ''Divot Diggers'', released in 1936.

Retaining McFarland, Matthew Beard, Tommy Bond, and Jerry Tucker, the revised series added Scotty Beckett, Wally Albright, and Billie Thomas, who soon began playing the character of Stymie's sister "Buckwheat," though Thomas was a male. 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 in the middle of 1934; Jackie Lynn Taylor and Marianne Edwards would depart by 1935.

Early in 1935, new cast members Carl Switzer and his brother Harold joined ''Our Gang'' after impressing Roach with an impromptu musical performance at the studio commissary. While Harold would eventually be relegated to the role of a background player, Carl, nicknamed "Alfalfa," eventually replaced Scotty Beckett as Spanky's sidekick. Matthew Beard as Stymie left the cast soon after, and the Buckwheat character morphed subtly into a male. That same year, Darla Hood, Patsy May, and Eugene Lee as Porky joined the gang. Scotty Beckett departed for a career in features (he returned in 1939 for two shorts, '' Cousin Wilbur'' and '' Dog Daze'').

The final Roach years

''Our Gang'' was very 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 went 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, persuaded Roach to keep the popular series in production.Maltin & Bann, pp. 169–170. Roach agreed, 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), marked the ''Our Gang'' directorial debut of former assistant director Gordon Douglas and won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (One Reel) in 1937.

As part of the arrangement with MGM to continue ''Our Gang'', Roach received the clearance to produce an ''Our Gang'' feature film, ''General Spanky'', hoping that he might move the series to features as was done with Laurel & Hardy. Directed by Gordon Douglas and Fred Newmeyer, ''General Spanky'' featured characters Spanky, Buckwheat, and Alfalfa in a sentimental, Shirley Temple-esque story set during the American Civil War. The film focused more on the adult leads (Phillips Holmes and Rosina Lawrence) than the children 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 the 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, the younger brother of Leonard Kibrick, played Butch's crony, Woim.

''Glove Taps'' also featured the first appearance of Darwood Kaye as the bespectacled, foppish Waldo. In later shorts, both Butch and Waldo were portrayed as Alfalfa's rivals in his pursuit of Darla's affections. Other popular elements 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 the final 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, making "hundreds and thousands of dollars."

As the profit margins continued to decline owing to double features, Roach could no longer afford to continue producing ''Our Gang''. However, MGM did not want the series discontinued and 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 $ today).Ward, Richard Lewis (2005). ''A History of Hal Roach Studios''. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 116, 225. . After delivering the Laurel and Hardy feature ''Block-Heads'', Roach also ended his distribution contract with MGM, moving to United Artists and leaving the short-subjects business. The final Roach-produced short in the ''Our Gang'' series, ''Hide and Shriek'', was his final short-subject production.

The MGM era

''The Little Ranger'' was the first ''Our Gang'' short to be produced in-house at MGM. Gordon Douglas was loaned out from Hal Roach Studios to direct ''The Little Ranger'' and another early MGM short, ''Aladdin's Lantern'', while MGM hired newcomer George Sidney as the permanent series director. ''Our Gang'' would be used by MGM as a training ground for future feature directors: 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 former senior ''Our Gang'' director 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 at Roach were two separate people.

The last few of the Roach comedies featured Alfalfa Switzer as the lead character; Spanky McFarland had departed from the series just before its sale to MGM. Casting his replacement was delayed until after the move to MGM, at which point MGM rehired McFarland.

In 1939, Mickey Gubitosi (later known by the stage name of Robert Blake) replaced Eugene "Porky" Lee, who had matured too quickly.Maltin & Bann, p. 211. Tommy Bond, Darwood Kaye, and Alfalfa Switzer all left the series in 1940, and Billy "Froggy" Laughlin (with his Popeye

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases