Dumb Stuff You Thought About The Rascals As A Tiny Kid

[malaria]

1.  That "Mike Fright" was the name of the guy whose frizzy hair kept popping out of his hat.


2.  That if you and your friend Gary would walk around Times Square looking straight up (a la "Pups Is Pups"), everyone else would, just as in the film.


3.  That they were real and unscripted.


4.  That lemonade stands were viable economic concerns.


5.  The blood-curdling howls ensued automatically if older guys pulled hairs out of their beard in a certain way.


6.  That a *reducing machine* was pretty much a standard home feature.


7.  That a "Methodist" was a breed of very clever dog.


8.  That Dickie Moore either was Scottie Beckett, or was related to him.


9.  That Buckwheat's name on the series was "Bukka-wheat."


10.  That if your group of friends didn't include a monkey of some sort, you were missing out on something good. 

[malaria]

11. That "alfalfa" was a made-up, dopey name, and not an actual CROP;

12. That the hidden secret of Chinese laundries was filling your cheeks with water and spitting it on the dirty clothes;

13. That "Stymie" was a lovable black kid who wore a derby, not an actual verb in the language;

14. That when kiddie plays went bad (as they all do) massive pie-throwing necessarily ensued;

15. That a secondary Big Problem in the US back then, apart from the Great Depression, was insidious fidgets dressed as adults.

16. That you never knew when Laurel and Hardy might pop up, especially if a sissified photographer was involved;

17. That there were two breeds of dog: pit bulls and police dogs, the beautiful Pomeranian not having been invented yet;

18. That telephone operators often got personally involved in straightening out kiddie complaints, fears and squabbles;

19. That typhoons became especially scary and involved lots of whistling sounds if they were *Chinese typhoons.*

20. That the pinnacle of male-female affection was this thing called "just one little-bitty kiss," and only harlots and slatterns partook.

[mtw12055]

21. Joe Cobb and Chubby were the same kid.

22. So... Farina's a girl, right?

Based on my only prior knowledge of the Rascals being the 1990s movie, and finally seeing one of the original shorts (Readin' and Writin')

23. That kid that keeps telling Petey not to follow him to school must be Spanky since he wears a beanie. I guess that means that the kid who keeps trying to get kicked out of school is... Alfalfa? Before he had the cowlick? Yeah, that makes sense.

[mtw12055]

24. Scotty Beckett and Porky were the same kid. Once again, I credit the '90s Rascals movie for this one - they decided to have Porky wear Scotty Beckett's sideways baseball hat.

[malaria]

LOL.

25. The Depression-era economy, such as it was, was driven by lemonade sales.

26. The guy who played the dad in that short and in "For Pete's Sake" was my dad as a much younger man. (Later, his resemblance to Pope Pius XII became more evident).

27. People would voluntarily pay for weak entertainment if you just let them watch it for free.

28. Sneezing around any sort of quadruped was asking for trouble.

29. Grownups of the male gender ALL did some version of the double-take or the Slow Burn.

30. The guy who tells Stymie that Petey isn't dead, there having been no gas in the cylinder, may well have been God, or at least godlike. He was even nice in "Shiver My Timbers."

[shirleymurphy]

Wasn't Farina still portrayed as a girl for a while after a boy actor inherited the part? Having to be dolls, dresses and perfume must have done a number on that kid's mental state.

[mtw12055]

May 4, 2019 21:17:25 GMT -5 shirleymurphy said:

Wasn't Farina still portrayed as a girl for a while after a boy actor inherited the part? Having to be dolls, dresses and perfume must have done a number on that kid's mental state.

That was Buckwheat.

Although sometimes Farina was identified as a female in the silents.

I'm referring more to the actors, though.

[tboneator64]

31. That in THE AWFUL TOOTH (1938), Alfalfa et al went to a lot of trouble for the sake of raising 20 cents for a $3 baseball glove. Also that a baseball glove only cost $3!

32. Why was Spanky suddenly missing, and Alfalfa the apparent (temporary) leader of the gang?

33. Why were some shorts shorter than others?

34. That the sudden edits in the TV broadcasts were there purely for comedic effect (IE. SPANKY (1932).).

35. That the MGM 'Our Gang's were just as good as the Roach shorts. (Thankfully, this phase of my existence was mercifully brief!)

CHEERS!

[mtw12055]

I don’t know if I’d call this dumb... more like innocent. But when I saw Buckwheat’s fantasy in UNEXPECTED RICHES as a kid, it never occurred to me that he was visiting a black neighborhood until someone pointed it out sometime later.

[malaria]

"...35. That the MGM 'Our Gang's were just as good as the Roach shorts."

HEAVEN FORFEND!!

36. That with just a little bit of effort, I (and my friends) could whip up a cool firehouse with slides, telescopes, and what I later learned to be fairly complex Oelze gags.

37. That a "shippin' clerk" was something either made up or specific to the 1930s.

38. That it was a pretty common occurrence to have 2-year-olds baby-sat by 8-year-olds back then.

39. That emcees of kiddie-talent shows were all insufferable prigs with short fuses.

40. That girls with Dutch-boy haircuts like Mary Ann could beat up boys, even those much larger.

[mtw12055]

41. Spanky was Wheezer's younger brother; the beanie was passed down from brother to brother.

And for that matter...

42. Continuity exists in the Little Rascals universe.

[tboneator64]

43. Expanding on the continuity idea, when I was a kid, I often thought the later Hal Roach shorts with Spanky and the gang could be combined for a continuous story. I never thought that with the later MGM entries, though!

44, In WILD POSES (1933), I felt Otto Focus' frustration with his fruitless efforts to get Spanky's picture took, and that Spanky was acting rather spoiled.

45. When viewing the MGM shorts, I always found it a bummer when the main kids left, as I wanted to see them progress beyond the 12 - 14 range. In hindsight, I think it somewhat had to do with my being in that same age range at the time, and being in a hurry to grow up.

CHEERS!

[mtw12055]

46. For Alfalfa’s third audition in THE PINCH SINGER, he wasn’t doing blackface; that paint on his face was blue. Another example of being oblivious to racial humor.

47. For that matter, The Plantation Trio’s blackface not was because they were eccentric performance artists.

48. The Brasnos were really kids during thier Our Gang appearances.

49. For some reason, I thought alcohol was still illegal in the US for some time after 1933.

[malaria]

50. That Alfalfa came from Arkansas or Kansas or Iowa, maybe Nebraska.

51. That the REAL hotties were Wheezer's mom in "Big Ears" and Dickie's nurse in Free Wheeling (not sure I've changed my mind...)

52. That my elementary school was quite advanced because it had (gasp) More Than One Room.

53. That all those names in the opening credits were just grownups that this great gang of pals had gotten to oversee technical stuff.

54. That taking a photograph was an operation roughly equivalent in difficulty to splitting an atom.

55.   That eclipses transformed full daylight into total darkness in about 60 seconds.

56.    That old people could cure their ailments by not taking prescribed medications.

57.    That something called "Plaster Of Paris" made any situation funnier.

58.    That donkeys and horses laughed exactly like Mickey Daniels.

59.    That at some point, the Washington Senators were actually half-decent. 
  

[tboneator64]

Are there any half decent senators around, these days?

60. That somewhere, there were Birthday parties being held where the cake really had the types of "prizes" we see in BIRTHDAY BLUES (1932). I only ever saw nickels, dimes, and quarters, and never at my own Birthdays, sad to say.