“Death has taken a second former member of the ‘Our Gang’ movie comedy cast”

Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer died of a gunshot wound during a fight on 21 Jan 1959.

Switzer had been a big star in the Our Gang film series from 1935 to 1940, and those shorts were finding a new audience on television.

Switzer had also been fairly successful at maintaining a career as a character actor with bit parts in movies and larger parts on TV.

And of course his violent death at age thirty-one was sensational.

As a result, Switzer’s death was widely reported in American newspapers.

A couple of weeks later, on 6 February, an Associated Press dispatch out of Meadville, Pennsylvania, began:

Death has taken a second former member of the “Our Gang” movie comedy cast within the past three weeks.

Don Law, 38, who played “Fats” in some 20 of the old-time child comedy films, died here following a brief illness.

Newspapers headlined that story with variations on “2d Our Gang Star Dead” (Boston American).

That concatenation produced follow-up stories. On 8 February, the Miami News ran “‘Our Gang’ Deaths Hit Home in Miami” by Denis Sneigr. With the news of Switzer and Law as a hook, that article collected the movie-making memories of four locals: Geraldine “Sissy” Fay; Jack “Freckles” Ray; Gilda Edwards, formerly known as Shirley Jean Rickert; and Sy Rich.

George “Spanky” McFarland called up Rick Du Brow of United Press International, “spurred to comment by the death last month of his co-star” and his own wish to restart his Hollywood career. In the 15 February Memphis Commercial-Appeal, that story was headlined, “Spanky Knows Why Many Child Stars Go Bad.”

That same week, the Associated Press’s Hollywood columnist Bob Thomas filed a story that began:

The recent deaths of two former members of “Our Gang”—one shot in an argument over $50—adds to the legend that the famed little rascals have been ill-fated in later life.

As far as I can tell, this was the first public discussion of a “jinx” or “curse” on the Our Gang cast.

There was earlier reporting on child stars in general feeling “jinxed” when they tried to continue their acting careers as adults; an article in the 19 Aug 1954 Long Beach Independent actually held up Carl Switzer as a counterexample. But that’s a long way from suggesting that Our Gang veterans in particular were cursed.

Though Thomas’s article mentioned only two “ill-fated” Our Gang actors, not even by name, the idea of a jinx had legs. Soon another reporter picked up the theme.

TOMORROW: The story takes hold.