TMDb Score. 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). These were released as "Famous Kid Comedies," as Official could not use "Our Gang". DVD Starring: Doris Roberts , Greg Germann , Lex Medlin and Valerie Azlynn Directed by: Alex Zamm The Little Rascals: The Boys of Our Gang. 1979 brought The Little Rascals Christmas Special, an animated holiday special produced by Murakami-Wolf-Swenson, written by Romeo Muller and featuring the voice work of Darla Hood (who died suddenly before the special aired) and Matthew "Stymie" Beard. Our Gang entered another transitional period, similar to that of the mid 1920s. The Little Rascals TV show was made when Hal Roach compiled 79 of the 80 films made with sound and bundled them together. By all accounts available, none of the former child stars were ever paid a cent in residuals from this, despite the substantial profits netted. The attendees were very receptive, and the press clamored for "lots more of those 'Our Gang' comedies." Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat, Darla, Stymie, Porky, Petey the dog and all of the Little Rascals star in this hilarious heartwarming classic. 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..."[20] 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. [39] The final short was Dancing Romeo, which was released on April 29, 1944 (as an MGM Miniature, not an Our Gang comedy). [25] 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. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. 4.6 out of 5 stars 26. That same year, Darla Hood, Patsy May, and Eugene Lee as Porky joined the gang. 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. This includes the 80 shorts – replacing the Blackhawk transfers on the previous set with their respective 1994 restorations – but excludes the disc featuring the extras. 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. 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 $454,078 today). 10 of 10 people found this review helpful. Spanky, Buckwheat, Porky and all The Little Rascals … [36] The series was given a permanent setting in the fictitious town of Greenpoint, and the mayhem caused by the Our Gang kids was toned down significantly. Jackie Cooper left Our Gang in early 1931 at the cusp of another major shift in the lineup, as Farina Hoskins, Chubby Chaney, and Mary Ann Jackson all departed a few months afterward. The success of The Little Rascals paved the way for King's new company, King World Productions, to grow into one of the largest television syndicators in the world. Little Rascals (6,709) IMDb 6.3 1 h 23 min 1994 X-Ray PG Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat, Darla, Stymie, Porky, and Petey the dog recapture the mischief that made the original series a timeless favorite in this charming adventure. Production continued at the Roach studio until 1938, when the studio's Our Gang production unit was sold to MGM, which produced the comedies until 1944. [17], 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 move to MGM offered Roach larger budgets and the chance to have his films packaged with MGM features to the Loews Theatres chain. In later years, many adults falsely claimed to have been members of Our Gang. The band had no connection with the actual Our Gang series. ", Academy Award for Best Short Subject (One Reel), The Pac-Man/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show, "Life & Times (Interview with Donald Bogle). According to crime writer David Lohr, there are some additions to the Our Gang death list: Robert H. Young “Bonedust” (9/15/17 – 9/10/51) Died in a hotel fire, which started when he fell asleep smoking in … You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. The King World/CBS 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 hosting. 67. A long list of people, including persons famous in other capacities such as Nanette Fabray, Eddie Bracken, and gossip columnist Joyce Haber[54] claimed to be or have been publicly called former Our Gang children. Get a sneak peek of the new version of this page. CBS offers original black-and-white and colorized prints for syndication. [36] Tommy Bond, Darwood Kaye, and Alfalfa Switzer all left the series in 1940, and Billy "Froggy" Laughlin (with his Popeye-esque trick voice) and Janet Burston were added to the cast. They were born from the 1922-1938 ‘Our Gang’ shorts from MGM. Republic would release Little Rascals VHS volumes for retail purchase in non-comprehensive collections through the rest of the 1980s and early 1990s. 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. From Wings to Parasite, here's a look back at all of the Best Picture Oscar winners in the history of the ceremony. By the end of 1941, Darla Hood had departed from the series, and Spanky McFarland followed her within a year. [6], The Our Gang series is notable for being one of the first in cinema history in which African Americans and White Americans were portrayed as equals. [2] 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. 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. [13] Early in existence of Our Gang, these theater owners complained to Pathé that Morisson and Hoskins had too much screen time and their prominence in the shorts would offend white audiences. There is evidence[53] that Our Gang-style productions were filmed in small towns and cities around the country using local children actors in the 1920s and 1930s. When Roach sold Our Gang to MGM, he retained the option to buy the rights to the Our Gang trademark, provided he produced no more children's comedies in the Our Gang vein. It was hugely influential, inspiring many imitations, though none reached the popularity of The Little Rascals. Neither he nor any other Our Gang children received any residuals or royalties from reruns of the shorts or licensed products with their likenesses. One notable exception was Jackie Cooper, who was later nominated for an Academy Award and had a career as an adult actor. In 1963, Hal Roach Studios, by then run by Roach's son Hal Jr, filed for bankruptcy. 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. 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. 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. Some stations bought both packages and played them alongside each other under the Little Rascals show banner. The Little Rascals (TV Series 1955) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. In 1939, Mickey Gubitosi (later known by the stage name of Robert Blake) replaced Eugene "Porky" Lee, who had matured too quickly. [51], The children's work in the series was largely unrewarded in later years, although Spanky McFarland was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame posthumously in 1994. So, Roach and company came up with the 'Little Rascals' name; which had been use in an on screen introduction done by some young dancing girls to introduce the early "talkie" OUR GANG Movies. [31] No further Our Gang features were made. [26] New faces included Bobby Hutchins as Wheezer, Harry Spear, Jean Darling and Mary Ann Jackson, while stalwart Farina served as the series' anchor. They're all here! In 1949, MGM sold Roach the back catalog of 1927–1938 Our Gang silent and talking shorts, while retaining the rights to the Our Gang name, the 52 Our Gang films it produced, and the feature General Spanky. 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. A bus driver and his sewer worker friend struggle to strike it rich while their wives look on with weary patience. By then, all but 11 of the Roach-era sound films were available on home video. 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. [22] A reviewer wrote of the Farina character - depicted as female though played by a male child[23] - in Photoplay: "The honors go to a very young lady of color, billed as 'Little Farina.' 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. Max Keeble, the victim of his 7th grade class, plots revenge when he learns he's moving; it backfires when he doesn't move after all. Television syndication package of the classic 1929-1938 shorts from the … In 1993, Republic Pictures Home Video sold the home video rights for the 80 sound Roach shorts and some available silent shorts to Cabin Fever Entertainment. 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. While Harold would eventually be relegated to the role of a background player, Carl, nicknamed "Alfalfa," eventually replaced Scotty Beckett as Spanky's sidekick. The Mack-directed shorts are considered to be among the lesser entries in the series. Many of these shorts include early appearances of Jerry Tucker and Wally Albright, who later became series regulars. These new television prints made their debut on the American Movie Classics cable network in 2001 and ran until 2003. The shorts used in this 1959 feature release were Our Gang Follies of 1936 (1935), The Pinch Singer (1936), ... See full summary ». Adult situations often drove the action, with each film often incorporating a moral, a civics lesson, or a patriotic theme. The story of race and Our Gang, or The Little Rascals, is rife with the contradictions and aspirations of the sharply conflicted, changing American society that was its theater. Scotty Beckett departed for a career in features (he returned in 1939 for two shorts, Cousin Wilbur and Dog Daze). With these releases, Cabin Fever made all 80 Roach sound shorts, and four silents, available for purchase unedited with digitally restored picture and sound. Meins's Our Gang shorts were less improvisational than McGowan's and featured a heavier reliance on dialogue. Alfalfa sings "The Barber of Seville" while bubbles come out of his mouth, an homage to the original Little Rascals TV series. The film, with a screenplay by Paul Guay, Stephen Mazur, and Penelope Spheeris– who also directed – presents several … 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 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. I just try to look at it as mostly a fun thing. New Roach discovery George McFarland joined the gang as Spanky late in 1931 at the age of three and, excepting a brief hiatus during the summer of 1938, remained an Our Gang actor for eleven years. 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. [37] The children's performances were criticized as stilted and stiff, their dialogue being recited instead of spoken naturally. The sound discs for Railroadin' had been lost since the 1940s, and a silent print was available for home movie release until 1982, when the film's sound discs were located in the MGM vault and the short was restored with sound. The MGM Our Gangs today appear periodically on the Turner Classic Movies cable network. 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. [40] The strips in The Dandy ended three years after the demise of the Our Gang shorts, in 1947. [34] Casting his replacement was delayed until after the move to MGM, at which point MGM rehired McFarland.[35]. 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. ViacomCBS owned CBS Television Distribution, through King World Productions, owns the rights to the Little Rascals trademark and has all other media rights to the 1929-1938 Roach shorts, which constitute The Little Rascals television package, with certain territory exclusions controlled by Cinematografische Commers Anatalt. 2-Movie Family fun Pack ) 4.7 out of 5 stars 505 City, California, USA bought both and... The chance to have his films packaged with MGM features to the Gang. The group from the series by five years, many adults falsely claimed to have been inspired or! 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