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Who are the original little rascals11/25/2022 ![]() ![]() New incarnations. In 1977 tv producer Norman Lear cast Gary Coleman in a pilot version of a revived version of the Little Rascals. (Along the way, some of the more politically incorrect elements were edited out over the years). In the mid 1950s the series began to be syndicated to television, where it was near ubiquitous in the after school time slot for the next three decades. Spanky, Alfalfa and Darla all dropped out 1940-1941 leaving the series to limp along without them until its conclusion in 1944. In 1939 they were joined by “Mickey” Gubitosi, better known to Baretta fans as Robert Blake the following year Billy “Froggy” Laughlin joined. ![]() The tone became sweeter and more polished, less “rough and tumble” and gritty. In 1938, Hal Roach dropped out of shorts production, handing the reins over to his distributor, MGM. In 1934 came Darla Hood, Eugene “Porky” Lee, Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer and his brother Harold, and Billie “Buckwheat” Thomas, initially represented as Stymie’s sister, though he was a boy, and would later switch to that gender role. In 1931, they were joined by three year old George “Spanky” Macfarland, whose adorable catchphrase “Okey doke” became a highlight of the films and eventually made him the star. Their teacher Miss Crabtree was played by June Marlowe. (Note: from this point, I’m only going to mention the more famous members of the gang, there were dozens more besides these over the years). Older kids were switched out new ones came in, including Jackie Cooper (soon to go on as a major star in features such as 1931’s The Champ and to enjoy a flourishing 60 year career after that), as well as Norman “Chubby” Chaney and Matthew “Stymie” Beard. The sound arrival saw those wonderful big band scores composed by Leroy Shield and Marvin Hatley, with the actual theme song written by Shield. The aspects of poverty and grittiness clicked especially in the 1930s images from these films are often what I think of when I am imagining those times. Talkies and the Depression arrived at about the same time. What has come to be regarded as its most significant aspect by cultural historians is that the Gang functions as a kind of color-and-gender-blind utopia: girls, boys, blacks and whites all playing and interacting equally side by side, the premise being that kids are innocent, oblivious to the bigoted attitudes that will set in as they become adults. The humor was generally gentle and universal, and centered around the kids getting into the kind of trouble Dennis the Menace might relate to. But one in which the little ones are not saccharine little dollies – no, those are the ones the Gang tends to get in scraps with. If they are idealized, the inspiration seems to be Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn – a world of back fences and horse barns and lemonade stands. The kids in the gang are poor, unkempt, often barefoot. In the Our Gang comedies, the Roach aesthetic of (relative) realism prevails. Most people don’t know that the franchise was originally created under Charley Chase’s supervision, and the writing stable included such future greats as Frank Capra, Leo McCarey, Frank Tashlin and Walter Lantz, among many others. Their animal companion Pete the Pup was drafted from the competing Buster Brown film series, in which he had played “Tige.” In 1922, Roach had the inspiration to build a whole gang of friends around him, and other kids were recruited for the job: curly haired Mary Kornman, freckle-faced Mickey Daniels, Jack Davis (Harold Lloyd’s brother-in-law), wild-haired Jackie Condon, the grossly corpulent Joe Cobb, and Allen “Farina” Hoskins. That’s him on Lloyd’s shoulders in Number, Please, for example. The kernel of Our Gang began with “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison, an African American child actor who began appearing with Harold Lloyd and Snub Pollard in Hal Roach shorts as a kind of mascot in 1919. Those who primarily know the cast from the series’ latter days may like to know about some of the original gang. Measuring from inception to the present day, Our Gang enjoys the distinction of being the longest lasting series of comedy shorts in the history of American cinema. Most Americans from the Baby Boom Generation through Generation X know these comedy shorts well from their showings on television, though since the ones that were distributed to TV were mainly from the Depression years of the 1930s, they might be surprised to learn the series started in the silent days (1922) and lasted all the way until 1944, 22 years, outlasting the popular Spanky, Alfalfa and Darla. Because I’ve had occasion to mention this franchise many times on this blog and in other writings, and it’s pretty important to film comedy history, I thought it fitting to finally do a special post on the comedy film short series known as “Our Gang” or “The Little Rascals.” ![]()
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