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: 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: Prissy, trimly mustached comic actor Johnny Arthur was a veteran of 25 years on stage before he entered films in 1923 as a utility player. His screen personality was nebulous enough to allow him to play the romantic lead in the 1925 Lon Chaney vehicle The Monster. At the Al Christie studio, Arthur established himself as a star comedian in a series of slapstick two-reelers. With the coming of talkies, Arthur began specializing in comic "nance" types -- limp-wristed, whiny-voiced homosexual stereotypes. His largest role along these stereotypical lines was as reporter Benny Kidd in the first movie-version of The Desert Song (1929). Once the Production Code was established in 1933, the "pansy" characters played by Arthur were banned from the screen. He spent the rest of the 1930s playing fussy, long-suffering wimps, albeit certifiably "masculine"; he is best-remembered for his appearances as Darla Hood's mealy-mouthed father in Hal Roach's Our Gang series. Most of Arthur's later roles were unbilled bits, with the notable exception of the 1942 Republic serial The Masked Marvel, in which he hissed and slithered his way through the role of Japanese villain Sakima. Unable to find film work in the last years of his life, Johnny Arthur died at the age of 68 at the Motion Picture Country Home.

Trivia: A veteran of vaudeville and the legitimate stage, Berlin-born Max Davidson was well past forty when he made his first film appearance. A small man with hunched shoulders and an scraggly beard, Davidson specialized in playing stereotypical Jewish characters: pushcart peddlers, pawnbrokers, shopkeepers, ragmen and the like. He signed with the Hal Roach comedy studio in 1925, at first appearing in support of Charley Chase. Under the supervision of Leo McCarey, Davidson was given his own starring series, resulting in such 2-reel laughspinners as Dumb Daddies (1926), Jewish Prudence (1927), Call of the Cuckoo (1927) and Pass the Gravy (1928). Hal Roach discontinued Davidson's series late in 1928 because of complaints from Jewish filmgoers; even so, the comedian made periodic returns to the Roach lot as a supporting actor in such films as Our Gang's Moan and Groan Inc. (1929) and Charley Chase's Southern Exposure (1935). Elsewhere, Davidson spent the remainder of his career in brief bits, a casualty of the Hays Office's determination to purge the movies of potentially offensive ethnic humor. As in the 1920s, Max Davidson landed his most noticeable roles in short subjects, ranging from his hilarious cameo as a court musician in the 1931 Masquers Club production Oh Oh Cleopatra to his apoplectic appearance as a shopkeeper in the Three Stooges' No Census, No Feeling (1940).