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It's a Saturday morning and there are better things to do than to practice the cello. There's a nap to take, and the frogs -- real frogs, kept in the bath room -- need a good scrubbing, but mother has a switch....

When Hal Roach thought up Our Gang, he wanted to populate it with the sort of kids he knew when he was growing up in Elmira, New York, not with clean-scrubbed child stars. Along with series director Robert MacGowan, he recreated the life of incidents and gentle humor and dangerous thrills that kids actually have, before they grow up. There's not much of a real plot -- but what kid thinks in those terms? In the meantime, they have a swell time and those of us who remember being kids have one with them.

TCM showed several early silent Our Gang comedies recently and this was among them. "Saturday Morning" is from the first year of the series but is very different from the earliest ones in several ways. First, Mickey is the established star in this one and he wasn't even in the ones made earlier that year. Second, the pattern and style of the short is very typical of their later films...more polished and enjoyable.

The story starts with poor Mickey being forced to practice his cello. He hates it and looks for ways to get out of it. Later, when he's sent to walk to the music teacher's class, he gets distracted and he and the gang all pretend to be pirates. All the fun is cut short by a silly plot device...a bear.

Apart from the bear (which made the ending a bit limp), this one was very good...enjoyable and cute...and well worth seeing.

This Hal Roach comedy short, Saturday Morning, is the sixth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series. It's also the next-to-last released in the inaugural year of 1922 of which the previous one made-A Quiet Street-is the actual last. After reading the review in Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann's Our Gang filmography book, when watching on YouTube, the info under the screen noted many missing scenes which I recognized when descriptions provided by Maltin and Bann didn't turn up in the version I watched. Still, there were plenty of gags I laughed at like Mickey Daniels' treatment of frogs before taking a bath and using his dog in playing the violin to fool his mom he's the one doing that, or what happens to the cops when they dive down the river after the boys. I also liked what happened with Farina and that bass fiddle. So on that note, I recommend Saturday Morning.

It did not take long in the Our Gang series for the screen potential of Mickey Daniels to be realized. His natural leadership abilities would soon shine through as the Gang's greatest idea man. Here the kids are seen trying to avoid their weekend chores from their nagging mothers but the bulk of the footage belongs to freckled-face Mickey. From outsmarting mom over cello practice and washing behind the ears, Mickey's expressive face carries this charming sequence. It also drives home the schizophrenic relationship between kids and their mothers. Mickeys mom is alternatively demanding, proud, wrathful and finally loving towards her wayward son. No wonder he thinks of running away.

Once Mickey meets up with the Gang under the bridge it only takes minutes before the cello is destroyed and the kids decide to sail away as pirates. The glory of Our Gang are these very moments when with just a few scraps of discarded junk the kids are able to create a magical pirate ship. The busted cello comes in handy as a side dinghy for Farina. Like all childhood memories it is short-lived as a bear arrives on the scene to chase the kids and their parents away until the next weekend and new adventures.

This is the sixth in the silent 'Our Gang' series produced by Hal Roach and supervised by Charles Parrott.

I know that Hal Roach wanted to make audiences laugh, but there's only so much that you can laugh at in children's silent comedy. The sound age desperately needed to be ushered in.

Saturday Morning (1922)

** (out of 4)

Early Our Gang short has the kids finding themselves unloved at home so they decide to run away. Their plan doesn't work out too well especially when they decide to go hunting and end up having a baby bear come after them. It's funny but when you discuss this long-running series from Hal Roach you're going to find people who love them and hate them. You might find some who love the silent era Gang but hate the sound era or vice versa. I'm somewhere in the middle but I'm not sure how many people could defend this early film. At just over 15-minutes it's short enough to where you won't get bored but sadly there aren't too many laughs to be found. What we basically have is a fairly simple story of the kids growing tired of the "chores" they have to do on Saturday mornings so they run away. There are a few minor gags here as Mickey (Daniels) doesn't want to take a bath so instead he scrubs down his pet frogs. This, of course, causes his mother to give him a beating, which certainly didn't get any laughs. The second half of the film really doesn't have much happening as we get several scenes of the kids walking around with a bear following. Cute but not funny. Saturday MORNING is certainly worth viewing if you must see every short in the series but there are much better films out there.