Little Mother

This Hal Roach comedy short, Little Mother, is the eighty-sixth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series. If anyone reading this is familiar with that above beginning, then you've probably read my other reviews of the OG shorts under my previous username tavm. Anyway, since their mother has gone to Heaven, Mary Ann is the one taking care of her little brothers Weezer and Beezer while their dad is at work. But a surprise awaits them...Even with some outrageous gags like some bubbles coming out of mouths after they're fed a mixture of baking soda and soap flakes because of ballooning stomachs or a fire hydrant being accidentally turned on, when the end arrives, it is a little touching though probably not something that would be done today. So on that note, Little Mother is worth a look. P. S. Since this may be my last review ever of an Our Gang comedy-unless two more existing shorts: Fair and Muddy and School Begins are available for public viewing or many of the lost ones are found or even many of the foreign language version of some of the early talkies like the Spanish version of When the Wind Blows of which I've seen a segment of on YouTube-I'd like to devote the rest of this review on what happened to Mary Ann Jackson after she left films. She'd only did a few more after leaving Our Gang (like Stage Mother which I'll review soon) and had married twice before being interviewed by Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann for their book "The LIttle Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang". Here's how she summed up her time at Hal Roach Studios: "We had great fun. Everything I have to say about Roach and the gang is nice. There's not one bad thing I can think of. It was just fun and fun and fun." She also laughed when she discovered many imposters claiming to be her due to their bobbed hair which the real Mary Ann ditched after retiring! Maltin and Bann also told her about her former fellow Gang member Jackie Cooper having a crush on her during their time in the series which made her laugh with delight! She died on December 17, 2003.