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Post by mtw12055 on Sept 12, 2015 8:34:35 GMT -5
Keep Jackie Condon in the series for just a few more shorts so he could last long enough to make it through the transition to talkies. If only this could have happened, we'd know what he sounded like. Hmmm... Maybe someone could try playing with the audio on that You Asked For It reunion to get an idea of what the silent Gang would have sounded like as kids. Though the results would likely be unnatural chipmunk voices. By the way, there is a sound home movie out there featuring Harold Lloyd and Jack Davis, if anyone's curious to hear what the latter sounded like.
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Post by RJH on Sept 12, 2015 22:51:21 GMT -5
They could also have asked Jackie Condon appear in Fish Hooky. He should have been fishing with Joe and Farina and get a couple lines. Instead that fits in with the lack of lead roles the long-running character had, and to me that is an injustice.
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Post by mtw12055 on Sept 13, 2015 9:26:26 GMT -5
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Post by tboneator64 on Oct 12, 2015 23:10:16 GMT -5
An 'Our Gang' Moment, I'd Like To Change: GENERAL SPANKY (1936): In my opinion, almost any other idea would likely have been preferable to this Civil War era tale, in which Buckwheat plays a slave who wishes to return to his master. This likely represents the PC Crowd's best argument against the 'Our Gang' oeuvre, among the talkies, at least! If Hal Roach was insistent on a full length 'Rascals' Feature Length comedy needing some adult presence, why not bring back Emerson Treacy & Gay Seabrook as Spanky's parents in a contemporary (For 1936) setting, instead? CHEERS!
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Post by RJH on Oct 15, 2015 23:33:38 GMT -5
Great post. And you don't have to limit the argument to just the talkies; nothing in the silents compares to the opprobrium of Buckwheat first crying because he got separated from his master to fighting for the South to win the right to be a slave the rest of his life. Even in "Spook-Spoofing Farina gets to hit his "friends" with a shovel many times, exacting some revenge. I saw "General Spanky" on some cable movie channel around twenty years ago and have never wanted to see it again. I felt strongly enough about this to make into a "Worst Films Never Made" post, where this offensive plot is taken to a logical conclusions: Buckwheat's actions turn out to be enough to change the outcome of the Civil War and he gets to be Spanky's slave forevermore.
"Our Gang" was a comedy series, and the Civil War was the least comedic part of American history. There was a wretched TV sitcom in the 1990s about the Lincoln White House that was so awful it got axed after about four episodes. Comedy and the Civil War will never go together.
I have thought of what I would do if forced to put the Our Gang cast into that setting, in the South of 1860-1861. I'd get rid of most of the adults, and have Buckwheat and Spanky end up at a plantation headed by Mickey Daniels and Mary Kornman that was actually a stop on the Underground Railroad. Other former cast members would be relatives and slaves, the latter who would be mistreated only occasionally to avoid suspicion. Antics would include disrupting objectionable neighbors' lives and sabotaging the Confederacy's war effort. (I don't have the ability to turn this into a decent coherent story.)
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Post by tboneator64 on Oct 16, 2015 4:40:12 GMT -5
I had forgotten the part of GENERAL SPANKY in which Buckwheat cries over being separated from his master. You're right about this cringe worthy part of the story line being far worse than SPOOK SPOOFING, which I find to be a rather funny film!
CHEERS!
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Post by Paul F. on Oct 16, 2015 10:54:19 GMT -5
It would be good if I could tell little Scotty that God loves him and that he is special, and that drug abuse is bad and that he should never do it. Perhaps that would have made a difference.
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Post by mtw12055 on Oct 16, 2015 12:31:50 GMT -5
Definitely would make an effort to keep more of the Rascals around a bit longer so that they could know how much they meant to people.
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Post by Paul F. on Oct 17, 2015 10:19:23 GMT -5
I had forgotten the part of GENERAL SPANKY in which Buckwheat cries over being separated from his master. You're right about this cringe worthy part of the story line being far worse than SPOOK SPOOFING, which I find to be a rather funny film! For those unfamiliar with GENERAL SPANKY: If I remember correctly, Buckwheat was frightened because he thought a slave without a master would be in danger, and that is in addition to being a four-or-so-year-old alone in the world. It's not as though he enjoyed being a slave. However, the romanticizing of the South in movies of this period is quite curious.
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Post by tboneator64 on Nov 23, 2015 11:30:47 GMT -5
That Hal Roach would have sold the 'Our Gang' series to Columbia instead of MGM. I think it would have been interesting to see how well Columbia's brand of slapstick might have meshed with the Rascals, especially as fellow former Roach star Charley Chase seemed to fare pretty well there, at least until his health had simply deteriorated far too much! I'm also with rascalstooge in seeing more Three Stooges supporting player interaction with the Gang, and a series sale to Columbia Pictures would have facilitated this, though albeit, technically outside of the Hal Roach era, as per his wish! CHEERS!
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Post by mtw12055 on Nov 23, 2015 17:17:13 GMT -5
That Hal Roach would have sold the 'Our Gang' series to Columbia instead of MGM. I think it would have been interesting to see how well Columbia's brand of slapstick might have meshed with the Rascals, especially as fellow former Roach star Charley Chase seemed to fare pretty well there, at least until his health had simply deteriorated far too much! I'm also with rascalstooge in seeing more Three Stooges supporting player interaction with the Gang, and a series sale to Columbia Pictures would have facilitated this, though albeit, technically outside of the Hal Roach era, as per his wish! CHEERS! Well, if Jules White's version of Our Gang is any indication of how he might have handled the series... www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ARMaLkneoQ
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Post by tboneator64 on Nov 24, 2015 2:01:35 GMT -5
That Hal Roach would have sold the 'Our Gang' series to Columbia instead of MGM. I think it would have been interesting to see how well Columbia's brand of slapstick might have meshed with the Rascals, especially as fellow former Roach star Charley Chase seemed to fare pretty well there, at least until his health had simply deteriorated far too much! I'm also with rascalstooge in seeing more Three Stooges supporting player interaction with the Gang, and a series sale to Columbia Pictures would have facilitated this, though albeit, technically outside of the Hal Roach era, as per his wish! CHEERS! Well, if Jules White's version of Our Gang is any indication of how he might have handled the series... www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ARMaLkneoQWhile that's an interesting observation, it is my take that "The Mischief Makers" shorts were simply produced in the wrong era, as by this time, even Hal Roach was striking out on attempted 'Our Gang' style revivals! I still think that at Columbia, as it was in the late 1930's - early 1940's, might have been better caretakers of the 'Our Gang' series than MGM, insofar as retaining at least much of the flavor that had been present during it's long and fruitful Hal Roach era! Unfortunately, all post World War 2 attempts (At least in the U.S.) to stage similar 'Our Gang' type series just seemed to fall flatter than a pancake that failed to rise! One could probably just chalk it up to changing times, changing sensibilities, and frankly, a different, more pedestrian approach to shooting comedy shorts that seemed to be more prevelant during the 1950's. CHEERS!
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Post by mtw12055 on Nov 24, 2015 22:12:32 GMT -5
Jules White's brother Jack had some association with Educational Pictures' "Boy Boy" comedies (one of the many rivals to Roach's Gang) back in the 1920s. I wonder if "The Mischief Makers" was partially an attempt at re-doing that series as well. That "High Pockets" kid seems to have been modeled off of Maclolm Sebastion.
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Post by tboneator64 on Dec 1, 2015 4:01:36 GMT -5
That June Marlowe, who played Miss Crabtree, would have come out of retirement as a one off for the 1935 'Our Gang' short, TEACHER'S BEAU, which would have brought her into the Spanky/Alfalfa (Though they weren't quite fully paired up just yet!) era. It's not as though Arletta Duncan did much more on Film herself, afterward, so her non appearance wouldn't have really affected her career much, anyway!
Don't get me wrong! I didn't dislike Arletta's Miss Jones character in any way. I just would have loved for June to have played Miss Crabtree just one more time, and her getting married would also have been a really nice way to wrap up her character in the series!
CHEERS!
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Post by tboneator64 on Jan 10, 2016 2:07:27 GMT -5
They could also have asked Jackie Condon appear in Fish Hooky. He should have been fishing with Joe and Farina and get a couple lines. Instead that fits in with the lack of lead roles the long-running character had, and to me that is an injustice. I agree that FISH HOOKY would have been a nice spot for Jackie. Also, while he was a bit too young to be in The Boyfriends series, it's too bad he couldn't have stuck around for the first 'Our Gang' talkie, SMALL TALK, and especially the follow up RAILROADIN', which borrowed some its sight gags from THE SUNDOWN LIMITED, which of course, did feature Jackie Condon. Also tantalizing is a photo taken of Jackie Condon with 'Our Gang' alumni Allen "Farina' Hoskins, Mary Kornman, Johnny Downs, and Joe Cobb, which looks to have been taken around the time the 1937 one reeler REUNION IN RHYTHM was shot, so it wasn't as though Jackie couldn't have conceivably been casted to appear in REUNION IN RHYTHM, though dialogue in that short wouldn't have been a given, either! This photo appears in the 1992 Edition of THE LITTLE RASCALS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF OUR GANG. It's also worth noting that Jackie Condon's 78 'Our Gang' appearances, is by far the highest total for an 'Our Gang' member that didn't appear in so much as a single talkie, his YOU ASKED FOR IT television guest appearance in the early 1950's, notwithstanding! CHEERS! P.S. Here is the YOU ASKED FOR IT clip, which I believe represents the only recording of Jackie Condon's voice: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlMFHTYdG4E
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