“They want boys like Farina”

As I wrote before, the 1930 Our Gang short “Pups Is Pups” (Lucky Corner; IMDB; Dave Lord Heath) was set in a city, with big industrial structures looming over the kids’ yard.

That setting was also reflected in the gang itself, which was more multiethnic than it had been since 1925. That was when George “Sonny Boy” Warde made the last of his nine movies playing a stereotypical Chinese kid. For “Pups Is Pups” the gang included Alan Dong in a similar role, never repeated.

Of course, like all the Our Gang films, “Pups Is Pups” included some African-American kids: Allen “Farina” Hoskins; his sister Jannie, as shown in a still from a deleted scene; and young twins Kenneth and Hugo Hill playing his little brothers. (In the next movie, Matthew Beard arrived as a little brother for Farina. At first called Hercules, he’d soon be nicknamed “Stymie.”)

“Pups Is Pups” was also the first movie for Buddy McDonald, whose 2001 interview with Richard W. Bann I’ve been studying. Having a racially integrated set of playmates was new to Buddy, but he enjoyed working with Farina and Stymie:

I really liked them, both. They were the very first black people I met. I thought nothing of it at the time. I did learn about racial prejudice, but not at Hal Roach Studios. My mother was a bigot. . . .

Farina was the only one I stayed in touch with. We were pretty good friends. I talked to Al Hoskins around the year he died. He was back and forth between Oakland and Los Angeles. He’d been down and out too. He seemed to have nothing left either from his days in the Gang, other than memories. But it didn’t defeat his optimism. What a nice man.

In that interview, McDonald drew Bann’s attention to a part of Farina’s costuming imposed to make him fit the prevailing stereotype of black kids:

watch the films with Farina. He had another pair of shoes on inside those big shoes he wore to make his feet look extra large.

The 1925 promotional film “Our Gang at Home” makes the difference obvious. That movie is included in Ben Model’s Silent Comedy Watch Party, episode 88. Watch from 45:30 to 46:10, when little Farina briefly gets to wear only his own shoes.

“Pups Is Pups” played off American racial attitudes in another way that Bann’s interview didn’t address. Early in the movie, Farina reads an advertisement seeking “colored boys” to be pages at a dog and pet show. Jackie proposes the whole gang seek jobs as pages, but Chubby says, “They want boys like Farina.” There’s no explanation of what that means, but probably no explanation was necessary. Farina heads downtown to earn good money, promising that once he lands the job he’ll get the gang prizes for their pets.

As I mentioned above, one publicity photo shows a scene that never made it into the final cut. Apparently the original script showed all the other neighborhood kids of Farina’s age in blackface, presumably to apply for page jobs. That group includes (from left) Jackie, Chubby, Mary Ann, Buddy McDonald, and Alan Dong.

Bann didn’t ask McDonald about being made up for this scene or how it played out, and McDonald didn’t bring it up. But I have to think it was a unusual, memorable experience for a new actor.

The book Hollywood Speaks quoted Hal Roach this way: “I’d say fifty percent of written comedy won’t play. Things sound funny on paper, but when you get on the set, they may not be funny.” The studio relied on improvisation, and many planned or even performed scenes were never released.

In this case, the original plan for “Pups Is Pups” must not have played. Director Robert McGowan pulled back into familiar territory of kids and animals pushing into a dignified adult setting. (Chaos and hilarity ensued, of course.)

“Trying to figure out what kind of a kid they had”

As recounted back here, Buddy McDonald joined the Our Gang troupe in 1930 at the age of seven.

He lived in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell. Now in the heart of Los Angeles County, that city was only three years old back in 1930. It had a population just under 8,000, though that was enough to justify its own local newspaper.

Culver City, home of the Hal Roach Studio and MGM, was twenty-eight miles away.

In his 2001 interview with Richard W. Bann, McDonald explained that his journey into the movies started with being “the champion speller for the Los Angeles city schools for my grade.” His parents, “drunk on a Sunday night,” sent a newspaper clipping about this feat to the company that made the Our Gang movies.

I think they mailed it to Hal Roach on a Monday, and on Wednesday the studio called our next door neighbor—because we didn't have a phone. They wanted me out there that Thursday.

So the next day, after school, we went all the way over to Washington Boulevard in Culver City to find this place, Hal Roach Studios. It was quite a drive on the roads in those days. We saw Bob McGowan, and Hal Roach. They sort of interviewed me. But very low key. I didn’t quite know what this was about and what my parents were doing with me. . . .

Looking back on it, they were trying to figure out what kind of a kid they had. What could I do? They talked with me, I had to make a few faces, sing a song, recite a poem; they filmed it. They developed the test, almost immediately. Took practically no time. They determined I was photogenic, and told me to report back to the studio the next day, Friday, to begin work on my first picture

Many of the first long-lasting Our Gang cast came from the Hal Roach Studio community: Ernie Morrison, already under contract; Mary Kornman, daughter of a still photographer; her friend and neighbor, Mickey Daniels, who was also a nephew of Harold Lloyd’s former leading lady Bebe Daniels; Jack Davis, younger brother of Lloyd’s current leading lady and then wife.

By the early 1930s, the studio was taking on kids with show-biz experience. Jackie Cooper’s mother was in vaudeville. Mary Ann Jackson, Harry Spear, Donald Haines, and Kendall McComas were regulars in other film series before joining Roach. 

But McDonald was just a kid from LA County. “I lived in Bell, and it was such a small community, I was the one and only person who had anything to do with the movies. It made me famous, at least there! If I sneezed, it was news. In Bell, that is.”

Buddy’s first movie was “Pups Is Pups,” filmed in April. His character was just a neighborhood kid with a pet goat, and the goat got better camera angles. I don’t think he had any lines. “They handed me a toothbrush and told me to brush the goat’s teeth,” McDonald recalled. “I was scared to death of that god-damned goat. I had never been around a goat, and it really frightened me.”

Presumably director Robert McGowan wanted to start Buddy slowly. But he learned fast. In his second movie, “Teacher’s Pet,” Buddy not only had lines, he was one of star Jackie Cooper’s three main friends, alongside established players Farina and Chubby. The studio managers didn’t give Buddy an elaborate costume or have him pose in publicity photos like the long-time cast, but clearly they saw potential in him.

Two More Oziana Short Stories

Last week’s posting about a mystery story in Oziana 2024 made me realize I’d never noted Oziana 2023, which contains two of my stories.

As I reported last week, I’ve been seeking inspiration for new stories from pairing two recurring characters in the Oz books, as L. Frank Baum did in his Little Wizard Stories of Oz.

“The Soldier with the Green Whiskers and the Guardian of the Gates” is a natural pairing: two officers of the Wizard’s Emerald City government who kept their posts under the Scarecrow and then Princess Ozma, working together as friends.

The Oziana 2023 stories, in contrast, pair characters who have little in common and start out at odds with each other.

“Button-Bright and the Professor” shows the small boy from Philadelphia and the highly educated Wogglebug quarreling over directions before they’re forced to deal with a giant riddle-loving pangolin. This story was illustrated by Marcus Mébes.

“Glinda and the Glass Cat” follows the transparent feline to the China Country, the Hammerheads, and the Fighting Trees while the powerful sorceress seeks to make her curb her willful instincts. Anna-Maria Cool supplied fun art for this tale, and for the magazine’s cover.

Like other recent issues of Oziana magazine, the 2023 collection is sold through Lulu.

A Mystery Tale from the Early Emerald City

Oziana is the International Wizard of Oz Club’s creative magazine for fiction and art inspired by the Oz books. It’s been published annually for about half a century now.

The latest issue, printed at the end of last year, includes my short story “The Soldier with the Green Whiskers and the Guardian of the Gates,” delightfully illustrated by Rob Lauer.

This story is set shortly after the end of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Wizard has flown away, leaving the Emerald City under the rule of the now-brainy Scarecrow. And then the Scarecrow departed to escort his friend Dorothy to the castle of Glinda the Good. So the soldier and the guardian are the highest-ranking officials in town when Winged Monkeys start tearing a hole in the city wall.

I wrote the first version of this story when I was in junior high or high school, but was never fully satisfied with it. A few years ago I realized that it fit into a couple of trends in my newer Oz writing:

• It was a mystery, and could be a better one.
• It paired two recurring characters, a form L. Frank Baum used in his Little Wizard Stories of Oz and which I’ve been using to springboard other tales.

I wrote the story again from scratch, hopefully better. At the time I didn’t have a copy of the first version. Since then I came across an old photocopy, but I haven’t dared to read it, lest it be so much worse or even a tiny bit better.

If you care to read “The Soldier with the Green Whiskers and the Guardian of the Gates,” plus six more stories about the early history of Oz, all illustrated, and a closing poem, please order Oziana 2024 from Lulu.

When Buddy McDonald Arrived in the Neighborhood

In the 1930 Our Gang short “School’s Out,” teacher Miss Crabtree calls on a boy named “Buddy O’Donnell.”

This little guy had lots of freckles, prominent ears, and an attitude. He had appeared in the two preceding Our Gang shorts: “Pups Is Pups” and “Teacher’s Pet.” In the second he was also called Buddy.

Most kids in the Our Gang movies shared names with their characters, though the studio could give them nicknames like “Buckwheat” and “Wheezer.”

Richard W. Bann and Leonard Maltin therefore went looking for a child actor named O’Donnell as they prepared their 1977 book on the Our Gang series, and then again as they revised it in 1992. But they came up empty.

In July 2001 a friend alerted Bann that an eighty-year-old California man named Bud McDonald had played Buddy. For some unknown reason, actress June Marlowe had referred to him under a slightly different name, sending researchers off on the wrong path.

Bann quickly contacted Thomas “Bud” McDonald (1922–2008), confirmed his identity by email, and interviewed him, sharing that new material on the official Laurel and Hardy website in two parts.

It’s a lively conversation, with McDonald offering vivid memories of making movies for the Hal Roach Studio, remarks on other events in his early show-biz career, and frank details about the rest of his life.

In particular, McDonald revealed some behind-the-scenes details which I don’t recall seeing elsewhere.

His first movie, “Pups Is Pups” (Lucky Corner; IMDB; Dave Lord Heath), was unusual in setting the gang’s neighborhood next to big industrial buildings, not in a residential or rural area.

That effect was achieved by shooting some scenes in urban locations but filling out other long shots with matte paintings on glass. McDonald remembered seeing that special effect come together:

We were acting out at the ranch and they’ve got a camera and a mirror and a miniature set showing a huge building, and they’re all hooked up together. I guess it was what they call a glass shot or a matte shot or something. All I know is we did our scenes without those other buildings, but when we saw the rushes, there they were up on the screen! . . . [At rushes] You looked at what you did, and the kids would kind of tease each other, playfully, saying, “Look at Chubby,” or whatever line we might fire off at the screen.

The vertically augmented shots include the Roach studio’s city intersection set, familiar from many other movies, but this time given some tall background buildings.

Even the ballroom where the kids take their pets for a dog show appears to have been jazzed up with a matte painting over the orchestra’s heads.

The regular Our Gang director, Robert F. McGowan, doesn’t seem to have used that technique in other movies. I therefore view “Pups Is Pups” as one of several shorts he made starting in the late 1920s trying out cinematic techniques: extreme close-ups, shooting up from under glass, cutting off the adults’ heads, and so on. He rarely went back to those tricks in later movies, though.

Bonedust and a Jug of Molasses

“Helping Grandma” (YouTube; IMDB; Lucky Corner) was an Our Gang comedy filmed in the summer of 1930 and released in January 1931.

Borrowing a situation from the very first movie shot for the series, titled “Our Gang,” it shows the kids helping out at a general store.

That series pilot from 1922 may not be the only source for this comedy, however.

“Helping Grandma” starts with a kid nicknamed “Bonedust,” played by Bobby Young (1917–1951; as an adult actor he went by Clifton Young).

Bonedust started to appear in the Our Gang series in 1925, sometimes in the gang and sometimes just in the neighborhood. When his character had any distinction, it was usually defined by haplessness.

Pretty soon Bobby Young grew too tall to fit in with the gang (his adult height was 6'1"). He stopped being a semi-regular in 1928. But in 1930 he came back to play occasional roles, now gawky as well as hapless, in a few talkies. Among those was “Helping Grandma.”

As this short starts, Bonedust is a customer at the store. Jackie Cooper fills a jug with molasses for him. But when it comes time to pay, Bonedust says, “Doggone it, Jack, the money’s in the jug.”

Jackie tells Bonedust, “That was an old gag when my mother was a kid. You come across with that dough or I’ll pop you in the chin!”

Since Jackie Cooper’s head didn’t come up to Bobby Young’s shoulders (as shown above), this doesn’t look like a feasible solution. But Bonedust is too ineffectual to just push his way through the little kids.

Grandma (Margaret Mann) comes over and asks “Robert” if his dime really is in the jug. Bonedust says it is. So she charges the molasses to his family and sends him off.

Jack’s not happy. “Gee whiz, Grandma! Don’t you know that guy’s gypping us?”

“I know, dear Jack,” says Grandma. “But do you remember, you got a quarter’s worth of molasses out of me that same way once.”

Jack gulps. “I was afraid you’d remember that. Well, we all have our weak moments. But that guy is permanent!”

The next scene shows Bonedust at home pouring molasses out of the jug into a pan and then retrieving his dime from the goop. So he was too hapless to lie.

That opening for “Helping Grandma” establishes Grandma’s character and the moral of the movie. But the way it presents the situation of claiming a coin was in the molasses container suggests that really was an “old gag,” a small trick that more than a few boys tried on storekeepers. And there is a notable precedent in Hollywood comedy.

Back in 1917, Buster Keaton made his first film as a supporting player for Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle in “The Butcher Boy” (YouTube; IMDB). In his autobiography, My Wonderful World of Slapstick, Buster Keaton explained the set-up this way:

The plot called for me to buy a quarter’s worth of molasses. I had brought along a tin pail for the molasses. But after it was ladled out I discovered that I had dropped the quarter into the molasses. Roscoe, Al St. John, and myself all took turns at trying to get the quarter.

That’s not exactly how the situation plays out. Fatty pours the molasses into Buster’s porkpie hat to retrieve the coin, leading to sticky situations and messy fights. Lea Stans provided a thorough analysis of this scene at Silent-ology. In the 1950s Keaton performed variations on the same skit for television shows like You Asked for It.

But “The Butcher Boy” is the only earlier appearance of this situation I’ve been able to find. Keaton didn’t suggest that this business came from a vaudeville sketch or well-known joke. I’ve searched Google Books and Early American Newspapers for anecdotes about molasses and coins and tricky boys, and I haven’t found any.

Perhaps better research will turn up examples, but for now it looks like what Jackie Cooper called an “old gag” in 1930 was a sort of homage to a movie made in 1917, the same year Bobby “Bonedust” Young was born.