Our Gang

"The Little Rascals" redirects here. For other uses, see The Little Rascals (disambiguation).

This article is about the film series. For the 1922 silent short subject, see Our Gang (film). For the novel by Philip Roth see Our Gang (novel).

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, one of the best-known and most successful in cinema history, 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 blacks 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, 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 whom never 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 Joe Cobb (right) as a baby brother.

African Americans in Our Gang

The Our Gang series is notable for being one of the first times in movie 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.

The black children in Our Gang often epitomized the early Hollywood pickaninny stereotype. These characters provided comic relief by speaking a mangled form of English and by frequently being so frightened that either their hair stood on end, or they turned white with fear (a special effect created with negative film exposure techniques). The black children's fathers were perpetually mentioned as being in and out of jail, and the children themselves habitually ate watermelon and fried chicken in the shorts. Comedian Eddie Murphy controversially parodied Buckwheat and the stereotypical aspects of his character in a series of skits for Saturday Night Live.

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 "freckled kid," the "fat kid," 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.

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 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 and Andy Samuel.

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Farina, Mary Ann Jackson and Joe Cobb in the 1928 short Old Gray Hoss.

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.

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Jackie Cooper in the 1930 short When the Wind Blows.

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 his contract to MGM in 1931. other members during the early sound shorts are Buddy McDonald, Douglas Greer, Bobby Mallon, Bobby "Bonedust" Young, and Shirley Jean Rickert. Both Bobby Young and Bobby Mallon appear in the silent shorts in the late 20's.

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. This type of scoring was used in the next couple episodes. Marvin Hatley had become music director of Hal Roach studios in 1929. Leroy Shield joined as a part-time studio musical director in mid 1930. At this point Hatley and Shield began composing and playing their own jazz influenced music for the films. This music became a recognizable trademark of Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy, and the other Roach series and films. Hatley's and Shield's jazz-influenced scores, which made their debut with Pups is Pups (1930), are particularly associated with Our Gang. Teacher's Pet marked the first appearance of the now-popular 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 immediately by Sherwood Bailey and a few months later by Kendall "Breezy Brisbane" McComas. Sherwood would get a lead role on one episode while Kendall/Brisbane got a lead role on another episode. When many children were needed, such as a classroom scene, for example, siblings of regular Our Gangers were also used (though they did not get speaking parts), along with long-term recurring youngsters (like Donald Haines, Bobby Mallon, and Douglas Greer for example). 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 before becoming 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!" Other members during these years includes Dickie Jackson, John Collum, and Tommy Bond. [[ Dickie Moore, a veteran child actor, joined in the middle of 1932, after it was determined that Sherwood and Kendall/Brisbane did not fit in as well as expected. Dickie Moore was overqualified and left for better roles in features after only a year in the middle of 1933. At the same time long-time characters like Wheezer (who had been with the gang since the late Pathe silents period) and Dorothy along with several recurring characters all left the gang 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. There was also a void in the series with several characters leaving the series leaving Spanky, Stymie, and Tommy Bond as the only regulars along with recurring gangers like Jerry Tucker and Georgie Billings. The last two episodes had Spanky playing the lead roles along with Gay Seabrooke and Emerson Tracy, who played his parents. Due to the void fewer episodes were made late in 1933.

Then in 1934, German-born Gus Meins assumed McGowan's role starting with Hi'-Neighbor!, working with assistant director Gordon Douglas and alternating directorial duties with Fred Newmeyer. At this point, the films became more dialogue intensive. While most episodes continued to use background music, several only featured partial scoring, while many others were released without any incidental score accompaniment.

At that point, Scotty Beckett and Wally Albright joined the gang, as did Billie Thomas, who within a few months of joining would begin playing the character of Stymie's sister "Buckwheat" (even though Thomas was a male)(note for a couple episodes Stymie's real-life sister Caroline played Buckwheat and on two other episodes a girl named Willie Mae Taylor played her). Scotty was teamed up as Spanky's sidekick. Also, recurring characters such as Jackie Lynn Taylor, Marriane Edwards, and Leonard Kibrick as the bully joined the series at that time. Tommy Bond and Wally left the gang in the middle of 1934.

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 at that point the Buckwheat character morphed subtly into a male. The same year, Darla Hood and Eugene "Porky" Lee also joined the gang. In 1936, Scotty, Leondard, Marriane, and Jackie Lynn left the series. At that point the most famous combination of Our Gangers were the regulars.

The final Roach years

Our Gang was hugely successful during the 1920s and the early 1930s. However, by 1934, movie theater owners were increasingly dropping two-reel (twenty minute) comedies like Our Gang and the Laurel and Hardy series from their bills, and running theatrical cartoons along with a feature or double feature programs instead. The Laurel and Hardy series was switched from film shorts to features exclusively mid-1935. In 1936, Hal Roach was about to announce that Our Gang was going to end in 1937. But then, MGM head Louis B. Mayer urged Hal Roach to continue making the Our Gang shorts. Roach agreed, and began producing Our Gang comedies as one-reel shorts (ten-minutes in length instead of twenty). The first one-reel Our Gang short, Bored of Education, won the Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Subject (One Reel) in 1936. Bored of Education also marked the directorial debut of former assistant director Gordon Douglas. Also in 1936, Roach decided to give the gang a shot at feature length motion pictures. Only one was made and was entitled General Spanky. Directed by Douglas and Fred Newmeyer, it 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. It was decided that the gang was not suited for feature films

Spanky, Darla, and Alfalfa 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. Most casual fans of Our Gang are particularly familiar with this 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, Alfalfa and Darla's on-again-off-again romance, and the comic team of Porky and Buckwheat. Several recurring children from as far back as the early Spanky era, along with siblings of regular characters, continued filling in on episodes requiring large amounts of children (such as a football game or classroom scene). Many of these later shorts had both Jerry Tucker and John Collum as extras. Both made their last appearance in Three Men in a Tub in 1938.

Roach produced one last two-reel Our Gang short, the lavish 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 produce the series for the long term. He planned to keep the series one more year until 1939. But MGM offered to buy the entire Our Gang unit (including the rights to the name and the contracts for the actors, writers, and director Douglas, the 22 Roach/MGM silents from the late 1920's, the 80 Roach/MGM talkies from 1929 to 1938, and their only feature film). Hal Roach accepted their offer and sold the entire unit to MGM in May of 1938. Roach also ended his distribution contract with MGM and stopped making any short subjects at all.

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The cover to Our Gang Comics #1. Cartoon versions of (l to r) Robert Blake (aka 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

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. After a frustrated Gordon Douglas left MGM to return to Roach after completing only two films, MGM began using Our Gang as a training ground for future feature directors; George Sidney, Edward Cahn, Herbert Glazer, and Cy Endfield all worked on Our Gang before moving on to features. 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, the elder Robert McGowan's nephew). 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. The MGM shorts gained a small cult following thanks to being seen on In2TV, although the above criticisms still follow.

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

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A poster for the Monogram Pictures re-releases of the Our Gang shorts under the title The Little Rascals in 1951. All of the shorts were reissued using similar poster designs, with only the name of each short -- in this case, The First Roundup -- changing.

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 Roach's only Our Gang feature General Spanky. As per the terms agreed during 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; distributing, along with the Rascals, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Jeopardy!, Dr. Phil, and Wheel of Fortune.

In 1971, because of controversy over their presumably racist content, 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 the pilots 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 $300 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.

Very few members of the cast are still alive. Margaret Kerry played the role of Peggy in three film shorts and is scheduled to sign autographs and pose for fans at the Mid Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in Maryland in September 2008. Jackie Cooper has written his autobiography and retains a private life away from fans.

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, Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts and 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 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 the actual actor who played Buckwheat, filed a lawsuit against ABC for negligence.

Persons and entities named after Our Gang

A number of other groups, companies, and entities have been inspired by or named after Our Gang. For example, most notably, Phfat Raskals', an American band, name is a reference to the short, Bubbling Troubles (1939), in which Alfalfa's stomach becomes overly bloated. 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

16 mm, VHS, and DVD releases

Further information: Our Gang filmography

From the 1960s to the 1980s, copies of all eighty Hal Roach Little Rascals talkies, and a handful of the silents, were available on 16 mm film through Blackhawk Films. The only edits made to the films were the replacements of the original Our Gang title cards with Little Rascals titles. Like the other Little Rascals distributors, Blackhawk was required to use custom title cards in place of the originals, and the conversion of Railroadin, whose soundtrack could not be found, into a silent. In 1982, MGM found a print of Railroadin with the soundtrack intact. This was turned over to copyright holders and made available in 16 mm film. In the early 1980s, Blackhawk made two-thirds of the Little Rascals shorts available by catalog on VHS home video. Blackhawk Films was acquired in 1983 by National Telefilm Associates, later renamed Republic Pictures, who repackaged about thirty Little Rascals shorts in various VHS compilations for sale in retail stores in 1984.

RHI Entertainment, the owners of much of the Hal Roach catalog, licensed the Little Rascals home video rights to Cabin Fever Entertainment in 1993. Between 1994 and 1995, Cabin Fever issued all eighty Roach talkies (including a restored sound version of Railroadin') in a twenty-two volume Little Rascals VHS tape set. Each volume, hosted by film historian Leonard Maltin, featured four digitally restored and uncut shorts, complete with their original Our Gang title cards. Six DVD's, comprising of contents of the first 12 VHS tapes, were also made available. In 1998, Cabin Fever shut down and sold the Little Rascals home video rights to Hallmark Entertainment, who re-issued the first ten volumes of the Cabin Fever VHS set, and released two Little Rascals DVD compilations. A third DVD, entitled Little Rascals Collectors' Series Volume III, was issued on November 15, 2005, and includes ten sound shorts. RHI acquired Hallmark Entertainment in 2006, and therefore again assumed control of the Roach-era materials. Its current home video partner, Genius Products, will issue all eighty Roach-era sound shorts in an eight-disc DVD set entitled The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection on October 28, 2008.

Meanwhile, MGM had released several non-comprehensive VHS tapes of its shorts, as well as the feature General Spanky. 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.

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 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 King World 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 have been owned by Turner Entertainment since 1986. 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. Most of the MGM Our Gangs are also available for viewing online at AOL's In2TV website.

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. Jerry Tucker said in an interview with Barry Z that when Bill Cosby was on a show that if he could he'd buy the shorts.

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

• Ernie "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison (1922–1924)
• Mickey Daniels (1922–1926)
• Mary Kornman (1922–1926)
• Jackie Condon (1922–1928)
• Allen "Farina" Hoskins (1922–1931)
• Joe Cobb (1922–1929)
• Jay R. Smith (1926–1929)
• Jean Darling (1926–1929)
• Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins (1926–1933)
• Mary Ann Jackson (1927–1931)
• Pete the Pup (1930–1938)

Roach talkie period

• Norman "Chubby" Chaney (1929–1931)
• Jackie Cooper (1929–1931)
• Dorothy DeBorba (1930–1933)
• Matthew "Stymie" Beard (1930–1935)
• George "Spanky" McFarland (1932–1942)
• Tommy Bond (1932–1934 as Tommy, 1937–1940 as "Butch")
• Scotty Beckett (1934–1935)
• Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas (1934–1944)
• Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer (1935–1940)
• Darla Hood (1935–1941)
• Eugene "Porky" Lee (1935–1939)
• Darwood "Waldo" Kaye (1937–1940)

MGM period

• Mickey Gubitosi (Robert Blake) (1939–1944)
• Billy "Froggy" Laughlin (1940–1944)
• Janet Burston (1940–1944)

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

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

• Steve Ramsey's Our Gang Online.
• Our Gang Online in the Wayback Machine.
• Little Rascals fan site
• King World Productions' Little Rascals licensing site.
• The "Little Rascals/Our Gang" Webring is the fourth most active webring at webring.com. It includes links to a number of fan sites dedicated to Our Gang.
• The Heustess Family Website has pictures, music, sound bytes, and episodes from the Our Gang comedies plus links to other Our Gang sites.
• Jean Darling's website (Darling was part of Our Gang from 1926 to 1929).
• Shirley Jean Rickert's website. (Rickert was part of Our Gang from 1930 to 1931).
• 4Alfalfa.com-A tribute site to Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer (member from 1935 to 1940)
• Portraits and autographs from former Little Rascals
• MGM Our Gang comedies at In2TV