Matthew Beard
Join all you favorites--Spanky, Buckwheat, Alfalfa, Darla, Butch, Froggy and more--in a jam-packed special covering more than twenty years and 200 episodes of Hal Roach's inimitable brand of childhood magic. This fascinating video offers insight into the Gang's personal lives, as rare footage follows each member's career through the joys and misfortunes that went along with being one of America's most beloved kids. See how the series began in 1922 and changed after the first all-talking release in 1929, why Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney never made the Gang, a fifteenth anniversary reunion, and clips from their only feature.
With the Gang aching to hit the gridiron, team captain Spankys got to play Little Papa and mind the baby, while Pete is framed by Wheezers hateful stepbrother, Sherwood, and sent to the pound in Dogs Is Dogs. Sherwoods dog kills a chicken, so he blames Pete, but Wheezer and his sister Dorothy have the last laugh; then Spanky and the Gang try to impress the daughter of Mr. Jones, the new truant officer, by Sprucin Up.
The Little Rascals answer the call as volunteer firemen in "Hook and Ladder" with Dickie as "Chief", then get snubbed after saying "Hi Neighbor" to the new kid on the block, so they build their own fantastic fire engine. In the silent "Sundown Ltd.", the Gang learns the danger of playing in the railroad yards as thy duke it out with Toughy, their rival for Mary's affections, and manage to run their hand-made train right off of the tracks.
Stymie, Spanky and the Gang have to save Pete from the dog catcher's gas chamber in "The Pooch", while Spanky and Alfalfa headline the school pageant with a pair of midgets mistaken for children on "Arbor Day". In the 1923 silent "Derby Day", the Gang is selling hot dogs and lemonade outside the racetrack when Mickie hits upon an idea of holding their own race--between a mule, a horse, a cow, a doh, a goat and a bicycle.
The gang's all here - Our Gang, that is, with Spanky, Alfalfa, Jackie, Farina, Scotty, Buckwheat, Chubby, Stymie, Wheezer, Dickie, Tommy, Mary, Pete and more in uncut versions of some of their funniest episodes. A magic lamp turns two adults into new arrivals at the Happy Home Orphanage in "Shrimps for a Day," while the Rascals show a thief how to "Fly My Kite" when he tries to send their beloved Grandma to the poor farm. The Gang is snubbed after saying "Hi Neighbor" to the new kid on the block, and Spanky has "Beginners Luck" during his debut on amateur night, before they mistake a hungry "Kid from Borneo" for Uncle George.
The Most Memorable Adventures from the "Our Gang Comedies" aka "The Little Rascals", Narrated By Jerry Lewis, Music by Nelson Riddle.
A behind the scenes look at Hal Roach's Our Gang comedies, complete with interviews from several former cast and crew members of the series.
A powerful eight-hour adaptation of John Steinbeck's 1952 generational saga stars Bruce Boxleitner and Timothy Bottoms as battling brothers reminiscent of Cain and Abel, and Jane Seymour as the malevolent young woman who toys with their emotions.
Spanky and Porky try to figure out a way to get their mother a winter coat for Christmas after she buys them a Blue Comet electric train.
Behind the scenes at the White House during eight administrations, as told by the people who work there.
Disco 9000, a neon-lit penthouse dance club that's one of the top nightspots in Los Angeles. He also owns Disco 9000 Records, a successful label that provides the music for this venue. A rival mogul ascertains that his company can't get a hit record in the Los Angeles market without exposure at the Disco 9000, but he fails to convince Black to play his company's records at the club. So his goons make life difficult for Black: they smash cars in the club's parking lot, destroy the Disco 9000 recording studio, ransack his office, steal the tape of his label's latest recording, and even attack the club while people are dancing. Meanwhile, one of Black's associates tries to get out of debt by providing information on Black; this leads to a woman's accidental death when she's hit by a car. The rival mogul offers to "help" Black as he struggles to overcome the damage to his business, but Black refuses the offer. Instead, he fights back by researching his rival's financial records.
This movie details the struggles of former Brooklyn Dodger catcher Roy Campanella to adapt to life in a wheelchair following his crippling automobile accident in 1959. Cinematographer Ted Voigtlander was Emmy-nominated.
Paratroopers Captain 'Rip' Murdock and Sergeant Johnny Drake are mysteriously ordered to travel to Washington, DC. When Drake learns that he is to be awarded the Medal of Honor, he disappears before newspaper photographers can take his picture. Murdock follows the clues and tracks him down, where he learns Drake is dead. Further investigations reveal unexpected twists. Rip learns that Johnny had been accused of murder and sets out to find out whatever he can. He falls in love with Coral whose husband Johnny is supposed to have killed.
Recently returned from WWII combat, unable to find a job, finding his sweetheart engaged to another man, and generally aware of the changes which have occurred in his hometown while he was away, a young man becomes easily talked into joining the Ku Klux Klan. Banned by the Virginia Board of Censors, and financed independently because no bank would loan money for it.
An unemployed drifter, Eric Stanton wanders into a small California town and begins hanging around the local diner. While Eric falls for the lovely waitress Stella, he also begins romancing a quiet and well-to-do woman named June Mills. Since Stella isn't interested in Eric unless he has money, the lovelorn guy comes up with a scheme to win her over, and it involves June. Before long, murder works its way into this passionate love triangle.
Dancing great Bill Williamson sees his face on the cover of Theatre World magazine and reminisces: Just back from World War I, he meets lovely singer Selina Rogers at a soldiers' ball and promises to come back to her when he "gets to be somebody." Years go by, and Bill and Selina's rising careers intersect only briefly, since Selina is unwilling to settle down. Will she ever change her mind? Concludes with a big all-star show hosted by Cab Calloway.
After her family's mansion is burned down by Yankee soldiers for hiding the rebel leader Captain Sam Starr (Scott) Belle Shirley (Tierney) vows to take revenge. Breaking Starr out of prison, she joins his small guerrilla group for a series of raids on banks and railroads, carpetbaggers and enemy troops. Belle's bravado during the attacks earns her a reputation amongst the locals as well as the love of Starr himself. The pair get married, but their relationship starts to break down when Sam Starr lets a couple of psychotic rebels into the gang, leaving Belle to wonder if he really cares about the Southern cause.
After noted violinist Arthur Williams suffers a hand injury which ends his playing career, his hopes are transferred to his son, who prefers swing music to classical.
Farmer Frank and his ward hunt brother Jesse's killers, the back-shooting Fords.
In the pre-Civil War South, a plantation owner dies and leaves all his possessions, including his slaves, to his young son. While the deceased treated his slaves decently, his corrupt executor abuses them unmercifully, beating them without provocation, and he is planning to sell off the father'e estate--including the slaves--at the earliest opportunity so he and his mistress can steal the money and move to France. The young boy doesn't want to sell his father's estate or break up an of the slave families, and he has to find someone to help him thwart the crooked executor's plans.
In 1923, Gregory Vance, a widower with two children, is a former scholar who has turned from book-to-bottle. He works, slightly, as a night-watchman and his children, who know him for what he is and what he isn't, are his only admirers. Then, it is discovered that he is the only registered voter in a key precinct and the politicians, from both parties, arrive in droves bearing inducements. What he does about this situation, and the relatives who want to take his children away from him make up the story.
Swanee River is a 1940 American biopic about Stephen Foster, a songwriter from Pittsburgh who falls in love with the South, marries a Southern girl, then is accused of sympathizing when the Civil War breaks out. Typical of 20th Century Fox biopics of the time, the film is more fictional than factual biography.
Roberta Morgan is being raised in a wealthy home where her mother is occupied with her society-club activities and her father is immersed in his business activities. She also feels that the household staff is against her and that no one understands her needs and problems. Things spiral out of control.
A cowboy is wrongfully accused of murder. He winds up in Harlem, where he assumes the identity of a preacher-turned-gangster who looks like him. He infiltrates the gang to catch the men who framed him.
The gang puts on a musical show at a reunion for some of the former Gang kids.
Action-filled drama about a ship captain, ashamed of his background in the slave trade, forced against his will to again transport human cargo.
Orphaned horse-trainer's little daughter has reciprocated bond with horse, which needs her presence to win races.
A boy (Billy Mauch) and his gang catch bank robbers using their clubhouse as a hide-out.
After setting the leg of John Wilkes Booth, Dr. Samuel Mudd is sent to prison as a conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
When a grand jury acquits a gangster accused of murder, a retired elderly citizen decides it's up to him to see that the criminal is proven guilty and put behind bars.
Members of the Hall Johnson Choir play members of a church congregation in the deep South in 1936. THey hold an open-air tent-and-camp meeting in order to raise the funds needed to send the church pastor, played by Clinton Rosemond, to a church conference in Birmingham, Alabama.
A young boy is forced to leave his family in the South and move in with relatives he doesn't know in New York.
Virgie Cary's father, a rebel officer, sneaks back to his rundown plantation to see his dying wife and is arrested. A Yankee officer takes pity and sets up an escape. Everyone is captured and the officers are to be executed. Virgie and Uncle Billy beg President Lincoln to intercede.
Dr. Peter Blood, unjustly convicted of treason and exiled from England, becomes a notorious pirate.
The gang's treasury is entrusted to Spanky, who accidentally gets it mixed up with his father's money.
The gang goes after pirate treasure they believe is hidden in a cave.
Rich boy Waldo gets his clothes dirty playing football with the gang just before he has to go to his mother's society party. The gang tries to help him clean up.
A magic lamp lets a young couple become kids again and exposes a mean old man who runs his orphanage like a prison.
The gang packs up for a camping trip to Cherry Creek two miles from their home, but to them it is the wilderness. After night falls, the hooting owls and croaking frogs conjure up visions of spooks. When a thunderstorm hits, they all scurry for home.
Charley finds that he got more than he bargained for when he takes a job as a kindergarten teacher.
Spanky's parents take their reluctant boy to get his portrait taken by a prissy photographer.
The gang goes to a circus sideshow to visit Dickie and Spanky's uncle, mistakenly believing he is "The Wild Man from Borneo."
When Cap's back pension finally comes in, he treats the gang to a day at an amusement park.
Spanky's parents are trying unsuccessfully to get Spanky to spend a peaceful first night in his own room.
Dickie throws a birthday party to try to raise money to buy his mother a birthday present.
Tired of going to school, Breezy comes up with a plan to get himself expelled.
Spanky, Buckwheat, Porky and all of the Little Rascals at their hilarious best! All films in this fantastic collection have been fully-restored and are presented here in beautiful COLOR! 1. Fly My Kite, 2. A Lad an' a Lamp, 3. Kid From Borneo, 4. Hi Neighbor, 5. Hide and Shriek
Farina plans a going-away party for Stymie as authorities prepare to place him in an orphanage.
Miss Crabtree, the teacher Jackie has a crush on, rents a room at Jackie's house.
The Gang plays hooky from school so they can listen to the tall tales of a friendly sea captain.
The kids' adopted grandma decides to sell her store, but can't decide whom to sell it to. The kids try to help her out.
A greedy man tries to get rid of his mother by putting her in an old folks home until he discovers she has a fortune in stock certificates.
Famous actress Norma Shearer's jewels are stolen… (Star-packed promotional short film intended to raise funds for the National Variety Artists Tuberculosis Sanatorium.)
The kids mistake Miss Crabtree's brother for a potential boyfriend, and plot to discourage him.
Nappus sends his grandson north for schooling to shelter him from their community.
This film sticks very closely to the Edna Ferber novel, rather than the musical based on the novel. There are only two major changes from Ferber's book : *Julie in this version is a white woman, not a racially mixed one; therefore she and her husband are not unlawfully married. * Ravenal returns at the end, instead of dying as in the novel
Joe Merrill, son of the millionaire owner of a chain of 5 and 10 cent stores, poses as Joe Grant, and takes a job in the stockroom of one of his father's stores, to prove that he can be a success without his father's influence. There he meets stockroom girl Maggie Johnson, and they fall in love. This causes problems, because Mrs. Merrill had planned for her son to marry Millicent Rogers, a high society girl.
Our Gang is a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and their adventures. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, the series is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively natural way, as 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. In addition, Our Gang notably put boys, girls, whites and blacks together as equals, something that "broke new ground," according to film historian Leonard Maltin. That had never been done before in cinema, but has since been repeated after the success of Our Gang. The first production at the Roach studio in 1922 was a series of silent short subjects. When Roach changed distributors from Pathé to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1927, and converted the series to sound in 1929, the series took off. Production continued at the Roach studio until 1938, when the series was sold to MGM, continuing to produce the comedies until 1944. The Our Gang series includes 220 shorts and one feature film, General Spanky, featuring over forty-one child actors. As MGM retained the rights to the Our Gang trademark following their purchase of the production rights, the 80 Roach-produced "talkies" were syndicated for television under the title The Little Rascals beginning in 1955. Both Roach's The Little Rascals package and MGM's Our Gang package have since remained in syndication, with periodic new productions based on the shorts surfacing over the years, including a 1994 Little Rascals feature film released by Universal Pictures.
