Hollywood films of the 1920s never portrayed blacks and whites as social peers, and wouldn't for years to come. But the fact that the cast was integrated at all was a milestone. (The integrated school scenes were cut whenever the films played in the South.) Characters like Farina, Stymie, and Buckwheat have since been criticized for perpetuating ethnic stereotypes, and ethnic humor was common in the series, especially in the early days.
In fact, he was the first Hollywood filmmaker to depict black kids and white kids playing together, treating each other as equals, even going to the same schools. That may not sound like a big deal, but in the 1920s it was unheard of. Roach also decided to cast black kids in some of the parts. As he told Leonard Maltin in The Life and Times of the Little Rascals: Our Gang, "I thought if I could find some clever street kids to just play themselves in films and show life from a kid's angle, maybe I could make a dozen of these things before I wear out the idea." Roach started putting together a cast of archtypical kids that audiences would be able to relate to: the leader of the pack, the pretty girl who gets teased by the boys, the tomboy, the nerdy smart kid, the chubby kid, the spoiled rich kid, etc. All of a sudden I realized I had been watching this silly argument for over fifteen minutes because they were real kids." FORMING THE GANG Roach thought movies about "kids doing the things that kids do" might make interesting viewing. "I knew they would probably throw away the sticks as soon as they walked around the block," he recalled more than 60 years later, "but the most important thing in the world right then was who would have which stick. He noticed a group of kids that had snatched a few sticks to play with, and were now arguing over them-the smallest kid had grabbed the largest stick, and the biggest kid wanted it. That afternoon when the auditions ended, Roach sat in his office and stared at the lumberyard across the street. They were usually well scrubbed and well behaved, and because the adult characters were almost always the center of the story, the kids interacted with the grown-ups more than they did with each othr. In those days child actors were supposed to act like adults, not like normal kids. It wasn't going well-the kids sounded too rehearsed and their stage makeup made them look like little grown-ups. STICKS AND STONES One day in 1921, a Hollywood producer named Hal Roach spent a frustrating morning auditioning girls for a part in one of his movies. Here's how the Little Rascals found their way onto the silver screen. With 221 episodes filmed over more than two decades, Our Gang/Little Rascals is the most successful, longest-running film series in Hollywood history. The following is an article from Uncle John's Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader.
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