Our Gang comedies

Identification: Short comedy films starring children

Director: Hal Roach Sr.

Date: 1922–1944

This long-running and immensely popular film series centered on children being themselves, a quality not typically seen in films of the 1920s. The equal treatment in storylines of girls and boys as well as whites and nonwhites was also revolutionary for the period.

Hal Roach created the Our Gang series concept while auditioning an overly made-up and rehearsed child actor. Contrasting the child he had just auditioned with a group of children playing outside his window, he realized that watching children participating in childlike activities was more entertaining than watching a child imitate adult acting styles.

The Early Years

Roach began producing short, two-reel silent “Hal Roach’s Rascals” series in 1922, with the title “Our Gang”being added to the pilot of the first short film. The series would be called by both titles until 1932 when “Our Gang”became the exclusive name of the series. In 1927, he changed distributors from Pathé to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios, and the series was converted to sound in 1929.

The directorial approach of the early films was to focus on the natural behavior and unaffected reactions of the child actors. Although scripts were written by Roach’s staff, the children did not memorize lines. Instead, they were given the overall plot and an explanation of the scene they would be shooting. Both Roach and the directors believed the best performances would come from natural behavior, not acting, so improvisation was encouraged. For silent productions, direction was given via megaphone as the children played out the scenes.

The themes and concepts of the Our Gangfilms were unusual for the 1920s. They featured the adventures of a group of children, the majority of whom were poor, who where often put at odds with wealthier children, interfering adults, and parents. The early silent films frequently centered on the children engaged in seemingly carefree activities that soon took an unexpected twist and ended with them in trouble with annoyed adults. Many popular plots had the children modeling adult actions that led to trouble, which was resolved by the group working together. In Love My Dog (1927), for example, the children put on a dog show for the neighborhood. When a dogcatcher takes one of the dogs and threatens to euthanize it, the group raises money together and saves the animal.

Cast Members

Many of the first cast members in the series were recommended by studio employees or were the children of Roach’s friends. Original cast member Ernie “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison was an established child actor with another Roach series and is believed to be the first African American actor signed to a long-term Hollywood contract.

The Our Gangfilms are noted for including African Americans and girls, both of whom were presented in storylines as equals to white male characters. Although there were many racial and gender stereotypes that would be considered unacceptable today, the integration of females and nonwhite characters into major roles was revolutionary for the era. Many have cited the importance Roach placed on presenting a world in which everyone had an equal share in childhood innocence and adventures.

Cast turnovers were commonplace as the children grew to adolescence. Roach often had six or seven lead characters, with several new and younger secondary characters who would replace main characters as they grew older. Of the six original cast members, Allen “Farina” Hoskins appeared most often in the short films, with one hundred total appearances. Hoskins was the only original cast member to make the transition from silent to sound films in 1929, and he was considered the most popular original Gang member and the most popular black child star of the 1920s. His last Our Gangfilm, Fly My Kite, was released in 1931.

From the beginning, Roach incorporated a menagerie of animals into the films. Cows, monkeys, cats, mules, and horses had roles in the storylines, but the animal many remember best is the pit bull terrier named Pete the Pup, better known as Petey. Petey’s signature ring around one eye was added by then-unknown Hollywood makeup artist Max Factor. Different dogs were used as Petey throughout the years, and the ring often changed sides or would sometimes not be in place at all. Petey was eventually removed from the series in the late 1930s.

Impact

The Our Gangseries was a hit from the beginning and did well at the box office throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. Many believe that Roach’s move to MGM in 1927 helped with the success of the series because it afforded him larger budgets and the opportunity to have the short films packaged with MGM feature films to the Loews Theatres chain. By 1934, however, many theater owners stopped showing film shorts and began running double-feature programs instead. Roach considered dropping the Our Gangseries, but he instead developed short (ten-minute) Our Gang films with his first, Bored of Education (1936), winning the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (One Reel) in 1936. The series ended in 1944 with 221 single episodes released.

Bibliography

Bond, Tommy, and Ron Genini. Darn Right It’s Butch: Memories of Our Gang. Wayne, Pa.: Morgin Press, 1994. An autobiography by 1930s Our Gang cast member, also providing information on other cast members of that era.

Browne, Ray B., and Pat Browne, eds. The Guide to United States Popular Culture. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 2001. Supplies synopses, background information, and analysis on significant entries in American cultural history, including the Our Gang series.

Gulick, Rebecca. Those Little Rascals: The Pictorial History of Our Gang. Avenel, N.J.: Crescent Books, 1993. A pictorial history of the series, with information on cast members.

Maltin, Leonard, and Richard W. Bann. The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang. New York: Crown, 1992. Includes information on original and subsequent cast members and photographs of scenes and actors.

Ward, Richard Lewis. A History of the Hal Roach Studios. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005. An illustrated history supplemented with financial information and synopses of the studio’s films and television series.