</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by PoohTerp:
Wasn't Robert Blake among the original cast members?? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="eek.gif" /> </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Pooh-Terp --
Robert Blake (nee Mickey Gubitosi) was a member of the Our Gang troupe, but not an original member. He appeared in films between 1939 and 1944, IIRC. During this time he changed his name from Mickey Gubitosi to Bobby Blake.
I have an exhaustive book about this film series, which is known interchangeably as "Our Gang" or as "The Little Rascals." This confusion arose when many of the films made prior to 1938 were sold for television distribution in the 1950s under the name The Little Rascals -- fodder for an infant medium looking for stuff to put on. I think the 1938-1944 MGM shorts remained the property of MGM and were likely distributed for television by MGM.
A lot of this is gleaned from that book (
Our Gang: The Life and Times of The Little Rascals, by Leonard Maltin and Richard Bann. It was published by Crown in the mid 1970s).
This series of short films produced between 1922 and 1944 was the brainchild of Hal Roach. He basically got the idea when he was watching a bunch of ragged kids play in the street, having an absolute grand old time. He was impressed by the fact they were "real" kids and when he was looking for kids to cast in his series he made a point of trying to find kids who were very natural as opposed to artificially cute robots.
While there were other film series of the time that depicted children, few were more popular than Hal Roach's Rascals, which was an instant sensation when it hit, and sustained its popularity for two decades and countless cast changes (call it the Menudo factor, I suppose. Kids who got too old were phased out the same way that boys whose voices are deepening get kicked out of Menudo).
The series won one Academy Award, for the 1936 piece "Bored of Education" (Outstanding Short Subject).
In 1938, Roach sold his "intellectual property" (so to speak) in its entirety to MGM ... which promptly ran the series into the ground by producing heavy handed morality plays as opposed to comedic gems.
There was a relationship between Roach and MGM prior to his "selling out," because from 1927 on it was MGM that distributed Roach's charming kid-filled short subjects (prior to that, they were distributed by Pathe). There was a distro deal, but the series remained under the creative control of Roach and his stable of writers, directors, and actors.
You won't find the 1922-1929 silent films *anywhere* anymore -- undoubtedly they've been lost to the decay that has literally destroyed a number of films from the silent era.
Oddly enough, one of the newly-deceased that Apocalypse Dude mentioned, Joe Cobb, WAS a member of the original group and appeared in many of the films throughout the 1920s. He was the first "fat kid."
Blake, and possibly Jackie Cooper (last time I checked he was still breathing) are among the very last living actors who worked in the series at any given time. Cooper, like Blake, is also one of the very few kids from the series who made a successful transition in the industry as an adult.
You can see many of the 1930-1938 films (considered the series' best period creatively by film buffs, including this one) on American Movie Classics. The show is hosted by Malcolm In the Middle's Frankie Muniz.
Sorry to go all film geek on you, but I LOVED these movies as a kid -- NEVER missed them when they were on -- and the book was a gift to me on my 10th birthday because I was so nuts about them. I basically memorized it. And damn if I still don't find myself glued to the idiot box watching them whenever I can find them.
It certainly is kind of freaky that these old men would meet their maker virtually simultaneously.
--soonerterp.
