Billie Thomas

Billie Thomas (born March 12, 1931 in Los Angeles , California as William Thomas, Jr. , † October 10, 1980 ibid) was an American child actor. The African American was best known as Buckwheat in the film series The Little Rascals in 93 films between 1934 and 1944.

Life

Film career

The Afro-American Billie Thomas got his first roles in the popular short film series Die kleine Trolche (Our Gang) at a casting in 1934 at the age of three . After he only played supporting roles in the background in his first three Our Gang films, he was given the role of the always cheerful Buckwheat in his fourth film, which had previously been portrayed as a female character by the actresses Willie Mae Walton and Carlena Beard. Buckwheat was still a girl in the first films with Billie Thomas, until in the course of 1935 she was transformed into a boy with a striking Afro look and a slouch hat. Thomas Rolle gained importance for the series when he replaced the old Matthew “Stymie” Beard in 1935 as the most important “black child” in the series. In the first years of his career at Our Gang he often formed a duo with Eugene "Porky" Lee , who accompanies the older children Spanky and Alfafa on their adventures and causes all sorts of chaos. From 1939 Lee was replaced by Robert Blake .

Between 1935 and 1944, Billie Thomas starred in all of the series' episodes. In General Spanky , the only feature film by The Little Tramp from 1936, Thomas played an escaped child slave. After Hal Roach's series was sold to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1938 , he remained a member of the children's theater troupe, but Our Gang lost its popularity noticeably. He stayed until the discontinuation of the film series with the film Dancing Romeo , which was made in November 1943 when Thomas was twelve years old. After just one more film role in Colorado Pioneers (1945), Thomas's acting career came to an end. All in all, Thomas had acted in almost 100 films during his childhood, with a few exceptions all of them Our Gang short films.

Next life

In 1954 Billie Thomas joined the United States Army and left it in 1956 with the National Defense Service Medal and the Good Conduct Medal. In later life Thomas received several offers to work again as a film or theater actor. However, he himself was not interested in working as an actor again, mainly because the job seemed too unsteady and insecure to him. Nevertheless, he remained connected to the film business and worked successfully as a film technician and film editor, among others for the Technicolor company . Shortly before his death, Thomas attended an event at the Sons of the Desert Convention , Laurel and Hardy's fan club , along with other Our Gang members, and received a standing ovation.

Billie Thomas had a divorced son. He died of a heart attack in his apartment at the age of 49 and was buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery in Los Angeles County .

Buckwheat hoax

In 1990, the grocer Bill English († 1994) from Arizona claimed to have played Buckwheat as a child on the American news program 20/20 . The broadcast did not initially question English's claim. However, Spanky McFarland became aware of the report and confronted the grocer in his presence live on TV the following week. McFarland explained to him that the real Buckwheat had been dead ten years ago, but that didn't stop English from sticking to the claim. This was followed by a public apology on the part of the news program, the responsible producer was fired for poor journalistic work. Billie Thomas' son later filed a complaint against Bill English, who had been exposed as a fraud.

Web links

• Billie Thomas in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Leonard Malton, Richard W. Bann: The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang . Crown Publishing / Three Rivers Press, New York 1978, ISBN 0-517-58325-9 , p. 268.
2. ^ William “Buckwheat” Thomas in the Find a Grave database . Accessed June 23, 2015.
3. ↑ Recording of the broadcast on YouTube
4. ↑ Article on the Buckwheat Hoax Latimes