“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.
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.
(NEXT: “They want boys like Farina.”)
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.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.
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
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.
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.
(NEXT: “They want boys like Farina.”)
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