Posted on 09/06/2015 6:33:45 PM PDT by lowbridge
Jean Darling, one of the last surviving members of the silent movie Our Gang comedies, has died. Her death was reported on Sunday September 6 on social media sites by her friends. She had turned 93 years old only two weeks earlier. Our Gang were also called Hal Roach's Rascals. The series was known as The Little Rascals on television. In its long history, from the 1920s into the 1940s, the Our Gang roster changed a lot, with some notable members including Jackie Cooper, Farina Hoskins, Stymie Beard, Spanky McFarland, Darla Hood, and Alfalfa Switzer.
Jean Darling joined Our Gang in 1927 when she was only 5 years old. Jean was the pretty girl, often getting the attention of the boys, and causing rivalries among them. Along with appearing in seveal silent Our Gang comedies, Jean also acted a handful of the early talkies.
One of Jean's most noted silent Our Gang comedies was "Crazy House" where she played a lonesome rich girl who was stuck in her mansion and not allowed to play with the "common" children in the neighborhood. When the parents and servants are away, Jean invites several of the kids into her house, which her father has rigged with April Fool gags for a party later that evening. Great visual gags and a heartfelt performance by Jean Darling make "Crazy House" one of the best Gang comedies of the silent era. Another of Jean's best films was the early talkie "Boxing Gloves" (1929) when she played the object of affection for rival boys Fat Joe Cobb and Norman "Chubby" Chaney, who end up fighting in a boxing ring over her. Since this is such an early talkie, it is part sound and part silent, giving the movie some historical significance as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Yes Lee +10. Funniest bit of them all.
I think by now I pretty much have every western series that has been released on dvd! The prime western items I most want are ‘restored’ copies of Universal’s series of 1930s b-westerns with Tom Mix, Buck Jones and Ken Maynard. The prints that circulate are almost exclusively shabby 16mm tv-prints that date to the 1950s.
Although what I ‘most’ want, western-wise, are some of hundreds of silent westerns that are now considered ‘lost,’ with no prints in existence anywhere. Most of those silent films of Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, Jack Hoxie, Wally Wales, Art Acord, Leo Maloney, and such.
She was hot!!!
So did Alfalfa.
I think when they became The Little Rascals.
I recall seeing them on my local bay area tv, but now they no longer show them. I recall shows like Little Rascals, Ma and Pa Kettle, 3 Stooges, Speed Racer, Flintstones, WC Fields, Laurel and Hardy etc. I find it so sad that many new generations have no clue. Like you stated they were watched on Saturday’s and sometimes weekdays after school. Now there are no more Saturday’s cartoons either.
That is my goal is to buy up a DVD collections of my own and play them whenever I feel it before they stop showing these shows on DVD.
No, I think the “Little Rascals” moniker started when Monogram Pictures decided to re-release the Hal Roach shorts to theaters in the early-1950s. Roach had sold the “Our Gang” name to MGM, and thus they couldn’t be distributed as such anymore. Then, they went into television syndication probably some time in the mid-to-late-1950s, still using the “Rascals” name. Although, the later MGM shorts (1938-44) eventually made it to tv too, and of course, kept that “Our Gang” name.
Imagine when kids were all free range.
I am so happy I grew up “free range”.
Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, Abbott & Costello, Hope & Crosby, Red Skelton, Jack Benny are great fun for me to watch... when I can watch them. Today’s “comedy” is vomity.
The very first silents had lots of animal gags in them.
Darla Hood was from a tiny town, Leedey (Oklahoma) where my parents grew up.
Indeed, that’s probably the reason I guess I always gravitated towards lectures, appearances, and film festivals, even when I was young. Just to get that taste of history and culture that America used to represent. Even when I was in high school, I went to see a Bob Hope event, a Harry James concert. Went to see an old guy in a nursing home who was with Pershing’s group when he went after Pancho Villa. And in college, would see lectures and appearances of Jacques Cousteau, Burt Lancaster, and Cary Grant. Of course, by the same token, I’d drive around and just talk to ordinary old-timers at feed-stores or hardware stores, about their experiences in WW1, the Depression, etc.
I was surprised when Darla Hood died, because she wasn’t that old, and I think she’d just lent her voice to some kind of “Our Gang” one-shot cartoon (or something like that), which I managed to miss. Darla also had a role in the Laurel and Hardy film, “The Bohemian Girl.”
However, the same year of that film, Spanky had a memorable role in one of my all-time favorite films “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine” (1936), starring Fred MacMurray, Sylvia Sidney, and Henry Fonda. It was the first Technicolor feature shot outdoors. Beautiful film.
“The Burns and Allen Show” unfortunately has never been officially released on dvd. That is, the 1952-58 lifespan of the series, when it was filmed by Screen Gems. The tv-series was done live the previous two years (1950-52), but about a dozen or so kinescopes of those episodes do circulate quite commonly.
Also of note, you can find quite a few of Burns and Allen’s 1930s Paramount features on dvd. Films like “Six of a Kind” (1934), “Love in Bloom” (1935) and such. “International House” (1933) is available on a WC Fields set, and I think “College Swing” (1938) is on a Bob Hope themed disc.
I’m not sure, but Tinseltown may have been too much for Darla.
Alfalfa fell into a troubled life and was murdered for a debt way to young.
Quite possibly. I do remember seeing an old episode of “The Jack Benny Show,” in which an adult Darla guest-starred, and they put on an “Our Gang” skit. I think Don Wilson played Spanky. Don’t recall too well. Haven’t seen it in over thirty years.
Remember when the kids in the Our Gang and Little Rascal movies didn’t give a damn about diversity, race, economic status (within their own group), or having “one’s own space”.
Since I’m older than most of you kids, I remember when desegregation started in the 50’s, but like the kids in these movies, in our Junior High School race wasn’t important. We elected a black student as VP of my year in 1958, and he was a real gentlemen. It was quite an honor but to us, it was no big deal as he was our friend. And that’s the way is should be.
The Our Gang and Little Rascal movies were socially way ahead of their times and yet everyone loved them. Kids were kids back then no matter what their skin color or ethnicity or religion. And if you belonged to a group, you were all brothers (and sisters). Pick on one, pick on all.
Self-generated “social progress” was done in the movies and in the schools/streets long before Marxist “diversity” parasites got into the act and ruined things for every body.
Movie writers and producers were often far ahead of their times in terms of dealing with unspoken or hushed up social issues, and we need to thank them for it.
Just imagine SciFi without Gene Roddenbery and the crew of the Enterprise. It would be good but it would be bland.
He created a future about an American-led crew going into space together, working together, and when necessary, fighting together, for each other and the mission.
Roddenberry gave us a view of his hope for the future, one that Obama and his divisive Marxist minions are destroying, just as the Our Gang and Little Rascal movies gave up a view of a better society in the making way back then.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.