Essays
Introduction to Our Gang Two-Reelers
TCM was having a day-long marathon of what we used to call “Little Rascals” back when they were showing public domain copies on early TV. I TiVoed ten of them. Our Gang is what they were originally called, and that’s what I’ll use here. We loved them. I find myself wondering if kids still do, or if the world they show is now hopelessly alien to them. I mean, little kids going out in the big bad world all on their own? No parental supervision? No stranger danger? No seat belts or child safety seats in cars? No iPhones to call your friends on? These kids might as well be playing on Mars.
Like so many films of this era, some of them are tainted by racism. Back in the bad old unenlightened days of my youth, those were shown on TV, too. And I will admit that one of the worst was a real favorite of me and my friends. It’s called “The Kid From Borneo,” and features a “wild man,” dressed in leopard skins, who somehow ends up in Spanky’s house. Spank starts feeding him stuff from the icebox (remember that term?), and the guy devours it all, growling “Yum yum, eat ‘em up!” which are the only English words he knows. He eats a can of sardines without opening the can, then he eats the key. He eats everything. We howled with laughter … but I think we would have howled if he had been white, too. These shorts have now been removed from broad distribution, or censored, and for once I agree … to a point. These things don’t belong on Saturday morning TV, for sure, or on Nickelodeon, or anywhere that children will watch. But I hope TCM still will show them. I don’t know if they do; that one wasn’t among the ones I just watched.
What impresses me more, given the times, is how racist they are not. Stymie, Buckwheat, and Farina are just part of the gang … a situation that, ironically, probably didn’t happen all that much in real life. Stymie in particular is often the wisest of the group. He will get scared by ghosts, as all “darkies” did in those days, rolling their eyes and such, but he’s no more scared than any others in the gang. They interact with and are treated exactly as the white children are. Stymie was, in fact—and I’m sorry to say this, but it’s true—my only interaction with a black kid during my whole childhood. Me and my gang all liked Stymie, though. He and Spanky and Alfalfa always had the best lines.
Mush and Milk
A bunch of kids in a boarding school run by an awful old woman. After they milk the cow Pete the dog knocks over the pail, so they mix up some more milk from plaster of Paris. James Finlayson, master of the double-take-and-slow-burn, has a small role.
Free Eats
Two midget pickpockets disguised as infants infiltrate a charity dinner at the home of a rich woman, and steal all their jewelry. Only the gang know these “kids” can talk, and are packing heat. They aren’t believed at first, but eventually they expose the bad guys.
Hook and Ladder
More amazing vehicles, this time three fire trucks. They find a barn on fire, and it is full of dynamite. Stymie saves the day!
Birthday Blues
Skinflint Pa won’t buy a new dress for Ma’s birthday. To raise money for a new dress, the son and his friends bake a cake with prizes in it and sell tickets to other kids. Naturally the kitchen is a disaster area.
Fish Hooky
The school is going on a field trip to an amusement park on a pier, but the gang doesn’t know that, so they play hooky, only to find they have missed all the fun. When they go anyway there is a chase through the park, over all the rides.. Old Our Gangster Mickey Daniels plays a truant officer.
Free Wheeling
The prop department at Hal Roach and MGM always outdid themselves in these little two-reelers. Here they create a donkey-powered taxi, a typical Rube Goldberg machine with ingenious linkages, cobbled together out of scraps and covered with misspelled words. The plot: A rich kid with a hypochondriac mother who is convinced he is sickly just wants to go out and play with Stymie and the gang. It is one of the few times I’ve ever seen that Stymie’s race is mentioned. To the mother he is “that little colored boy.”
Forgotten Babies
Impossible to make this one these days. The kids go fishing and elect Spanky to babysit all the really young kids, about a dozen of them. The kids wreck the house. One kid keeps tottering to the top of the stairs and then starting down. I hope they had a safety cable on him. These days, it would be child abuse to film that scene.
The First Round-up
They all go on a camping trip, but won’t allow Spanky and his younger friend to go. But when they get there, worn out and hungry, Spanky is already there. They hitchhiked! Only Spanky remembered to bring food, or a good sleeping bag … or much of anything else. At night they get spooked, and run home. A pretty good one.
Mike Fright
The gang forms The International Silver String Submarine Band and wreak havoc in a radio station before performing a pretty good rendition of “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.”