“We went back and figured out what we would do for a beginning”

After “The Big Show!” and “The Cobbler,” the next Our Gang production was Bob McGowan’s “The Champeen!”

As Rob DeMoss explains on the Lucky Corner website, it’s not clear when in September 1922 or so that short was filmed. The two preceding films both had an unusually high number of shooting days, and the studio records don’t assign any days to “The Champeen!” at all. DeMoss posits there was a bookkeeping error.

Watching for the splint that Jackie Condon started wearing after his 8 August fall offers hints to how “The Champeen!” was created. And the recent ClassicFlix restoration of that short (which can be viewed here) provides clear pictures.

During that movie’s climactic boxing scene, Jackie serves as timekeeper for the match. He rings the bell with his left hand. A bit of the splint can be seen poking out of his right sleeve, as shown above.

Likewise, in his first appearance in this short, appearing to drive a car, Jackie has the splint on his right forearm while his left forearm is bare. So that footage was also shot while he was still recovering—but he seems more dexterous.

About a quarter of the way through these two reels, Jackie has a scene with Jack Davis. In some shots he appears still to be wearing the splint, even as he uses his right arm to knock a pastry out of Jack’s hands. But in the shots when Jack pummels the smaller boy, as shown here, Jackie’s forearms are both bare. Apparently his arm had healed by then (and a good thing, too).

Those glimpses suggest that McGowan filmed the fight scene in “The Champeen!” first. In the same way, Harold Lloyd, the biggest star working on the Hal Roach Studios lot in 1923, shot the big climbing sequence in Safety Last, then worked backwards to motivate that action.

“We didn't know what we were going to have for the beginning of it,“ Lloyd said in a 1966 interview; “after we found that we had, in our opinion, a very, very good thrill sequence,…we went back and figured out what we would do for a beginning, and then worked on up to what we already had.”

For “The Champeen!” McGowan appears to have created a funny boxing scene for the climax but needed a motivation for Jack Davis and Mickey Daniels to fight. Rivalry for Mary Kornman offered a reason. The final scenario has her first set those two boys against each other by asking Mickey to chastise Jack for pummeling her little brother—Jackie. But that scene wasn’t shot till after the big finish.

Indeed, on reflection Jackie Condon’s role at the end of “The Champeen!” doesn’t fit with his scenes before. He goes from being part of the beef between the two boxers to being a neutral timekeeper. Though Mary is introduced as his big sister, there’s no connection between them in the final scene. Not that I thought about those discrepancies until now. 

Working Around Jackie Condon’s Broken Arm

The Lucky Corner website shows that the Hal Roach Studio continued to pay Jackie Condon $40 per week throughout the summer and fall of 1922, even after he broke his arm on 8 August during the making of “The Big Show!”

That seems to confirm that Jackie did indeed work on his regular schedule after a doctor put on a splint, as the newspaper article quoted yesterday reported. (Though the studio should have been reluctant to dock the four-year-old’s pay while he recovered from an on-the-job injury.)

We can see the result of Jackie’s fracture in the Our Gang movies made in the late summer and early fall of 1922.

The freeze frame above comes from “The Cobbler,” which Tom McNamara shot in late August and early September 1922. Jackie wears long sleeves, the right one stretched tight over his splint.

Likewise, in “The Big Show!” Jackie usually has his left sleeve rolled up to his elbow but his right loose at his wrist. When he releases a bunch of animals from their cages, he works only with his left hand, the right hanging at his side.

Jackie’s injury may even have shaped the plot of “The Big Show!” as it was cut together. According to Rob DeMoss at the Lucky Corner, filming on that short was spread out: 28 July to 15 August (a week after the injury), “added scenes” 11 to 28 September, and finally reshoots 10–11 January. That break suggests director Bob McGowan and the unit did some retooling.

The newspaper article about Jackie’s fracture and the publicity photo shared yesterday show that “The Big Show!” was always written to feature the gang’s jury-rigged version of a county fair. That photo also shows Mary Kornman with the gang for the first time.

In the final film, Mary’s only scene comes in a middle section devoted to the gang and guests imitating Hollywood stars like William S. Hart and Douglas Fairbanks. She plays Mary Pickford, curly wood shavings added to her natural hair to evoke the Fauntleroy hairstyle.

Jackie doesn’t show up in that sequence at all, not even as Jackie Coogan to Andy Samuel’s Charlie Chaplin. (And ironically, back in 1921 the little tousle-headed boy had been the first face to appear in Pickford’s Little Lord Fauntleroy.)

Furthermore, Jackie doesn’t appear on any of the fair rides with the other kids in the final cut. Instead, the story is driven by the big kids excluding Jackie from their activities because he’s too little. He tries to sneak into their fair, gets chased away by tiny security guard Farina, and finally frees those animals as revenge. Those scenes were shot after his injury.

It therefore looks like Bob McGowan shot parts of “The Big Show!” with Jackie, Mary, and the gang at the fair. Then Jackie fell. As he recovered, he may have needed more rest and couldn’t do complex scenes with the whole gang—but the unit could shoot him with just Farina and the animals.

McGowan and the studio may have rebuilt their story around Jackie being left out, adding a new opening scene outside a real fair (with Joe Cobb, who didn’t join the gang until September). We don’t know whether the original story had a kid-driven plot, but that change might have been for the better.

TOMORROW: A ringside seat.

“The 3-year-old comedian is so proud of his injury”

The 22 Oct 1922 Portland Oregonian, and probably some other newspapers around the same time, ran this story from Hollywood:

Jackie Condon, the little tousled-haired kid playing in Pathé’s “Our Gang” comedies, is the proudest kid around the Hal Roach Studios. Jackie broke his right arm in two places the other day while working on a new picture—hence his proudness.

Bob McGowan was directing the scene in which the youngsters stage a county fair. Little Jackie fell from a “death-defying slide” and became unconscious. He was rushed to Dr. Hull of Culver City, who diagnosed the injury as a compound fracture.

The arm was placed in splints and Jackie taken home, but he is so intent on his screen career that he appeared on the Roach lot in the afternoon, ready for work. The 3-year-old comedian is so proud of his injury that he exhibits it on the slightest provocation to everyone who comes near him.

Jackie Condon (1918–1977) was actually four years old at this time, but Hollywood publicists routinely underreported child actors’ ages.

The article glossed over the circumstances of Jackie’s fall. Was he doing a scene or playing unsupervised? Was this a foreseeably dangerous stunt? Was he simply too short to go on that ride? Emphasizing his plucky return and pride smooths over the fact of a four-year-old with a compound fracture.

According to Rob DeMoss’s Lucky Corner website, Hal Roach Studio records show Jackie suffered his injury on 8 August during the filming of what became “The Big Show!”

The still photo above was taken as that movie was made. It shows most of that season’s gang posed on a merry-go-round built to be whirled around by their dog. The kids never appear in this configuration in the finished film, so this shot was most likely constructed for the poster.

Jackie Condon sits on an arm of the merry-go-round at the left. His right forearm is obviously not injured, meaning this picture was taken before his fall. Knowing what lies ahead, one wishes he had a better grip on the apparatus.

Though the news story about Jackie’s injury uses the present tense to describe him showing off his splint, more than two months had passed since his fall.

The first Our Gang movies were screened for the industry early in 1922 and garnered enough enthusiasm for Hal Roach to order up more that summer. But the series didn’t launch into wide release until September. Pathé offered the second film, “Firefighters” on 8 October; Jackie Condon played a prominent role in that one as the smallest boy who gets to be the fire chief because he’s the only fellow who has the right hat.

That explains why the movie publicists were pumping the story of Jackie’s injury in October. Publicity back in August, before the Our Gang movies were in cinemas, wouldn’t have benefited the series.

COMING UP: Working around an injury.

Another Addition to the Jackie Condon Filmography

Discontented Wives was a five-reel melodrama directed by and starring J. P. McGowan, released in September 1921.

The American Film Institute summarized it this way:

Ruth Gaylord gives up her home in New York to marry John Gaylord but grows discontented with the loneliness and desolation of life in the West and leaves her husband. After returning home, she hears that he has struck one of the richest gold veins in California. A letter surrendering her interests in the mine falls into the hand of Kirk Harding, an eastern capitalist; and John, tricked into surrendering his rights and discovering the truth, struggles with Harding. Ruth awakens, discovering it was all a dream, and decides not to leave her dedicated husband after all.

At the end of a review in the 16 October 1921 Seattle Daily Times came this paragraph:

The cast in Mr. McGowan’s support, besides Fritzi Brunette, includes Jean Perry, Andy Waldron, C. S. McGregor and little Jackie Condon.

Now lost, Discontented Wives is thus another entry in Jackie Condon’s pre-Our Gang filmography.

The mention of Jackie’s name might imply that his face and tousled hair were becoming known to movie exhibitors or audiences.

The first short in the Our Gang series that Hal Roach and Pathé released in September 1922 was “One Terrible Day.” The poster for that film, shown above, doesn’t depict the whole gang. Instead, it features only the two kids who would have been most familiar to viewers because of their previous work: Ernie “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison and little Jackie Condon.

“So completely captivated with little ‘Jackie’ Condon”

A couple of weeks before the Los Angeles Evening Herald profiled two-year-old movie performer Jackie Condon (as quoted yesterday), the paper ran an anecdote about a movie he was making.

The 5 Apr 1920 edition reported:

$300 Gold Watch Given Boy Who Appears in Film

When Neely Edwards, the star of the Hall Room Boys comedies, went on location the other day he conferred with his co-star, Hugh Fay, and his director, Malcolm St. Clair, and decided to shoot some exterior scenes that would require the front entrance to a prominent mansion.

Mr. St. Clair being personally acquainted with Mr. W. A. Clark, jr., the son of the famous senator, induced Mr. Clark to allowed him to film his mansion on West Adams street.

They all went to the Clark home and worked all that day on the lawn and porch of the house. Mr. Clark was so completely captivated with little “Jackie” Condon of the party that he gave him a solid gold watch worth over $300.

The watch will now be used in the picture as a befitting climax to it. The Hall Room Boys comedies are released by Jack and Harry Cohn in New York.

Perhaps that solid gold watch is why Jackie’s recent earnings were so high according to the Herald’s 23 April story.

William Andrews Clark, Jr., was an heir to a mining fortune, attorney, book collector, and philanthropist, by 1920 founder of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and funder of the Hollywood Bowl. Clark’s house at the corner of West Adams and Cimarron, somewhat modified, appears above, courtesy of the Adams Boulevard blog. Having been widowed twice, Clark was living there with his teen-aged son; his lover, Harrison Post; and no doubt a large staff.

Clark’s house and grounds appeared in several movies around 1920, including “Fresh Paint,” featuring Snub Pollard (but not, contra IMDB, Ernie Morrison) and directed by Charley Chase. Other productions offering glimpses of the estate include “The Tourist,” with Jimmy Aubrey and Oliver Hardy, and Harold Lloyd’s Dr. Jack.

The Hallroom Boys was a comic strip that H.A. MacGill launched in 1904. It spun off a couple of film series. The young male comedians who played the main characters were swapped out several times. According to IMDB, only one Hallroom Boys movie starred Neely Edwards and Hugh Fay with Malcolm St. Clair as director: “Tell Us, Ouija!”

Released in September 1920, this movie played off the ouija board craze. More pertinent to our inquiry is this portion of the advance review from the 20 May 1920 Film Daily, as quoted in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of American Horror Film Shorts, 1915–1976:

One scene in which a child is seen first in a derby hat, only the sky-piece being visible at first, provokes a giggle. When, however, they employ a similar scheme showing a pair of large and well-worn shoes protruding from under a bed, what actually amounts to the same gag is offered again, for the youngster soon appears wearing them.

St. Clair’s signature style as a director evidently used a lot of close-ups and reveals like this. The youngster in those scenes was most likely Jackie Condon.

COMING UP: A melodrama.

“Jack’s been around again”

Jackie Condon surely appeared in more movies before “Our Gang” than the seven listed yesterday.

The 23 Apr 1920 Los Angeles Evening Herald reported on his acting success shortly after he turned two. “Young Film Player Amasses $3000 in Short Career Before Camera” was the headline.

The story said the little boy began his career “at the age of six weeks.” (In later press about Jackie, that age was halved.) “In the last three weeks he has earned $500. During his lifetime he has earned $3000.”

The story went on:

But when Baby Condon is “off duty” he is the “terror of the neighborhood.” When the neighbors discover broken shrubbery, when they discover the sides of their houses marked with chalk or a pencil, they say, “Jack’s been around again.”

While touting Jackie as the Condon family’s main earner, the article also noted that two older siblings were also appearing in movies: Geraldine, aged 5, and “Billie,” aged 8. Billy Condon would have a prominent role in “Our Gang” but not appear in any of the subsequent series.

According to the Lucky Corner website, Jackie and Billy each earned $7.50 per day for their week of work on “Our Gang” in January 1922. When Hal Roach committed to making a series, Jackie was the second kid he signed to a long-term contract (after Ernie Morrison), and the salary was $40 per week with no pay when there was no filming.

That’s a long way down from $500 in three weeks, the figure the Herald reported. Either Jackie’s earning potential plummeted after he turned three, or the newspaper story was exaggerated—as newspaper stories about Hollywood usually were. But with press like that, we can see why so many parents were eager to get their children into moving pictures.

Because little Jackie Condon was almost always an uncredited supporting player, and because so many of Hollywood’s early movies have been lost, finding his pre-Gang work relies on luck piecing together what information survives. I’ve spotted two additions to his filmography.

COMING UP: A tale of a watch.

Jackie Condon’s Career Before “Our Gang”

Jackie Condon was the youngest player in the first Our Gang movie ever shot in early 1922, establishing the role of the tagalong little brother. Born in March 1918, he was going on four years old.

Among the kid actors in “Our Gang,” however, Jackie was probably second only to Ernie Morrison in filmmaking experience. He’d been appearing on camera since he was a babe in arms.

IMDB and the Lucky Corner list seven movies Jackie appeared in before “Our Gang” was filmed:

• Jinx, a Mabel Normand feature in 1919—as shown by press reports.
• “Italian Love,” a Billy West short directed by Charley Chase in 1920—a viewing on YouTube confirms Jackie appeared in it, in the flesh. 
• “A Convict’s Happy Bride,” an Alice Howell short—also on YouTube, with Jackie quite active. 
• “The Morning After,” a Snub Pollard one-reeler released in 1921, now lost—Jackie’s work was identified by Robert Demoss through Rolin/Hal Roach Studio records. (In this period Ernie Morrison was Pollard’s regular sidekick, so this was the first movie Ernie and Jackie both appeared in before Our Gang.)
• Little Lord Fauntleroy, the Mary Pickford feature—in the opening scene, Jackie gets undressed to play in a sprinkler.
• “At Your Service,” a Hallroom Boys short—only one reel survives, and Jackie doesn’t appear in that footage; I don’t know the basis for listing him in the cast.
• Penrod, a Wesley Barry feature made in 1921 and released in 1922, adapted from Booth Tarkington’s novel—I don’t think this movie survives, but the press material includes Jackie in the long list of young cast members.

In fact, Penrod was a significant precursor to the Our Gang series launched a few months later. Hal Roach lent Ernie Morrison to be a featured player in it, and its cast also included Peggy Cartwright, who became the “leading lady” in several of the earliest Our Gang shorts.

Wesley Barry’s stardom in the early 1920s probably also influenced Roach’s thinking about the Our Gang series. For Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), producer-director Marshall Neilan had young Wesley act for the first time without greasepaint covering his freckles. The young actor caught the eye of moviegoers. He rose quickly to be a featured player, then a star in Dinty (1920). Wesley Barry established the archetype of the freckle-faced “reg’lar” American boy that Mickey Daniels, Jay R. Smith, Harry Spear, and Donald Haines would play in the Our Gang movies.

Dinty also showed its young white hero having an African-American kid and a Chinese-American kid as his playmates. Many reviewers mentioned that favorably. Of course, that movie, and that press coverage, played up the racial stereotypes of the day. But at least those characters were friends.

COMING UP: New additions to Jackie Condon’s filmography.

Two More Tales of Oz

The 2025 edition of Oziana, the International Wizard of Oz Club’s creative magazine, is now available for purchase through Lulu.

This issue contains two stories by me.

“The Piglets and the Tin Soldier” is another short slice-of-life tale inspired by L. Frank Baum’s Little Wizard Stories of Oz, taking a couple of his established characters and bouncing them off each other.

The Nine Tiny Piglets first appeared from the Wizard’s pockets in Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz and made small cameos in the Emerald City after that, never getting individual names. 

Captain Fyter, the Tin Soldier, marched onto the scene in The Tin Woodman of Oz. At one point in that book the heroes meet the piglets’ parents. Afterward the soldier says, “I hope I’m not too particular about my associates, but I draw the line at pigs.” So there was a natural tension to work with.

David Valentin created digital artwork of the Tin Soldier and his basket of piglets for this story of a journey through the Munchkin Country.

“The Missing Key” is a mystery featuring Snip, the button boy who was a protagonist of Ruth Plumly Thompson’s The Lost King of Oz. She introduced Snip sneaking into Mombi’s kitchen and then spying on her, establishing him as a curious kid. Several years ago, I used that trait to bring Snip into a story called “Invisible Fence.” More recently I realized that would make him a good investigator for a mystery.

In this story, Snip sets out to retrieve the wind-up key that’s vanished from Tik-Tok’s back. David Lee Ingersoll supplied the illustrations, including one of Snip pinned to the ground by string-wielding field mice, inspired by scenes in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Gulliver’s Travels.

At Last an Our Gang/Wizard of Oz Crossover

In 1962, as described yesterday, Starlight Musical Theatre of San Diego held tryouts for a production of The Wizard of Oz, using music from the MGM movie.

To play the Tin Woodman the company chose a local television personality: Johnny Downs!

Downs brought decades of experience as performer, starting with acting in Our Gang comedies in the mid-1920s. In fact, he had sung and danced alongside MGM’s Tin Man, Jack Haley, in such movies as Coronado and Pigskin Parade, which also featured fourteen-year-old Judy Garland.

Downs appears in this photograph scanned from the 3 June San Diego Union with Cammy Wesson as Dorothy, Ray Wilde as the Cowardly Lion, and John Bryce as the Scarecrow.

The director was Charlie Cannon, a co-founder of Starlight Musical Theatre (San Diego Civic Light Opera Company) years before. In 1978 the San Diego Evening Tribune reported:

Cannon is most proud of his “Wizard of Oz” production in 1962 featuring Johnny Downs, a TV personality, as the tin man. “We put close to 5,000 in the bowl for that one,” he said. “We even had people sitting in the aisles, and Downs would stay after the show for an hour signing autographs.”

That number may be an exaggeration since on 10 Aug 1964 the San Diego Union reported that 3,800 people was “a record crowd” at the Starlight Bowl. However, that record was set by the 1964 production of The Wizard of Oz—the show was so popular that the company brought it back after only two years.

In the revival Johnny Downs once again played the Tin Woodman, and was often listed first in newspaper notices. Cammy Wesson, now a college student, returned as Dorothy. Ole Kittleon played the Scarecrow and Forest Gantz the Cowardly Lion.

A new director reblocked the action for that run. In an interview with a high-school classmate for the 12 Aug 1964 Coronado Eagle and Journal, Wesson described having trouble at first knowing which way to turn. She added: “Johnny Downs, who plays the Tin Woodsman [sic], has adapted very well, but he’s a professional.”

Cammy Wesson went on to careers as an elementary school teacher, realtor, and financial advisor. As a sexagenarian back in Coronado, she took up marathon running.

The Wizard of Balboa Park

The San Diego Civic Light Opera Association was founded in 1945. Its first show was Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado in the Wegeforth Bowl at the San Diego Zoo.

Because of San Diego’s ideal weather, the organization staged its shows outside. It soon took on the name of the Starlight Opera.

On July 29, 1946, the San Diego Union and Daily Bee said: “If the new Starlight Opera company becomes any more popular it will have to move to Ford Bowl.” That was the amphitheater in Balboa Park built for a 1935 expo.

Indeed, the Starlight Opera Company was soon using that larger space. Around 1950 the amphitheater became known as the Starlight Bowl. (An amphitheater in Burbank was using the same name at that time, confusing matters.)

The Light Opera Association also widened its repertoire to include new, popular shows and operated under the same of Starlight Musical Theatre.

Because the amphitheater was right under the main flight path to Lindbergh Field, performers learned to freeze when a loud plane passed overhead. Starlight Musical Theatre’s old website called this “One of the most artistic innovations of productions at the Starlight Bowl.”

In 1962 the Starlight company planned a summer season of The Music Man, Can-Can, The Wizard of Oz, and Bye Bye Birdie.

About the third show the 7 Apr 1962 San Diego Evening Tribune explained:

“The Wizard of Oz,” was adapted originally for the stage by L. Frank Baum from his classic children’s story. It was first presented in 1903, starring the team of Fred Stone and David Montgomery. Their leading lady was Anna Laughlin, the mother of singer Lucy Monroe.

The version of “Wizard” which Starlight is using has been updated by Frank Gabrielson, and features the songs of Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg, composed for the highly successful 1939 movie.

That adaptation had originally been commissioned by the St. Louis Municipal Opera in 1942 and is therefore known as “the MUNY Version.” As the licensor says, it “features characters and events not seen in the MGM film”—and it also leaves out several characters and events.

The 1962 San Diego Evening Tribune article was headlined “Little Munchkins Needed for Starlight ‘Wizard of Oz’,” and its main news was:

Casting for Starlight’s production of “The Wizard of Oz” will be held for three days, instead of the usual two, due to the large number of children needed in the cast. . . .

The youngsters will be used for the Wizard of Oz’s “army,” composed of one private and 24 generals. They will also be used as munchkins—the little people enslaved by the Wicked Witch of the East and freed by Dorothy. . . .

Roles open for adults include that of the Scarecrow—which also requires dancing ability; the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion. The leading role of Dorothy, calls for a teenage soprano with acting experience, age 18 at the maximum.

In 2010, after more than sixty straight years of productions, the San Diego Civic Light Opera Association went out of business. There’s now a Save Starlight campaign to fix up the abandoned amphitheater and stage new concerts and shows there.

TOMORROW: Crossing the streams.