Born on July 11, 1882 in Denver, Colorado, a fellow responsible for many, many laughs on the silver screen: Robert F. McGowan, creator of Our Gang.
Wikipedia's entry for Mr. McGowan adds:
"Before moving to Los Angeles, McGowan was a firefighter in his native Denver. An on-the-job accident during a fire rescue mission left him with a permanent limp. McGowan moved to California in the 1910s and made the acquaintance of Hal Roach, an aspiring film producer who opened his own studio in 1914. By 1920, McGowan was a director at the Roach studio, and in 1921 began work on the first entries in the Our Gang series."
Prior to his hiring by Hal Roach, Robert F. McGowan worked as a scenarist for Christie Comedies and as assistant director on marital farces starring Mr. and Mrs. Carter DeHaven.
Along with writer Tom McNamara, producer Hal Roach and director general Charley Chase (former director of the aforementioned Mr. and Mrs. Carter DeHaven comedies), Robert McGowan was on the team that originated the Our Gang series in 1922.
After the first two entries, the Our Gang series quickly found its footing. Soon assembling a stellar cast, the Our Gang comedies became an immediate hit and would remain very popular through the silent era.
The formula clicked early in Our Gang's run, due to the exceptional cast, featuring Harold Lloyd's nephew Jack Davis, Lloyd co-star and skilled scene-stealer (in the hilarious Get Out & Get Under) "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison, along with Mickey Daniels, Jackie Condon, Mary Kornman and the series' first good natured "fat kid" Joe Cobb.
While the silents have been eclipsed to some degree by the later Spanky-Alfalfa-Darla lineup, largely because the 1935-1939 Our Gangs were shown frequently on television, they remain fast-paced classic comedies that get laughs.
This would be the first of several groups of extremely talented kids who starred in Our Gang over its 22 year run. Many studios produced "kid comedies" with the hopes to compete with Our Gang, to little or no avail.
Mickey Daniels and Mary Kornman were among the most photogenic, spunky and likable child actors ever to make movies.
Hal Roach would subsequently cast the teenaged versions of the pair in director George Stevens' The Boyfriends series, but they were definitely at their best as the plucky Our Gang stars of 1924-1925.
None of the Hal Roach Studio's competitors came up with a cast that could compare with Our Gang, try as they did.
Robert F. McGowan became ill in 1927-1928 and took a sabbatical after cranking out dozens of Our Gang comedies (his nephew, Robert A. McGowan a.k.a. Anthony Mack took over in the interim, with varying results), then returned to create many of the best and most memorable films in the series and shepherd the cast from silents to talkies.
It was a bit of a rocky transition from silents to talkies. McGowan was accustomed to giving the cast instructions verbally - and this was not possible once sound recording was in the production process. The gang weathered the transition to sound with flying colors nonetheless.
The 1929-1930 season of Our Gang featured a very funny and endearing group of kids. The cast combined stalwart silent era veterans Allen Clayton Hoskins a.k.a. "Farina" (arguably the most talented and most sensitive child actor ever in Our Gang), Joe Cobb, top "kid comedienne" from the Mack Sennett Studio's Smith Family series Mary Ann Jackson and perennial "lil' squirt" Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins with excellent newcomers Norman "Chubby" Chaney and Jackie Cooper.
The charming actress June Marlowe would soon join the cast of Our Gang as the one, the only Miss Crabtree.
There's a fascinating collaboration in the early talkies between Our Gang and frequent stars and supporting players from the Hal Roach Studio's other series, such as Max Davidson and Edgar Kennedy. These made for some of the funniest entries in the series.
Matthew "Stymie" Beard and Dorothy "Echo" DeBorba were soon added to the cast.
This would complete what was arguably the best, most talented and most varied of all the Our Gang lineups.
With the exception of Free Eats, directed by Ray McCarey, Robert McGowan helmed the Our Gang comedies, with the exception of the 1927-1928 sabbatical, through 1933.
McGowan was there at the Our Gang helm long enough to see George "Spanky" McFarland show his star potential as a toddler in Free Wheeling.
One notable and rare break from the gang was a very, very zany All-Star comedy Robert McGowan directed titled A Crook's Tour.
Starring British music hall entertainer Douglas Wakefield, a comic who resembles a living version of Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy, A Crook's Tour includes live fish dropping inside ladies' clothes, tommy gun totin' gangsters on ocean liners, hand grenade throwing and 9-year-old Mae West impersonators. It is a favorite film of the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog.
After hitting complete and utter burnout, not from working with the kids, but dealing with their obnoxious parents, Mr. McGowan left Hal Roach Studios and briefly worked for Paramount Pictures. He would return to Hal Roach to make one last Our Gang comedy, the extremely funny Divot Diggers in 1936. Then Robert McGowan retired again.
In the late 1940's, Mr. McGowan produced and wrote storylines for yet another Our Gang series, this time two not particularly memorable featurettes. The executive producer was Hal Roach, Jr. and the films were not directed by McGowan, but by Bernard Carr.
The stars of Curley (who, unfortunately for the revival of Our Gang, entirely lacked Jerry "Curly" Howard's comedy mojo) and Who Killed Doc Robbin, try as they did, could not put over the material, as the Our Gang casts from both silents and Depression-era talkies did so well.
On one hand, watch Who Killed Doc Robbin at your own risk - even with a relative of Matthew "Stymie" Beard in the cast, it simply isn't very good. On the other hand, this is about 1/100 as terrible as the godawful Our Gangs produced in 1938-1944 by the ever comedy-challenged MGM, a mega-studio that did fine making movies co-starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, but otherwise were so inept with humor they made bad movies with The Marx Brothers.
Here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we have nothing but love, respect and admiration for the laugh makers who made things better for moviegoers hit hard by the Great Depression.
While the Our Gang comedies are out on DVD and prevalent on YouTube, unquestionably, these wonderful movies are best seen with an audience - so let's hope that sometime in the distant future, enough progress will be made on bringing the rampaging COVID-19 epidemic under control (2023, maybe) that we can someday get together and watch movies on the big screen. . . even if we are all seated 6-10 feet apart. What a concept!
For more info on Robert McGowan and the gang, read The Little Rascals: The Life And Times Of Our Gang by Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann.
No comments:
Post a Comment