The missing Our Gang kid?

[Buppster]

From reading old posts on this forum I've found out that over the years there have been several wannabe Our Gang kids who claimed to have been in the Gang but weren't. Some of those pretenders claimed to have had nicknames which were never used in Our Gang shorts, it seems that claiming to have been 'Freckles' or 'Stinky' were popular choices. That made me wonder if perhaps the series might have benefited from the addition of another character at some point during it's existence? So what do you think? Invent a character, with a nick name, name a period actor (if you want) who you think could have played your character and state which era of Our Gang your character was best suited for. That'll give you something to ponder.

[Buppster]

I think I'd like to have seen Tommy Ryan appearing as part of the late 1930s Gang, alongside Alfalfa, Spanky, Darla, Buckwheat & Porky. He did make one appearance, under his alternative name of Philip McMahon, in Follies Of 1938. I think he'd have been a great addition to the Gang playing the same sort of character, a boy who wanted to be rich and part of High Society. It could have led to plenty of amusing story lines and Tommy/Philip had enough personality and talent to carry off being one of the major character in the series. He was also sufficiently different from any of the existing characters to be able to stand out in his own right.

[mtw12055]

Stinky, the equivalent of Mr. Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street. Young Spanky keeps insisting that he's real, but the older kids never buy it.

[Buppster]

Billy Lee, would have been great playing a kid inventor, sort of like he did in Reg'lar Fellers alongside Alfalfa and Spike but I'm think of when he was a little younger. He could have injected a bit of much needed humor into the early 1940s dreary MGM shorts with wacky inventions that either didn't work or worked in ways that he hadn't envisaged. He could have any one of a whole load of cliched names like Titch, Brains, Prof, Short Arse, whatever.

[myhomeo]

I kinda wish Dickie Jones had been able to do more, perhaps continuing as alternative bully Spike and either being teamed with or pitted against Butch in some way. That said, he seems to have benefited much more from his frequent appearances in B-westerns and I wouldn't want to take that away from him.

[Buppster]

Mar 2, 2018 13:59:04 GMT -5 myhomeo said:

I kinda wish Dickie Jones had been able to do more, perhaps continuing as alternative bully Spike and either being teamed with or pitted against Butch in some way. That said, he seems to have benefited much more from his frequent appearances in B-westerns and I wouldn't want to take that away from him.

That's pretty much the same reasoning that I used for not choosing Tommy Bupp as a candidate for more parts in The Gang. He appeared in Hi' Neighbor in 1934 but in that same year alone he also appeared in twenty other movies. That's according to IMDb and it's quite possible he had appeared in other uncredited roles that they haven't listed in his credits. Tommy liked to wander around the studio lots during breaks in filming and appear as an unpaid and uncredited extra in other movies, simply because he enjoyed doing it. So although it was nice that he did make an appearance in Our Gang he certainly had much better roles in movies during the same period, which he might have missed out on if he'd done more Our Gang films.

[imnotallenhoskins]

I would have liked Trellis from Lazy Days to be a regular character. Her role as Farina's girlfriend was amusing.

[Buppster]

Yes, Trellis was one of the highlights of that short.