Our Gang is an American series of comedy short films chronicling a group of poor neighborhood children and their adventures.
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21 Facts About Our Gang
2.
Our Gang is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively natural way; Roach and original director Robert F McGowan worked to film the unaffected, raw nuances apparent in regular children, rather than have them imitate adult acting styles.
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3.
Across 220 short films and a feature-film spin-off, General Spanky, the Our Gang series featured over 41 child actors as regular members of its cast.
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4.
Our Gang series produced during the Jim Crow-era is notable for being one of the first in cinema history in which African Americans and White Americans were portrayed as equals.
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5.
Our Gang had its roots in an aborted Roach short-subject series revolving around the adventures of a black boy called "Sunshine Sammy", played by Ernie Morrison.
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6.
The other Our Gang recruits included Roach photographer Gene Kornman's daughter Mary Kornman, their friends' son Mickey Daniels, and family friends Allen Hoskins, Jack Davis, Jackie Condon, and Joe Cobb.
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7.
The Our Gang series was a success from the start, with the children's naturalism, the funny animal actors, and McGowan's direction making a successful combination.
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8.
The shorts did well at the box office, and by the end of the decade the Our Gang children were pictured on numerous product endorsements.
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9.
Also at this time, the Our Gang cast acquired an American Pit Bull Terrier with a ring around one eye, originally named Pansy but soon known as Pete the Pup, the most famous Our Gang pet.
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10.
In spring 1929, the Roach sound stages were converted for sound recording, and Our Gang made its "all-talking" debut in April 1929 with the 25-minute film Small Talk.
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11.
Our Gang entered another transitional period, similar to that of the mid 1920s.
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12.
Meins's Our Gang shorts were less improvisational than McGowan's and featured a heavier reliance on dialogue.
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13.
Early in 1935, new cast members Carl Switzer and his brother Harold joined Our Gang after impressing Roach with an impromptu musical performance at the studio commissary.
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14.
Our Gang was very successful during the 1920s and the early 1930s.
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15.
On May 31,1938, Roach sold MGM the Our Gang unit, including the rights to the name and the contracts for the actors and writers, for $25,000 .
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16.
The final Roach-produced short in the Our Gang series, Hide and Shriek, was his final short-subject production.
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17.
Our Gang would be used by MGM as a training ground for future feature directors: Sidney, Edward Cahn and Cy Endfield all worked on Our Gang before moving on to features.
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18.
Since 1937, Our Gang had been featured as a licensed comic strip in the UK comic The Dandy, drawn by Dudley D Watkins.
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19.
Our Gang Comics outlasted the series by five years, changing its name to Tom and Jerry Comics in 1949.
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20.
Television rights to the silent Pathe Our Gang comedies were sold to National Telepix and other distributors, who distributed the films under titles such as The Mischief Makers and Those Lovable Scallawags with Their Gangs.
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21.
The folk-rock group Spanky and Our Gang was named for the troupe because lead singer Elaine "Spanky" McFarlane's last name was similar to that of George "Spanky" McFarland.
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