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. Yes, Spanky McFarland and Alfalfa were indeed friends. Our Gang was very successful during the 1920s and the early 1930s. While Harold would eventually be relegated to the role of a background player, Carl, nicknamed "Alfalfa," eventually replaced Scotty Beckett as Spanky's sidekick. This story may contain some links from which we may earn a small affiliate commission. In January 1959, Switzer met an untimely end as he was fatally shot during a fight over $50 and a hunting dog. Ironically, this would end up being a preview of what would ultimately be in store for him. [31] 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. Many of these shorts include early appearances of Jerry Tucker and Wally Albright, who later became series regulars. Here are The (original) Little Rascals then and now. I even have the postmark on the envelope the day he died.. He is one of the most memorable and recognizable Little Rascals. In January 1958, it was reported that while he was getting into his car in Studio City, someone fired a bullet at him, which crashed through the window and hit him in the right arm. But he loved looking back and talking Spanky., Rick was the first person to approach him as an adult to make appearances. Rick Saphire, an entertainer turned manager, who worked with the former head of the He-Man Woman Haters Club in his adult years, emphasizes, You know, he was Spanky. You'll Barely Recognize Spanky From Little Rascals Now The films were otherwise offered unedited. Theyd ask things like, Do you remember when Petey [the dog] did this or that? He didnt want to let his fans down, so he made up the most logical answer to the question. Dickie Moore, a veteran child actor, joined in the middle of 1932 and remained with the series for one year. I went to see Spanky at a local TV station in Philadelphia because he was either working for Philco-Ford or Magic Chef at the time, but he was doing a local appearance and he was a curiosity.. In 1983, with the VHS home video market growing, Blackhawk began distributing Little Rascals VHS tapes through catalog orders, with three shorts per tape. Beard played the role of Little Rascal, Stymie. [1] It was the 80th Our Gang short that was released. And then they transferred over to MGM for the rest of their run, and he saw primarily the same kids all the time and worked with them as they spit out movies like crazy. Until its closure in 2018, the MGM Our Gangs were available for streaming via the subscription-based Warner Archive Instant streaming video service.[78]. Roach's distributor Path 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. My dancing teacher talked my mother into letting me go to New York City, where I wound up leading the band at the Edison Hotel and caught the eye of theOur Gangcasting director. 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. Lots of times our sets would be next to Laurel and Hardys on the same stage. Lee retired and became analternative school educator at Broomfield High School inColorado. He was buried with the famous derby hat he wore all his life, back from his Stymie days. The hat was gifted to him by comedian Stan Laurel, who had also worked under Our Gang creator Hal Roach in shorts and films in which he teamed up with Oliver Hardy (hence Laurel & Hardy). I said, I think some of these college kids might enjoy reminiscing about something they grew up with, because those kids would have grown up in the 1950s watching The Little Rascals. She had a bobbed haircut and acted quite tomboyish. Dorothy graduated high school and became a clerk. I also did a one-minute film commercial for Wonder Bread that was shown in local theaters in the Dallas Fort-Worth area, Spanky related to Harry Smith at CBS News. This TV special "RASCAL DAZZLE" aired in 1985 and featured a best of compilation of Little Rascals / Our Gang moments from the 30s. George "Spanky" McFarland and Robert Blake at the 4th Annual American Cinema Awards, Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Beverly Hills. Carl was dubbed Alfalfa and, over the course of the films, he became best friends with Spanky and, of course, was always pursuing Darla. One of the most popular female characters inOur Gangduring the 1930s, Jackson often played the older sister of Wheezer. In 2014, Universal Pictures released a direct-to-video film, The Little Rascals Save the Day. 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. The scooter was given to Laughlin by his parents only two weeks prior to the accident. I just try to look at it as mostly a fun thing. Under its new name, The Little Rascals enjoyed renewed popularity on television, and new Little Rascals comic books, toys, and other licensed merchandise were produced. 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. He tended to tell the same handful of anecdotes whenever he was interviewed, and there was one he always told and it could be true, it could be apocryphal, it could be a mild exaggeration of the truth, but it doesnt sound improbable. Directed by Penelope Spheeris, the celebrity cameos led by the Olsen Twins,Whoopi Goldberg,Mel Brooks,Reba McEntire,Daryl Hannah,Raven-Symon, and Donald Trump really stole the show. In the commercial, a. [3][4][5], 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. This was a second film loosely based on the series and featuring interpretations of classic Our Gang shorts, including Helping Grandma, Mike Fright, and Birthday Blues. I used to follow him around the lot, hed buy me ice cream and one day he said, Well, give this kid a derby. Thats why it never fit me; it belonged to Stan Laurel.. It was the early 1970s and everything in the colleges was a protest, notes Rick. I was very excited about it., For the autograph shows, there would have been no more perfect celebrity than Spanky McFarland, because he spanned from the beginning of talkies and his fame was intact right through the time we were booking him in the 1990s due to the fact that the films were still popular on TV and coming out on DVD. Before he joined Our Gang, McFarland modeled childrens clothing for a Dallas department store. On June 14, 2011, Vivendi Entertainment re-released seven of the eight DVD's from RHI/Genius Products' The Little Rascals The Complete Collection as individual releases. During the 1980s and 1990s, MGM released several non-comprehensive VHS tapes of its shorts, and a VHS of the feature General Spanky. Image dated 1933. We went to school together, played together, laughed together. So now, kids going to college mightve been sort of familiar with Spanky, but all of that wasnt a part of their wonder years. Some of the lines I had to say I didn't like, but I never look at it like that. As to where Hal Roach came up with the concept for Our Gang,Do You Rememberturned to film historian Leonard Maltin, who also wrote the bookThe Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang. 4 at the age of 93. The Little Rascals were super and have remained timelessly so. Producer/creator Hal Roach re-bundled 79 of the shorts to make The Little Rascals TV series, which is still broadcast today. These were released as "Famous Kid Comedies," as Official could not use "Our Gang". The kids from The Little Rascals each had their own distinct personality and image that earned them their nicknames. Hallmark colorized a few Our Gang shorts and released them across 8 VHS tapes. Character Spanky McFarland is one of the most famous and recognized Rascals in the entire series, but his debut seems a bit odd as his family structure and status was always changing. Although the placement of a cenotaph in McFarlands honor at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, Texas, has received approval, it is noted on the cemeterys website that the installation is still pending. Unfortunately, Daniels career never took off after the shorts. Mickey Daniels was one of the most Rascals to appear most frequently in Hal Roachs original Our Gang shorts, with between 70 and 80 appearances spanning 1932 to 1935. What Happened To The Original Cast of The Little Rascals - DoYouRemember? 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 deleted from the syndication package because of perceived racism, while Big Ears was deleted for its depiction of carelessly ingesting an assortment of drugs out of a medicine cabinet. Speaking toDo You Remember, Saphire notes, After Spanky said, Okay, lets do it, he then added and these were his words I cant believe that college kids of today are going to be excited about coming to see a little fat man who hasnt made a movie in 30 years. And I said, Spanky, I guarantee youre going to get a standing ovation before you even open your mouth. As it turned out, I was right., I had a ball, he has said in regards to playing Spanky. Portrait of Previous child film star George McFarland, circa 1956 | Photo: Getty Images. Spanky, Tommy (aka Butch), Alfalfa, Darla Sounds like a reunion with old friends, doesnt it? [68] The first ClassicFlix release, The Little Rascals: The ClassicFlix Restorations, Volume 1, was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on June 1, 2021, featuring the first eleven "talking" short subjects in the series from 1929 and 1930. The Little Rascals Are No Longer Little: Alfalfa and Spanky, 20 Years Later You make me vomit. When he was recruited to appear in theOur Gangcomedies later that year,Hal Roachsimply left it on, creating one of the most recognized dogs in film history. In the 1930s and1940s, actor George McFarland appeared on screens as a child star favorite in one of the period's most beloved shows. These productions did not appear to be affiliated with Hal Roach, but often used storylines from the shorts of the period, and sometimes went so far as to identify themselves as being Our Gang productions. William Thomas Jr. was born on March 12, 1931, in Los Angeles. Initially, the music consisted of orchestral versions of then-popular tunes. Thomas initially played Buckwheat speech impediment and all as a girl dressed as the stereotypical African-American pickaninny. He wore bowed pigtails, a large hand-me-down sweater, and oversized boots. She left the series in 1933 after making 24 pictures. William Robert Laughlin was born on July 5, 1932, in San Gabriel, California. [57], Among notable Our Gang imposters is Jack Bothwell, who claimed to have portrayed a character named "Freckles",[57] going so far as to appear on the game show To Tell the Truth in the fall of 1957, perpetuating this fraud. Spanky, he continues, had a healthy attitude about it, because when he was around 13 he had already outgrown his cuteness. 21. To escape his acting career, he changed his name to Gordon Lee after his favoriteOur Gangdirector, Gordon Douglas. [19] Theater owners then were wary of booking shorts focused on a black boy,[19] and the series ended after just one entry, The Pickaninny, was produced. Travis Tedford's career started with his role as Spanky in Little Rascals and was shortly followed by a run as one of Welch's "spokes-tykes" (via The New York Times ). While out delivering newspapers on the back of his friends scooter near his home in La Puente, California Laughlin was fatally struck by a speeding truck. 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. [58] 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. So I learned to disown Porky. His best friend, Alfalfa, has been chosen as the driver for the club's prize-winning undefeated go-kart, "The Blur", in the annual Soap Box Derby style race. Additionally, theres her mischievous nature and her ability to mimic other characters lines in a humorous way, which gave her the nickname Echo.. He used to say that he was slinging hash, he owned a restaurant, he had a steak sauce he manufactured, he worked at a gas station at one time and he hosted a local kids TV show where he wore a beanie and introduced the Our Gang or Little Rascals comedies. 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. This week's topic is "Our Gang," the cute little kids who made adults and children alike laugh themselves to tears in movie theaters across the country. Beard reflected, I took to him from the start. For much more on Norman, please check out our profile of him. Beanie-wearing, scene-stealing Spanky joined "Our Gang" in 1935 when he was 3 years old and held forth as the gang's leader in 95 shorts, exiting in 1942 when he was 10. The first twelve volumes of Cabin Fever's The Little Rascals VHS set were released on July 6, 1994, followed by nine more on July 11, 1995, coinciding with the theatrical and home video releases of Universal's 1994 feature. A struggling novice syndication agent named Charles King purchased the television rights to The Little Rascals in the bankruptcy proceedings and returned the shorts to television. George Robert Philips McFarland (October 2, 1928 - June 30, 1993) [6] was an American actor most famous for starring as a child as Spanky in the Our Gang series of short-subject comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. In 1954, the Our Gang shorts, repackaged as The Little Rascals, appeared on television for the first time, introducing a new generation of fans to the antics of America's favorite kiddie comedians. After leaving the series in 1940, he was the victim of typecasting and struggled to find roles. To learn much more about George Spanky McFarland as told by a close friend, please click here. In many of his other roles as an adult, he was cast as a Native American or Latino character, despite being an Italian from New Jersey. 14. The Little Rascals, which debuted on television in 1955, introduced a band of ragtag children to the world. On the syndicated television print, 12 minutes of this short, which are the scenes of Uncle Tom's Cabin, were edited out in 1971 making the film only nine minutes long. Some stations bought both packages and played them alongside each other under the Little Rascals show banner. Pal got his start as Tige in theBuster Brownseries in the 1920s. As it turned out, he was suffering from a glandular ailment which resulted in his weight reaching 300 pounds while he stopped growing at 47. The MGM Our Gangs today appear periodically on the Turner Classic Movies cable network. CBS offers original black-and-white and colorized prints for syndication. 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. United States. [19] 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. Television broadcast", "WAUGH and On and On #1: Neither Fish Nor Fowl", "Monogram Will Enter Short Subjects Field with 39 Reissues Made by M-G-M", "Same Client, Same Vidpix On Second Go-Around", "Metro Readies Short Subjects Bundles for TV", Business Data for The Little Rascals (1994), Urban Legends References Page: 'Our Gang' Curse, "Complete National Film Registry Listing - National Film Preservation Board - Programs - Library of Congress", Joyce Haber, a Gossip Columnist Known for Barbed Commentaries, "Former child actress Mollie Barron dies", "The Little Rascals DVD news: Little Rascals Box Set Announced", "The Little Rascals DVD news: Box Art for The Little Rascals The Complete Collection", "DVD Talk Review: The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection", "Laurel & Hardy Vivendi Press Release Addenda", "WarnerBros.com | General Spanky | Movies", "ClassicFlix's Little Rascals Preservation & Restoration Project For Blu-ray", "Update: The Little Rascals - The ClassicFlix Restorations, Vol. 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. Beard maintained his sobriety, giving lectures on drug-abuse awareness. [49] The Little Rascals was a moderate success for Universal, bringing in $51,764,950 at the box office.[50]. [25] At the start of the 193334 season, the Our Gang series format was significantly altered to accommodate McGowan and persuade him to stay another year. The 1930 Our Gang short Pups is Pups was an inductee of the 2004 National Film Registry list. 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 45, 2011. In the 1994 feature-film remake of The Little Rascals, Petey is an American Bulldog. 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. The fifty-three-year-old man had gotten into a scuffle with his eighty-three-year-old father when the old man had tried to give his son a spanking. The Lee family traveled from Texas to Culver City, California. He signed on to release future products through the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which released its first Our Gang comedy in September 1927. Another director, Herbert Glazer, remained a second-unit director outside of his work on the series. (2003) Itinerant Filmmakers and Amateur Casts: A Homemade, Academy Award for Best Short Subject (One Reel), The Pac-Man/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show, "Life & Times (Interview with Donald Bogle). Even as an adult, I told none of my friends. In 1930, Roach began production on The Boy Friends, a short-subject series which was essentially a teenaged version of Our Gang. Matthew Beard Jr. was born on January 1, 1925, in Los Angeles. Portrait of film star George McFarland, circa September 23, 1984| Photo: Getty Images. The Little Rascals (film) - Wikipedia His memory, of course, lives on thanks to all of those filmed moments of that wiseass, but oh-so-funny, little kid who has delighted generations of fans. Laughlins character Froggy was known for his strange, guttural voice, which sounded like a frogs croak thus a nickname was born. The attendees were very receptive, and the press clamored for "lots more of those 'Our Gang' comedies." He was 16 as old as Billy Froggy Laughlin when he died. Glove Taps also featured the first appearance of Darwood Kaye as the bespectacled, foppish Waldo. They would watch us shoot and we would watch them shoot.

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