I wonder why Spanky wasn't in the last 3 shorts from 1938? And why didn't they cast Buckwheat for "Feed 'em And Weep" opting for another black child instead?
Spanky “retired” from the series in 1938. That’s why he was absent for the final three Roach shorts and the first two MGM shorts. MGM brought Spanky back after that.
@ClassicFlix IMHO for a raw scan as nice as that, do as little as possible, don't mess with it too much. The crowd that prefers ultra modern looking digital-esque type presentations simply will not be purchasing Silents in the first place so why not cater to the crowd that will? The crowd that will are the ones who will prefer the natural look of the raw scan you provided. The same crowd that also prefers the real grey scale and detail contained within rather than true blacks which obfuscate detail. I'm sure you know which is "better" even if you won't publicly admit it and so I beg you ; Please make this a true to life work of film art and not merely a release catered to flighty all things modern folks who won't be purchasing Silents to begin with.
Nice post and appreciate the comments on cleaning up raw footage too much, hope the process David and Team working on Silent Shorts @ClassicFlix will going easy on these vintage Classics and give us fans the best while walking fine line! I'd love to sit back and enjoy these Silents all once again in best viewing presentation on Blu-Ray media!
Truer words have never been spoken. I recently watched a version of the 1928 silent horror film “The Fall of the House of Usher” that looked like it was projected at 60 frames/second. It’s a deliberately slow film to begin with, so at times it was like watching paint dry. An unpleasant experience. Certainly comic films like “The Little Rascals” should not be subjected to that. Please heed the call and make this release as natural and organic as the raw scan. Thank you in advance!
Saw that David @ClassicFlix uploaded a RAW scan for an Our Gang Silent Short in the Restoration phase from 1928... "Barnum & Ringling, Inc"
Hal Roach and the directors he used usually had a good sense for when the Our Gangers were outgrowing the series and needed to be replaced. The MGM shorts kept Spanky and Alfalfa on to the point that it got pretty grotesque to see them as teenagers still acting the way they had when they were much younger.
It’s pretty obvious that MGM didn’t really understand what made the series click, and whatever strength it had initially was just momentum carried over from Roach. The directors MGM hired for the series got progressively lackluster, and they had no clue as to what made the earlier gang members so appealing. (Obnoxious Mickey Gubitosi and Janet Burston wouldn’t have even earned screen tests at Roach. At MGM, they became featured gang members.) (I have to admit I have somewhat of a soft spot in my heart (head?) for the MGM shorts. They were run on TV (Channel 56 in Boston) after school as part of a 30-minute “Little Rascals/Our Gang” program. (Generally one 2-reel Roach short, and one 1-reel MGM extravaganza.) The MGM stuff became quite familiar to me, so while I can recognize their inferiority to the Roach product, I can still sit through most of them (although much of my amusement is due to the godawful histrionics of Mr. Gubitosi).
In their excellent book on the Our Gang series, Leonard Maltin and Richard Bann really go to town criticizing the MGM shorts (understandably). There is one very late MGM short, Little Miss Pinkerton, where an adult character who befriends the kids is murdered (off-camera). Maltin and Bann rightly note how far off this is from Hal Roach's vision for the series. They also make fun of Janet Burston quite a bit.
Both of the Our Gang Follies shorts are a lot of fun. Our Gang Follies of 1938 features future jazz legend (and star of the Basket Case horror movie sequels) Annie Ross as the "Scottish" kid singer, and Henry Brandon as the opera impresario. Brandon is a favorite "Hey! It's that guy!" character actor of mine. He's also Barnaby in Babes in Toyland, Scar in The Searchers, and Chaney in Assault on Precinct 13. That's one heck of a career span.
As a kid, he scared the crap outrageous me in Babes in Toyland. Then I saw him in this Little Rascals shorts and couldn't believe that I was freaked out by such a nice young man.
I had Maltin & Bann’s book, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Their take on the lousy MGM films was generally quite accurate. (I cannot tell you how many hours I pored through that book. It even lead me to get into buying 8mm copies of episodes not on TV. [For example, Blackhawk Films had just discovered the long-lost soundtrack to Railroadin’, so getting that fully restored was a treat. I also got to discover how the earlier Hoskins/Daniels/Kornman/Cobb/Condon gang was so much more talented than the hapless MGM crew.])
It took me a while even though I recently watched that episode. Mush and Milk. I've been through all of the shorts on the 6 ClassicFlix discs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSOZOhNSTqo I couldn't get the preview to post here.
Watching the shorts (that are available), you can see a definite evolution in the cast members through the years. Up through, say, the Jackie Cooper era, the kids are just kids, acting like children naturally before the cameras. By the time Spanky, Darla, Buckwheat and Alfalfa come in, there's a gradual change from "kids acting like kids" to "child performers," if that makes sense. More professional, less natural. I still like the later Roach shorts, though, until MGM bought the series.
Hopefully there's an announcement soon or this Fall when a Complete Blu-Ray Boxset package will be available... Currently ClassicFlix is working on Silent Shorts Restoration project!
