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: At age one he debuted onscreen (playing John Barrymore as a baby) in The Beloved Rogue (1927), then appeared in a number of films as a toddler. He stayed onscreen through his childhood and adolescence, becoming one of Hollywood's favorite child stars. He appeared in many Our Gang comedy shorts and more than 100 feature films. He was less successful as a teenage actor and young adult, and he retired from the screen in the early '50s. He went on to teach and write books about acting, edit Equity magazine, perform on Broadway, in stock, and on TV, write and direct for TV, produce an Oscar-nominated short film (The Boy and the Eagle), and produce industrial shows; he wrote the book Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (But Don't Have Sex or Take the Car) (1984), an insider's account of the hazards of being a child star. He was married to actress Jane Powell from 1988 until his death, at age 89, in 2015.

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: 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: 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: Expressive, dark-eyed child actress Edith Fellows made her movie debut in the Charley Chase two-reeler Movie Night (1929). She occasionally appeared with Hal Roach's Our Gang troupe in the very early talkie era, but was quickly snapped up by the bigger studios for feature-film work. Never a star, Fellows was allowed more versatility than many "bigger" movie moppets; her roles ranged from spoiled brats to pathetic street urchins. She was well-showcased in Bing Crosby's Pennies from Heaven (1936), which led to a series of leading roles in several Columbia programmers of the late 1930s. Fellows retired from films in 1942, opting for a quiet married life as the wife of agent/producer Freddie Fields. The advent of her divorce, coupled with a nervous breakdown, was followed by near-miraculous emotional recovery, which became the basis of one of Ralph Edwards's This is Your Life TV programs of the 1950s. Fellows began acting again in character roles in the 1960s; one of her best showings was in the role of famed costume designer Edith Head in the 1983 TV-movie biopic Grace Kelly. In 1985, actor-turned-director Jackie Cooper (himself a former child star in the Our Gang series) announced plans to do a biopic of Fellows, but the film never materialized.

Trivia: The daughter of actress Freda Jones, dark-eyed, sad-faced child performer Marcia Mae Jones was an infant when she made her screen bow in Mannequin (1926). There was always an air of tragedy about Marcia Mae; more often than not she played cripples or consumptives who didn't survive past reel five. She was at her best as the terror-stricken Rosalie, the virtual slave of vitriolic Bonita Granville, in These Three (1936). She also proved a good, realistic "opposite" to sweetness'n'light Shirley Temple in Heidi (1937) and A Little Princess. In the 1940s, Jones played grown-up leads in several Monogram and PRC films; she was always worth watching, even when he films were barely tolerable. Latterly billed as Marsha Jones, the actress continued appearing in supporting and minor roles in TV and films until the early 1970s.

Trivia: Gus Leonard was a character actor who specialized in comedy. Like most performers at his level of the acting profession, he usually played small roles in major films and large roles in small films. But the fact that three of those "small films," Mush and Milk (1933), Teacher's Beau (1935), and The Lucky Corner (1936), happened to be installments of Hal Roach's Our Gang/Little Rascals shorts has assured that generations of viewers recognize Leonard's face, if not his name, which changed considerably across his life. He was born Amedee Theodore Gaston Lerond in Marseilles, France, in 1859, which puts him in the running (if not at the head of the pack) for being the oldest actor to have made a career in talking pictures. Leonard came into the world 68 years before the advent of talking pictures, a year earlier than British character actor Morton Selten, four years before C. Aubrey Smith, and 10 years earlier than D.W. Griffith stock company player Spottiswood Aitken, and 14 years before Guy Standing, all of whom were known for playing old man roles in the silent or early sound eras. Leonard's parents moved to the United States and settled in California when he was a boy, and he made his stage debut in San Francisco with producer Tony Pastor when the latter's road show company performed there. He worked in vaudeville for a time and made the move into motion pictures in 1915, at the age of 56, under the aegis of Harold Lloyd. Leonard's earliest surviving credited screen appearance was in the 1916 William Beaudine-directed short The Missing Mummy, and he was seen in almost two-dozen short films that year, and even more in 1917 and 1918. It was with Lloyd, in shorts and then in features, however, that Leonard got more notice and better parts, and he was busy across the teens and into the 1920s in a multitude of roles and films. He was still working with Lloyd in Speedy (1928), and appeared in movies made at MGM and other major studios, sometimes in small character roles and mostly in minor, uncredited parts. In the mid-'30s, however, Roach and his directors recognized a kindly, comically avuncular quality in Leonard -- sort of like a humorous equivalent to Lionel Barrymore -- that they realized played well opposite the natural charm of the Our Gang cast. And so Leonard found himself immortalized on-screen first in Mush and Milk (1933), playing Cap, the aging, sweet-tempered teacher to the Our Gang orphans, who tries to educate them and protect them from his mean, scowling, whip-wielding wife (Louise Emmons); as the kind-hearted adult tries to help Spanky McFarland at the dinner table in Teacher's Beau; and Gus, Scotty Beckett's grandfather, trying to run his little lemonade stand, in The Lucky Corner (1936). His last screen appearance was in the Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy vehicle Maytime (1937). He passed away in 1939 at the age of 80.

Trivia: Scottish comedian James Finlayson attended the University of Edinburgh with the intention of pursuing a business career. He was deflected by his best friend, stage actor Andy Clyde, who encouraged Finlayson to give theatre a try. After serving his apprenticeship in regional repertory, Finlayson was cast in the West End production of Bunty Pulls the Strings in 1912, a production which brought him to New York. He embarked on a vaudeville tour with Alec Lauder (brother of the more famous Sir Harry Lauder), then headed to Hollywood, working at the Ince and L-KO studios before settling at the Mack Sennett fun factory in 1919. While with Sennett, Finlayson developed his famous, apoplectic caricature of the old-fashioned "me proud beauty" Victorian villain.In 1923, Finlayson moved to Hal Roach, where he would spend the next 17 years as both a star comic and (more successfully) a supporting player. During his Roach years, Finlayson perfected his comic signature, the "double take and fade away": a reaction of surprise, followed by several turns of the head and an upraised eyebrow, capped with the expletive "Doh!" Legend has it that one of Finlayson's double-takes was so energetic that it caused him to crack his skull against a wall and lose consciousness! Though he worked with everyone on the Roach lot, Finlayson became most closely associated with Laurel and Hardy, co-starring with the team on 33 occasions between 1927 and 1940. Fin's most memorable films with L&H include Big Business (1929), Another Fine Mess (1930), Chickens Come Home (1931), Our Wife (1931), The Devil's Brother (1933) and, best of all, Way Out West (1937), wherein as western saloon keeper Mickey Finn, Finlayson outdoes himself with his own hilarious brand of double-dyed villainy. He also appeared frequently with another team, Clark and McCullough, over at RKO. While some of Finlayson's feature-film roles were sizeable, notably his assignments in Dawn Patrol (1930) and All Over Town (1937), he was most often seen in unbilled bits, sometimes (as in the 1938 Astaire-Rogers vehicle Carefree) minus his trademarked paintbrush moustache. Because of his long associations with Sennett and Roach, James Finlayson was frequently called upon to appear in nostalgic recreations of Hollywood's silent era, notably Hollywood Cavalcade (1939) and The Perils of Pauline (1947).

Trivia: Dapper character actor Rolfe Sedan was nine times out of ten cast as a foreigner, usually a French maître d' or Italian tradesman. In truth, Sedan was born in New York City. He'd planned to study scientific agriculture, but was sidetracked by film and stage work in New York; he then embarked on a vaudeville career as a dialect comic. Sedan began appearing in Hollywood films in the late '20s, frequently cast in support of such major comedy attractions as Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chase, the Marx Brothers, and Harold Lloyd. He was proudest of his work in a handful of films directed by Ernst Lubitsch, notably Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938). Though distressed that he never made it to the top ranks, Sedan remained very much in demand for comedy cameos into the 1980s. Rolfe Sedan's television work included the recurring role of Mr. Beasley the postman on The Burns and Allen Show, and the part of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee in several TV commercials of the mid-'70s.

Trivia: The Little Rascals is the television title given to the Our Gang two-reel comedies produced by Hal Roach in the '20s and '30s. While he'd always wanted to make a series of comedies with children, Roach was not fond of cutesy "professional kids." He hit upon the Our Gang notion one morning in 1922 while watching a bunch of kids arguing over a piece of wood. The thought struck him that if he was fascinated with children behaving like real kids rather than miniature adults, audiences would be equally fascinated. The first film in the series, Our Gang, was lensed in 1922: The first of the group were African-American child actor Sunshine Sammy Morrison (already a popular Hal Roach contractee) and white kids Jackie Condon, Peggy Cartwright, Mickey Daniels, and Mary Kornman. Before 1923 was half over, two more early Our Gang stalwarts, fat Joe Cobb and black infant Allen "Farina" Hoskins, were added to the fold, as was the group's resident bull terrier, Pete the Pup. Under the supervision of Robert McGowan, 88 silent Our Gang two-reelers were produced, all greeted with squeals of delight by young and old moviegoers alike. The series had no trouble making the transition to sound in 1929: 58 more two-reelers and 22 one-reelers would emerge from the Roach fun factory before 1938. Given the fact that a "Ganger" was pretty much washed up by 12, there was quite a turnover in personnel. A handful of the Hal Roach kids went on to substantial adult careers, notably Jackie Cooper and Johnny Downs; for most of the Gangers, however, their fame rested almost entirely on their participation in the series. The best-known members of the troupe during the Roach days (in addition to those already mentioned) were George "Spanky" McFarland, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, Mathew "Stymie" Beard, Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas, Eugene Gordon "Porky" Lee, Tommy "Butch" Bond, Darla Hood, Mary Ann Jackson, Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins, Norman "Chubby" Chaney, Darwood "Waldo" Kaye, Dickie Moore, Scotty Beckett and Wally Albright. In 1936, Roach cast the Gang in a feature film, General Spanky, which opened to general indifference. Having converted his studio to a feature-film factory by 1936, Roach was considering dropping Our Gang as he had his Laurel and Hardy and Charley Chase two-reelers, but was prevented from doing so by Louis B. Mayer. Mayer, the head of MGM (which distributed the Roach product), was crazy about the series, so Roach agreed to continue, albeit economically cutting back the running time of each short from two reels to one. In 1938, Roach sold the entire Our Gang package directly to MGM, which continued churning out Our Gang one-reelers until 1944. The MGM shorts were by and large pale shadows of the best Roach films; while the Roach shorts had concentrated on the sort of adventures an average healthy kid could get into (with a bit of poetic license to allow for slapstick and funny dialogue), the MGMs became insipid 10-minute morality plays dealing with everything from traffic safety to wartime conservation. In addition, the children began acting unnaturally, over-emphasizing their lines and mugging atrociously to the camera. As Spanky, Alfalfa and the other veterans outgrew the series, MGM started hiring as unappealing a troupe of urchins as has ever been seen in films, including Billy "Froggy" Laughlin and Janet Burston. Worst of all was whiny little Mickey Gubitosi -- who (much to the amazement of those who'd suffered his "Gang" appearances) grew up to become top dramatic actor Robert Blake. By the time the last MGM Our Gang short, Dancing Romeo, was released in 1944, only Buckwheat remained from the Roach days. While the mediocre MGM films went a long way in destroying the series' reputation, the TV boom made the old Hal Roach Our Gangs saleable again. Since Roach had sold the Our Gang imprimatur to MGM, he was obliged to alter the series' name on prints of his old shorts: that's why the Roach films have been running on TV for forty years under the title The Little Rascals. Since the series' resurgence of popularity in the '50s, several efforts have been made to revive the "Rascals" with a new group of children. Producers ranging from former "Ganger" Jackie Cooper to Hal Roach himself tried and failed to make new kid comedies; the general consensus was that it would be impossible to come up with child actors as natural and ingenuous as the original troupe. In 1994, however, director Penelope Spheeris came forth with The Little Rascals: The Movie, which met with respectable though not spectacular box-office receipts. Perhaps sensing that a "new" Rascals contingent would be difficult to create, Spheeris chose to cast lookalikes for Spanky, Alfalfa, Stymie, Buckwheat, Darla and other favorite Rascals. While the results were amusing, they proved that Hal Roach and Jackie Cooper were right: you can't completely successfully revive The Little Rascals simply because the original children were so unique -- and so essentially real.