Commencement Day

An early product of the Hal Roach/Pathe period of Hal Roach Studios, COMMENCEMENT DAY is so good at capturing a time and place, that today it serves as a window to its production date.

Centering around the closing days of the school year, this is a view into the life of a one-room schoolhouse. This type of learning institution has long vanished from the landscape being continued in Amish communities and such.

We get kid-centric amusement as various skills of music are performed by youngsters who were probably coaxed by parents to take up the instruments used.

The black kids (Earnest "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison and Allen "Farina" Hoskins) are mysteriously absent from the classroom sessions but interact through a window and a doorway. Of course explaining why they weren't allowed would put a damper on the lively proceedings.

The prominent kids (Mickey Daniels, Joe Cobb, and Mary Kornman) are natural and appealing. Expressions are persuaded once again by Robert (Bob) Mcgowen who directed most of the silent and the sound era shorts up to the mid 1930's. He had been a fireman who had been injured but Hal Roach gave him the position because he had a natural rapport with children.

Comedies of that era saw amusement in throwing insects and frogs at people.

Now we have fart jokes.

One thing about the old silent Our Gang comedies I appreciate is that the kids are often BAD!! In later sound films, the kids are generally much nicer and well behaved...which is why I prefer the silents! In "Commencement Day", it's the kids' final day of school and they are to put on a program for visiting guests. But the kids get in fights, forget the thing they are supposed to be reciting, have pepper dropped into a sax and a frog down Mickey's back. By the end, it's degenerated into an all out melee and the special day is an awful mess!

It's fun to watch others' kids misbehave...which is why I like this one very much...and man do they misbehave!!

It's commence day at school, so there are plenty of adults on hand to watch the kids perform. First, of course, Mickey Daniels has to tackle another boy who has insulted Mary Kornman's goat, and tricks must be played on Joe Cobb and... well, you'll see.

It's another of the early Our Gang episodes which shows them being kids and causing the usual sort of mischief and eventual chaos, despite the adults who try to bring them to order. It's my favorite type of episode in the series, in which there is no real plot, and the structure -- going to school -- is eventually turned topsy-turvy in the thoughtless way that children have. Everyone gets his or her turn to be the center of attention. With the Little Rascals, there are no small parts, just small actors.