A Quiet Street

This Hal Roach comedy short, A Quiet Street, is the fifth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series. The print I saw of this on YouTube was missing the intertitles written by H.M. Walker as well as the drawings of Tom McNamara who was also the co-director with Robert F. McGowan. A shame as the authors of the definitive Our Gang filmography book-Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann-mentioned them as "amusingly written and wonderfully illustrated (even animated)". Good thing I read the synopsis the book provided as well as the info printed under the YT screen before watching this. In a nutshell: A new kid is in town and he's a bully to little Jackie so the gang beat him up for retaliation. But the new kid's father is a cop so when he confronts them, they run but the real reason he comes near them is because a mugger is also nearby. I'll stop there and mention there's also some good visual gags concerning Mickey Daniels' tooth being pulled by a dog, Ernie Morrison rolling in a barrel (though a commenter on YT noted a missing payoff sequence involving a man and his car that I would have loved to have seen), and that dog chasing that bad guy up a long flight of stairs that looks a little like the ones Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy had trouble with in The Music Box...Oh, and this turned out the be the last series entry to feature leading lady Peggy Cartwright though since she's in the background of the beginning scene, you hardly notice her. In summary, I liked A Quiet Street despite the missing parts I noted above.

This is the fifth in the silent 'Our Gang' series produced by Hal Roach. I do believe that the missing ingredient in this series was sound. We needed to hear the American accents, which was why 'The Little Rascals' were so engaging. Their childlike voices had a musical quality to it.

According to IMDB, this should be a 20 minute film, though the copy I found on YouTUbe is only 16 minutes. I strongly suspect it is missing about four minutes...which is often the case with older films on nitrate film stock. There are no intertitles and the story at times seems confusing...especially the first half.

The first half of the story, as I just mentioned, is confusing. It appears as if a new kid (Jackie Condon) movies in and has trouble being accepted by the gang. He not only wants to be there friend but see the tooth they are charging kids to see.

Later, a mugger, Red Mike, attacks someone and the police give chase. Coincidentally, the gang is nearby and think they police are chasing them...so they run. However, Pete the dog springs into action...chasing the crook and eventually subduing him and is a hero. Oddly, soon after this, Sunshine Sammy's dad gives him a whipping for no apparent reason.

My score of 4 is not to say it was originally a bad film. There are some very enjoyable parts (especially involving the dog) but the story is missing too many pieces and is simply confusing at times. Hopefully one day they'll locate a more complete copy and I can re-watch and re-review it.

An early idyll -- which means, for the Little Rascals, not much happens in the way of a plot. It is little but kids doing kid's stuff, yanking out loose teeth by tying one end around the tooth, the other end around a dog, rolling around in a barrel. That sort of thing.

For me, these are the best Our Gang pieces, in which the problem is to fill up the day as interestingly as possible. The series lost that quality after director Bob McGowan left, to be replaced by stars like Spanky and Alfalfa, who always sang. What was the purpose of that? Haha, they're only kids, they don't know how bad they are?

Yes, but think back to when you were a youngster. During the endless afternoons of the late summer -- I definitely recall one August day in 1958 I discovered monarch butterflies on the marigolds. That afternoon lasted longer than the Carter Administration and was certainly more interesting.

That's the sort of day these episodes recall: true in reality, if not in fact. McGowan's Our Gang shorts always showed clearly that he remembered all this, and we enjoyed the world with the Rascals. We did not stand off to a side and laugh at them for their ineptitude. We laughed with them as their dog chased the burglar up the same steps that Laurel & Hardy would later move a player piano. But that was after we all grew up.

I won't comment on the other reviewer who likes the quality of the children's voices in this movie. He has a tendency to recycle his reviews, but it is, I suppose, possible, that these kids were so much a part of his youth that he knows their voices. Such is the power of someone who remembers his childhood: Bob McGowan and I are two. Are you another?