Our Gang

Our Gang (also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals) is an American series of comedy short films chronicling the adventures of a group of mischievous children in a working class neighborhood of Los Angeles. Created by film producer Hal Roach, who also produced the Laurel and Hardy films, Our Gang shorts were produced from 1922 to 1944, spanning the silent film and early sound film periods of American cinema. 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. The series also broke new ground by portraying black and white children interacting as equals during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the United States. The franchise began in 1922 as a silent short subject series produced by the Roach studio and released by Pathé Exchange. Roach changed distributors from Pathé to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1927, and the series entered its most popular period after converting to sound in 1929. Production continued at Roach until 1938, when the Our Gang production unit was sold to MGM, where production continued until 1944. Across 220 short films and a feature-film spin-off, General Spanky, the Our Gang series featured more than 41 child actors as regular members of its cast. Because MGM retained the rights to the Our Gang trademark after buying the series, the Roach-produced Our Gang sound films were re-released to theaters and syndicated for television under the title The Little Rascals. The Roach-produced Little Rascals shorts that remain under copyright (1931–1938) are co-owned by Legend Films and Multicom Entertainment Group, using restored titles from their Official Films masters as "Hal Roach's Famous Kids Comedies"; the entries produced...