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: Cherubic, pop-eyed character actor Otis Harlan came to films in the 1920s after extensive legitimate-stage and vaudeville experience. Though he essayed a variety of roles in silent films (he even appeared as a black family retainer in one effort), Harlan was most felicitously cast as a semi-regular in the Reginald Denny comedies at Universal. In 1929, he played Captain Andy in the first filmization of Edna Ferber's Show Boat. Most of his talkie assignments were bits, albeit memorable ones, including Starveling in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) and small-town constable Hi Jenks in the 1937 "Our Gang" 1-reeler Roamin' Holiday. Generations of cartoon fans have revelled in Harlan's voiceover portrayal of "Happy" in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Otis Harlan was the uncle of silent-movie leading man Kenneth Harlan.

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.