Our Gang
Our Gang, also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals, was a long-lived series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and the adventures they had together.
Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, Our Gang was produced at the Roach studio starting in 1922 as a silent short subject series. Roach changed distributors from Pathé to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1927, went to sound in 1929, and continued production until 1938, when he sold the series to MGM. MGM continued producing the comedies until 1944. A total of 220 shorts and one feature film, General Spanky (1936), were eventually produced, featuring over forty-one child actors.
In 1955, the 80 Roach-produced shorts with sound were syndicated for television under the title The Little Rascals, as MGM retained the rights to the Our Gang trademark.
Spanking scenes
The series made various references to spanking. Some examples can be seen in the videos to the right.
One episode from 1928 was titled "The Spanking Age". Its opening intertitle says: Spanked if they did-- Spanked if they didn't--So they did--. Two kids misbehave (very creatively, one must admit) and Mary Ann Jackson is spanked by her mother over the knee, kicking her legs.
Episodes that feature spanking include:
- "Bouncing Babies" (1929, F/B)
- "When the Wind Blows" (1930, M/B)
- "Dogs Is Dogs" (1931, F/B)
- "Birthday Blues" (1932, M/B)
- "Wedding Worries" (1941, MMMM/mmmm)
"Spanky"
One of the series's main characters, George McFarland, was nicknamed and known as "Spanky". His nickname is said to have arisen from repeated warnings by his mother not to misbehave during one of the initial discussions with Hal Roach in his office. As the story goes, he had a habit of reaching out and grabbing things, and on doing so his mother Virginia would say, "Spanky, spanky, mustn't touch!"
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Our_Gang ]
External links
Review Review Our Gang on Internet Movie Database
Review Review Our Gang on Internet Movie Database
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