Trivia: Twenty thousand boys had reportedly entered the contest to replace Joe Cobb as Our Gang's resident fat kid. The year was 1929, and clocking in at 113 pounds, Baltimore's Norman "Chubby" Chaney emerged as the winner. Unlike Cobb, whose weight always remained somewhat proportional, the shorter Chaney was plain obese, and even worse, seemed to resent that fact. The screenwriters at Hal Roach Studios didn't help matters by constantly casting him as a hopelessly lovesick would-be Lothario. He made 18 shorts before his ever-increasing weight made him a target of pity rather than mirth. Completely retiring from show business in 1932, Chaney, whose weight eventually escalated to a life-threatening 300 pounds, passed away four years later from the glandular condition that had caused his obesity in the first place.

Trivia: The blonde "vamp" or "Little Rich Girl" of such Our Gang shorts as Helping Grandma (1931) or Bargain Day, Shirley Jean Rickert had won a beautiful baby contest in her native Seattle before making her screen debut opposite comedian Monte Collins in How's My Baby (1930). She followed her stint with the Gang with appearances opposite Mickey McGuire (later Mickey Rooney) and in subsequent years worked as a dancer/chorus girl in numerous MGM musicals, from Best Foot Forward (1943) to Singin' in the Rain (1952). When film musicals went out of fashion, Rickert toured America as a burlesque dancer or, as she herself acknowledges, "a striptease."

Trivia: The son of a Los Angeles minister, three-year-old Matthew Beard won out of 350 kids to replace Allen "Farina" Hoskins as the resident black child in Hal Roach's Our Gang comedies. Nicknamed Hercules in his first two-reeler, Teacher's Pet (1930), Beard was thereafter known as Stymie because of his innocent offscreen habit of confounding his elders. Wearing an oversized derby hat (borrowed from Roach comedian Stan Laurel), the clever, resourceful, eternally grinning Stymie quickly became one of the most popular Our Gang kids. After appearing in 36 Our Gang shorts, Beard began freelancing in 1935, playing small roles in big films like Captain Blood (1935), Jezebel (1938), The Great Man Votes (1939), and Stormy Weather (1943). Alas, after dropping out of high school in 1945, he fell into a bad crowd, spending the next two decades in and out of jails for committing crimes to feed his drug habit. Miraculously, Beard completely turned his life around in the mid-'60s when he entered the drug rehab organization Synanon. Looking remarkably like the eternally optimistic Stymie of old, Matthew Beard made a successful show business comeback in the 1970s, appearing in such films as The Buddy Holly Story (1978) and such weekly TV series as Good Times and The Jeffersons.

Trivia: Named after a breakfast cereal, Farina Hoskins (born Allen Clayton Hoskins) was reportedly discovered by Our Gang veteran Ernie Morrison, who recommended the African-American child actor to Hal Roach. Hoskins made his Gang debut in 1922 and remained with the team until 1931, setting an all-time Our Gang record by appearing in a total of 106 comedies. In the early years, the boy's true gender was inexplicably disguised by his wearing a dress and sporting a rather feminine cornrow hairstyle. Hoskin's sister, Jannie, who played the recurring role of Mango in the series, reportedly stood in for her brother on occasion. As the series progressed, however, Hoskins' attire became increasingly masculine. Always a favorite of Hal Roach himself, Hoskins eventually suffered the same fate as his predecessors, "old age." But he returned, along with Mary Kornman, Mickey Daniels, and Joe Cobb for an encore in 1933's Fish Hookey. There were a couple of non-Our Gang shorts as well, including a Voice of Hollywood series entry in which he was the emcee, but Hoskins' screen appearances effectively ended with a bit in Jean Harlow's Reckless (1935). After serving two tours of duty during World War II, the former child star studied acting on the G.I. Bill but was unable to find work -- even with Hal Roach. Reportedly somewhat disillusioned, he left Hollywood in favor of Northern California, where he raised a family of six and found employment as a social worker.

Trivia: American actor Jackie Cooper was in movies at the age of three; his father had abandoned the family when Jackie was two, forcing his mother to rely upon the boy's acting income to keep food on the table. Shortly after earning his first featured part in Fox Movietone Follies of 1929. Cooper was hired for producer Hal Roach's "Our Gang" two-reeler series, appearing in 15 shorts over the next two years. The "leading man" in many of these comedies, he was most effective in those scenes wherein he displayed a crush on his new teacher, the beauteous Miss Crabtree. On the strength of "Our Gang," Paramount Pictures signed Cooper for the title role in the feature film Skippy (1931), which earned the boy an Oscar nomination. A contract with MGM followed, and for the next five years Cooper was frequently co-starred with blustery character player Wallace Beery. Cooper outgrew his preteen cuteness by the late 1930s, and was forced to accept whatever work that came along, enjoying the occasional plum role in such films as The Return of Frank James (1940) and What a Life! (1941). His priorities rearranged by his wartime Naval service, Cooper returned to the states determined to stop being a mere "personality" and to truly learn to be an actor. This he did on Broadway and television, notably as the star of two popular TV sitcoms of the 1950s, The People's Choice and Hennessey. Cooper developed a taste for directing during this period (he would earn an Emmy for his directorial work on M*A*S*H in 1973), and also devoted much of his time in the 1960s to the production end of the business; in 1965 he was appointed vice-president in charge of production at Screen Gems, the TV subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. From the early 1970s onward, Cooper juggled acting, producing and directing with equal aplomb. Modern audiences know Cooper best as the apoplectic Perry White in the Christopher Reeve Superman films. In 1981, Cooper surprised (and sometimes shocked) his fans with a warts-and-all autobiography, Please Don't Shoot My Dog. Cooper died in May 2011 at the age of 88 following a sudden illness.

Trivia: Nicknamed "Echo," Dorothy De Borba was the little brunette with the festive hair bows in the 1930-1933 Our Gang comedy shorts. De Borba arrived in the series at the dawn of sound, along with Jackie Cooper, Chubby Chaney, Stymie Beard, and Mary Ann Jackson, and her first series entries were released in both talkie and silent versions. Although the grown-up De Borba often complained that the boys were awarded the best lines, she certainly enjoyed her full share of quips in perhaps her best short, Love Business (1931), the one in which Jackie Cooper gets a fiery crush on Miss Crabtree (June Marlowe. De Borba, who had made her screen debut in the comedy-drama A Royal Romance (1930), left films after playing an autograph-hound in Jean Harlow's Bombshell (1933).

Trivia: Donald Haines was eight years old when he joined Hal Roach's "Our Gang" troupe in 1929. Haines appeared in Roach shorts until 1931; one of these was The First Seven Years (1930), in which he fought with Jackie Cooper over the affections of Mary Ann Jackson. The adversarial Haines-Cooper screen relationship would extend over a decade, with Donald and Jackie coming to blows (or threatening to do so) in such features as Skippy (1931), A Feller Needs a Friend (1932) and Seventeen (1940). Haines' other roles of note included Jerry Cruncher Jr. in Tale of Two Cities (1935), Alabama in Boys Town (1938) and Men of Boys Town (1940), and Skinny in six of Monogram's East Side Kids films. Donald Haines died while serving in WW II.

Trivia: A dapper-looking supporting comic from St. Louis, Otto H. Fries came to films in the early 1910s with a varied background in medicine shows and vaudeville. By 1915, he was with Keystone and a lifelong friendship with Stan Laurel led to appearances in that star comedian's early films for Bronco Billy Anderson. Not surprisingly, Fries later landed at Roach, where he supported not only Laurel & Hardy and Charley Chase but also such lesser lights as Max Davidson and James Finlayson. Sound proved no hindrance and Fries would appear in many of Roach's German-language talkies. Often cast as inebriates, Fries played scores of bit parts and walk-ons in grade-A films until the year of his death. A German actor with a similar surname (Otto Friese) acted in British films of the 1950s.