A lot of modern audience may not know much of the Our Gang/Little Rascals characters other than the 1994 movie, which only proved that any actor playing Alfalfa is a horrible person in real life.
I mean, let’s face it. Bug Hall had every opportunity to be a better person than Carl Switzer and just decided to be a bigger asshole referring to his own daughters as “dishwashers” and get arrested for huffing air dusters. Switzer, himself, was shot in the dick over a dispute of $50 And still many decades later, there’s debate over whether it was really self-defense or not. But if you show up at someone’s house banging on their front door brandishing a knife, there really isn’t much grey area over whether it’s murder or self-defense.
Worse, Switzer died on the same day as Cecil B. DeMille, so imagine who got the most press at the time. Even my own parents, who were both alive on Jan. 21, 1958, were surprised when we were watching a Phil Donahue show about the actors. It’s funny how Switzer played a character cock-blocked by Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. Reportedly, Switzer was more of a brat on the set. According to an E! True Hollywood Story, he would climb up on the rafters and urinate on the studio lights which would stink up the soundstage when they were turned on. Another time, he reportedly got upset over filming delays and put his chewing gum in the film magazine ruining all footage.
So, it was no surprise he was 86ed when Hal Roach Studios sold the rights to MGM. And that led to the downfall of the film short series originally titled Our Gang. Roach had wanted the series to focus on real kids, both white and black, boys and girls, interacting.
But by the time MGM was releasing them, the tone had changed. The shorts had more song and dance routines as well as including more educational value. No one could argue the shorts were politically correct as the use of Farina (Allen Hoskins), Stymie (Matthew Beard Jr.), and especially Buckwheat (Billie Thomas) were stereotypes. Also Buckwheat was originally a girl. But that era, black people were mostly used negatively.
When the series started during the silent film era, Al Jolson was still making a fortune doing blackface. And people were listening to white people do black stereotypes of Amos N’ Andy on the radio. Racism was still out there but it was slowly changing.
Still, when MGM released the Our Gang short “Ye Olde Minstrels,” the nails were already being hammered into the coffin. This one is so boring I seriously doubt anyone in the theaters watched it with excitement. They probably went to go get concessions. Spanky (George McFarland) who was 12 at the time but looked older obviously seems out of place as he and the rest get Walter Wills as himself, who was a real minstrel performing, to set up a show to raise money for the American Red Cross.
It’s bad but the coup de grace comes at the end when all the white people on stage suddenly appear in blackface. And if there’s one thing you don’t need to see is McFarland with a Chesire Cat/Shit-Eating Grin dancing poorly on stage in blackface. Yet what’s worse than that, is a few seconds of Buckwheat having whiteface among all the kids in black and looking surprised by it with a “Lordy lord!” expression.
Most of this is recalled from memory when I caught The Little Rascals on TV as a young kid. (FYI, the shorts were renamed The Little Rascals when they began to air on TV.) I’ve not been able to find the short online and for good reason. Please remember I grew up in northwest Georgia and most of the TV stations at the time were broadcasting out of Atlanta or Chattanooga in the mid-1980s. It wasn’t acceptable to do “blackface” but it wasn’t frown on as it later would be.
It was released on this date, March 18, 1941 and should be used as a reminder that 85 years might seem like a long time but poor Emmett Till had yet to be born. He would be born a few months later. But it was still pretty much accepted like an older racist relative “who grew up in a different time.”
But the main issue was most of the people who grew up on Our Gang had kids of their own by the early 1940s. And like Saved by the Bell or Glee, people didn’t really care anymore about the younger cast. Imagine if The Dukes of Hazzard decided just to totally replace John Schneider and Tom Wopat with Byron Cherry and Christopher Mayer. (I had to double check those were the real actors.)
As they began to lose popularity and many loyal fans didn’t care for the change in tone, theaters really had no choice for a while. MGM would do what was called “block booking,” a technique cable/satellite TV would do in which they would promise the more popular movies, cartoons and other shorts if, and only if, they accepted the Our Gang shorts. Since more theaters were independently owned at the time, getting the latest most popular movies and cartoons could bring in the crowds.
But it was pretty obvious no one was really interested anymore in the shorts as they were, production ceased permanently in 1943 with the last three shorts being released during the early Spring of 1944.
As they grow up and the shorts had a revival as The Little Rascals, many of the actors (now adults) defended performances of Buckwheat, Farina and Stymie, saying every character was presented as a “caricature” or “stereotype.” And while most were fun to watch as an innocent child, you can’t but help notice the awful prejudices. Even cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry used blackface. And you then there’s the cartoon of Donald Duck doing a Heil Hitler Nazi salute.
The Captain America comic-book cover of him punching Adolf Hitler in 1940 drew controversy as some Americans were still divided about Hitler even after he had ordered the invasion of Poland. Just because some people accept certain stereotypes and feel certain people need to be defended, doesn’t exactly mean they are right in their personal choices.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 