It sounds to me like the audio has been cleaned and boosted up, which is a good thing for those earliest shorts which always sounded so quiet and had a lot of surface hiss. Even the very earliest talkies like SMALL TALK and BOXING GLOVES look and sound good, considering their age and the fact that they're so primitive. But I have sampled a bunch of shorts and am starting to think this won't be bad at all once the viewing gets underway. I really wish I could dive into this new set in chronological order, but I'm still dedicating the last days of October to watching horror features. There's no way in hell the real Spanky would ever say such a thing.īut has anything in the history of movies been the source of more confusion and misinformation than "Our Gang?" I doubt it. Rather than admit that they printed a bunch of baloney due to a gullible reporter believing what a chronic liar had to say, they lied to me. It was the day I lost my "innocence" as far as journalism is concerned. The next day I called again and she told me, "I called George McFarland himself and he verified that this woman was the real Spanky and he only took over the role years later." She said she'd find the book and get back to me. The Maltin book had just come out and I told her it's well documented that Spanky was, and always had been, George McFarland, whose real life nickname as a child was Spanky. I told her to come over and I'll show her some of my kid pictures, which will prove that I was really Shirley Temple. "Why," she told me, "she had pictures that prove it!" She was incensed that I doubted the veracity of the woman. So I called the paper and asked to talk to the writer of the article. The picture "proving" this was of her wearing overalls and a straw hat, with the caption "Edna Finklehoover (or whatever her name was) as Spanky." The article told us that she played Spanky in "Our Gang," and no one ever knew she was a girl. In the middle of the page was a picture of a fat-cheeked, middle-aged woman, and the headline was, "She Had 'Em All Fooled!" Louis Globe-Democrat ran a full page article/interview. In the Spring of 1978, the late and unlamented St. I still get somewhat angry thinking about something that happened 30 years ago. This is an example of what plagues the world in many areas, i.e., people being assigned to projects about which they have no knowledge and, worse, no interest. I don't hate this dvd, but it could have been so much more. This is a mixed bag of quality that's all I can really say. So far as I can tell, the films are all complete and uncensored, though. But "Free Eats" is scratched all the way through. Mush & Milk looked like it was filmed yesterday! Great print. But for the dvd, this is what happens when you try to do a Little Rascals dvd without the participation of Leonard Maltin-a gross mispresentation of facts and faces.Īs for the films themselves? I watched five of them. ![]() This sort of misrepresentation has plagued the cast members since the series' inception go read "Our Gang: the Life and Times of the Little Rascals" for far more anecdotes. So new people watching them are going to think Dick Moore was beaten to death instead of Scotty, and so on. This stuff is petty to be true, but it's also inexcusable, because the films themselves do not carry cast credits for the most part. During a filmed documentary, the commentators go on and on about Sunshine Sammy, while they're showing us pictures of Farina. Some of the shorts' titles are misspelled in the book and/or in the dvd menus: "Hearts are Thump," instead of "Hearts are ThumpS," "Moan & Groan" instead of "Moan & Groan INC." The filmed intro for disc 6 should be the intro for disc 7. Hello-Dick Moore is not only still alive, but he's a participant in the dvd extras! Worst of all-Dick Moore is listed as Scotty Beckett and says he was beaten to death at age 38. It says Chubby died after crash dieting he didn't-he had a serious glandular problem and died following surgery for that. Well, Mickey did die of cirrohosis Donald died during World War II. Donald Haines is listed as Mickey Daniels, and it says he died of cirrohosis of the liver. First, in the little booklet, there's a page of Our Gang cast members who supposedly died young and/or tragically. Okay, um.there's some serious quality control issues here that will irritate the crap out of hardcore Our Gangers.
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