Trivia: American actor Spanky McFarland (born George Emmett McFarland in Forth Worth, TX) was the most popular member of the Our Gang children's comedy troupe. He got his start while still a baby as an advertising model for a bakery in Dallas because he looked so fat and happy. It was his pudginess as a toddler that led him to the Our Gang series of shorts when he was hired to replace Joe Cobb as the tubby child. In addition to appearing in that series, McFarland also appeared in a few feature films and in other shorts. By the mid-'40s, his acting career was over and he found gainful employment elsewhere.

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: When Scotty Beckett was three years old, his father was hospitalized in Los Angeles. During a visit, Beckett entertained his convalescing dad by singing several songs. A Hollywood casting director overheard the boy and suggested to his parents that Beckett had movie potential. The wide-eyed, tousle-haired youngster made his screen debut opposite Ann Harding and Clive Brook in 1933's Gallant Lady. In 1934, he was signed by Hal Roach for the Our Gang series; in the 13 two-reelers produced between 1934 and 1935, Beckett appeared as the best pal and severest critic of rotund Gang star Spanky McFarland. This stint led to such choice feature-film assignments as Anthony Adverse (1936) (in which Beckett played the out-of-wedlock son of Fredric March and Olivia De Havilland), Marie Antoinette (1938) (as the Dauphin) and My Favorite Wife (1940) (as one of the two kids of Cary Grant and his long-lost wife Irene Dunne). In 1939, Beckett briefly returned to the Our Gang fold, playing "Alfalfa" Switzer's brainy Cousin Wilbur in a brace of one-reelers. Beckett was frequently called upon for "the leading man as a child" roles, playing youthful versions of Louis Hayward in My Son, My Son (1940), Don Ameche in Heaven Can Wait (1943), and Jon Hall in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1940). As he matured, Beckett was often cast as obnoxious younger brothers, notably in the 1943 Broadway play Slightly Married and the 1948 Jane Powell vehicle A Date with Judy (playing the sibling of none other than Elizabeth Taylor). On radio, Beckett played Junior Riley in the popular William Bendix sitcom The Life of Riley, and on television he was seen as Cadet Winky in the early sci-fi series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. Scotty Beckett's last film was 1956's Three For Jamie Dawn.

Trivia: Tommy Bond was five years old when he began posing for magazine ads in his native Dallas. Discovered by a talent scout for Hal Roach Studios in 1933, Bond and his grandmother headed to Hollywood where he was immediately put to work in Roach's Our Gang films. After playing a cherubic, tousle-headed kid named Tommy for two seasons, he left the Our Gang series to freelance at other studios, building up a reputation as one of Hollywood's most reliable movie brats. He was brought back into the Our Gang fold in 1937; this time around, he was cast as scowling neighborhood bully Butch, one of the series' most memorable and sharply-defined characters. He continued to play Butch in 1940, by which time Roach had sold Our Gang to MGM. During this period, he also bedeviled such adult comedians as Andy Clyde, Charley Chase, Laurel & Hardy, and Walter Catlett. Despite the nastiness of his movie characters, Bond was well known as one of the nicest and most well-adjusted juvenile actors in the business. His best friend was his onscreen "worst enemy," Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer; in fact, whenever Switzer began misbehaving or cutting up on the set, it was usually Bond who calmed him down. Long after their Our Gang days, Bond and Switzer co-starred in PRC's Gas House Kids films, a ripoff of Monogram's Bowery Boys. Though most of his 1940s roles were bit parts, Bond landed a meaty supporting role as cub reporter Jimmy Olsen in Columbia's Superman serials. Graduating from Los Angeles College in 1951, Bond left acting to work as a property master at L.A. TV station KTTV, a job that later expanded to all the TV outlets owned by KTTV's parent company Metromedia. Long married to a former Miss California, Bond retired in 1990. Still as nice and unassuming as ever, Tommy Bond has become a welcome addition to many a film and nostalgia convention, and has made innumerable personal appearances in connection with his 1993 autobiography, You're Darn Right It's Butch!

Trivia: In films from infancy, Tommy Bupp became a familiar juvenile actor in the 1930s. He was often cast as the younger version of the grown-up leading man in both A- and B-pictures. He worked steadily in Westerns, was briefly associated with Hal Roach's Our Gang, and was a memorable spoiled brat in 1939's Nancy Drew, Reporter. Comedy buffs will recall Bupp as Jimmy the Crippled Kid in the sentimental Three Stooges short Cash and Carry (1937). Tommy Bupp's credits are sometimes confused with those of his brother Sonny Bupp, who played Orson Welles' son in Citizen Kane (1941).