Posted on 01/07/2026 12:54:58 PM PST by lowbridge
Sidney Kibrick, who portrayed the bad boy known as “Woim” in Our Gang comedy film shorts in the 1930s, has died. He was 97.
Kibrick died Saturday at a hospital in Northridge, his daughter, Jane Lipsic, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Kibrick appeared in about two dozen Our Gang/Little Rascals films, made at Hal Roach Studios and/or MGM, from 1935-39. As Woim — that’s Brooklynese for “worm” — he was the henchkid for the neighborhood bully Butch (Tommy Bond).
It was a grind making those shorts, he told Nick Thomas in a 2023 interview. “We’d have two hours of schooling in the morning and then work anywhere from six to 16 hours until we finished,” he said. “There was a lot of work, no question about it, but our director Gordon Douglas was a terrific guy, and he was really able to get a lot out of each kid.”
-snip
The youngest of three kids, Sidney Henry Kibrick was born in Minneapolis on July 2, 1928. He came to Los Angeles as an infant with his family.
“My mother took us to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and after the movie, a man came over to us, pointed at me and said he could ‘use that little kid in the movies,’” Kibrick recalled. His parents really wanted him and his brother to get into acting.
The boys got started in 1933, appearing in Raoul Walsh’s The Bowery (1933), starring Wallace Beery, George Raft and Jackie Cooper. Leonard, who was about four years older than Sidney, appeared in his first Our Gang film in 1934 (he died in 1993 at age 68).
Kibrick said he was earning $750 a week for the shorts, “a lot in those days, especially during the Depression,” he told Thomas.
(Excerpt) Read more at hollywoodreporter.com ...
Woim probably was the archetype for the bullies’ henchman for shows ranging from The Simpsons to A Christmas Story.
In 1935 the average annual income for a homeowner was about $1200 per year. For a "sharecropper" (still a category in the census at that time) it was $475
My Dad, as a 30 year-old low-level manager at a steel plant in 1955 (twenty years later), made about $5200 per year.
So YES - that was a lot of money!
Glanced at the headline without my reading glasses.
I thought it was Stanley Kubrick. I thought “the director was in Our Gang”?
Not to be confused with Stanley Kubrick.
I met one of the Our Gang actors in NYC in ‘76, had no idea any of them were still alive.
Sidney Kibrick Original “Our Gang” Actor Interview at The Hollywood Museum Our Gang Exhibit Opening
15AUG2022
Bionic Buzz® got to cover the red carpet of the 100th Anniversary of Hal Roach’s “OUR GANG” exhibit grand opening at The Hollywood Museum in Hollywood, CA. The Exhibit features Hal Roach’s Academy Award, Spanky McFarlands costume from the “Our Gang” comedy film short “Doin’ Their Bit”, also costumes from Darla Hood, Alfalfa Switzer, and Jerry Schatz. Original Our Gang / The Little Rascals movie posters, countless B&W production stills, and more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjY69f3RWFs
Good clean stuff for us...I’m 82..
I wish’t Cotton was a monkey.
Yum, yum. Eat ‘em up.
I loved that guy. RIP.
I always tell my kids “You ain’t getting any.” And they say “I noes it.” Stymie with a watermelon.
I wish I had a watermelon.
Stanley has been dead since 1999.
Oh, my gosh. I remember that...LOL!!!
Butch about to deck Alfalfa.
I watched on Christmas a 4k Blue Ray version of It's a Wonderful Life. As some may know Alfalfa, as played by Carl Switzer, was the jilted kid at the High School dance. He and his buddy where the ones that had the key to the dance floor which opened up into the pool.
We got caught in a violent t storm once in the Midwest. Colo or Kans in the 70s. We got holed up in a KOA. The guy that played Spanky McFarlands little brother entertained us. I guess we were trapped.
it is so much money that i wonder if it is accurate. have any other cast members ever discussed their salaries, i wonder.
It sounds WAYYYY too high, honestly.
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