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: Juvenile performer Carl Switzer and his brother, Harold, began singing at local functions in their Illinois hometown. While visiting an aunt in California, the Switzer boys accompanied their mother to Hal Roach Studios, then proceeded to warble a hillbilly ditty in the Roach cafeteria. This performance won them both contracts at Roach, though only Carl achieved any sort of stardom. Nicknamed "Alfalfa," Carl became a popular member of the Our Gang kids, his performances distinguished by his cowlicked hair, vacuous grin, and off-key singing. Few who have seen The Our Gang Follies of 1938 can ever forget the sight of Alfalfa being pelted with tomatoes as he bravely vocalizes the immortal aria "I'm the Bar-ber of Sevilllllle!" The boy remained with Our Gang when Roach sold the property to MGM in 1938; his last Gang short was 1940's Kiddie Kure. Switzer found it hard to get film roles after his Our Gang tenure, especially when he began to mature. By the early '50s, his movie appearances had dwindled to bits. Switzer's handful of worthwhile adult film roles include a 100-year-old Indian in director William Wellman's Track of the Cat (1954); he was also a semi-regular on Roy Rogers' TV series. Throughout most of the 1950s, he supported himself as a hunting guide and bartender. Miles removed from the lovable Alfalfa, 32-year-old Carl Switzer was killed in a boozy brawl over a 50-dollar debt.

Trivia: Appeared as a background actor in the 1934 Our Gang (Little Rascals) shorts The First Round-Up, For Pete's Sake and Washee Ironee before landing the role of Buckwheat.Joined the U.S. Army at age 23 in 1954 and earned a National Defense Service Medal and a Good Conduct Medal in 1956.Chose a career in film editing with the Technicolor corporation instead of acting upon returning from active duty.Was moved to tears when he received a standing ovation at a Little Rascals reunion at the Sons of the Desert convention in 1980.The Buckwheat Scholarship for students at California State University Northridge was established in his honor by his son Bill Thomas Jr. in 1992.

Trivia: American actress Darla Hood is best remembered for being the adorable childhood sweetheart of "Alfalfa" (played by Carl Switzer) in the mid 1930s version of the "Our Gang" series of comedy shorts. She got her start in the series in 1935 when she was only four and went on to appear and occasionally sing in dozens of episodes for the next ten years. Hood also sometimes got roles in feature films such as Born to Sing (1942). She left films at age 14. Later she had a career singing television commercial jingles. She also occasionally took tiny roles in feature films.

Trivia: Freckle-faced child actor Leonard Kibrick appeared in more than three-dozen movies across the 1930s and early '40s, often in bit roles and sometimes, more prominently, as a tough kid and bully. Born Leonard Kibrick Warren in Minneapolis in 1924, he entered movies in the early '30s, at age eight. His screen career dated from Darryl F. Zanuck's debut 20th Century Films production, The Bowery (1933), starring Wallace Beery, George Raft, and Fay Wray. Kibrick also had a small part in the Frank Borzage Depression-era masterpiece Man's Castle (1933), starring Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young, and he could be seen in uncredited roles in such major productions as Ah, Wilderness! (1935) and San Francisco (1936), well into the decade.It was the handful of short films, though, that Kibrick made as part of Hal Roach's "Our Gang" (aka "Little Rascals") troupe that immortalized the actor. Starting with For Pete's Sake (1934), in which he played the nasty son of a greedy, conniving store owner (William Wagner), Kibrick was typed as a bully and tough kid, a role that he played to the hilt (and often to good comic effect) in the middle of the decade, in Shrimps for a Day (1934) and The Lucky Corner (1936, in which he reprised his role with Wagner from For Pete's Sake). Kibrick was supplanted as the company's heavy by Tommy Bond, who took on the role Butch, the resident bully, though Leonard's equally freckle-faced and huskily built younger brother, Sidney Kibrick, continued to get work in the Our Gang films, playing Butch's sidekick, "The Woim."Leonard Kibrick turned up in small roles in Nothing Sacred (1937) and Roxie Hart (1942), but left pictures in the early '40s. He briefly resumed his acting career on television in the late '80s, with parts in The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman and an episode of L.A. Law. Kibrick died of cancer in 1993.

Trivia: Freckle-faced child actor Sidney Kibrick, like his older brother Leonard Kibrick, made his mark on movies as a member of Hal Roach's Our Gang (aka, Little Rascals) comedy troupe. His older brother Leonard cut a memorable figure in a handful of shorts made between 1934 and 1936 as the gang's resident villain, before being supplanted by Tommy Bond in the role of Butch. Sidney had been in the shorts as well from 1935, in small, barely seen roles, but that transition was his call to near-center stage, as he took on the part of Butch's burly sidekick, The Woim. The subsequent shorts depicting Butch's conflicts with series "leading man" Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer came to define the later -- and, in many ways, best-loved -- period of the Roach-produced shorts, and he became so thoroughly identified with the role that some reference sources refer to him as Sidney "Woim" Kibrick. He continued in the Our Gang shorts through 1939 and "Time Out for Lessons," by which time the series had already seen its best days. There were other roles in slightly bigger pictures, such as It Happened in Flatbush and Flight Lieutenant (both 1942), but Kibrick left pictures after an appearance in the Little Tough Guys/Dead End Kids feature Keep 'Em Slugging (1943).