Lodge Night

Joe Cobb is the new boy in class, so he's invited by Our Gang to join the Kluck Kluck Klams, their lodge.

The early Our Gangs in which the rascals devise their own kid-warped view of some adult activity -- in this case, of fraternal lodges -- are not among my favorites. This one is further weakened by the fact there is a long, stereotypical 'lecture' in gibberish by Ernest Morrison Sr., playing the father of Ernie and Farina, broken up when everyone in the audience starts playing craps; there's also an ending in which the Gang get involved with a carjacking ring.

In short, there are too many adults in this one, and it also looks as if it was written hastily.

Years ago, I bought the mega-set of the Our Gang/Little Rascals films. However, while it was supposed to be complete, since the time the DVD set came out, quite a few more of the silent Our Gang comedies have been discovered and "Lodge Night" is one of them.

The film consists mostly of the kids welcoming in the new kid, Joe*, to the club. To do this, they haze him and make him do all sorts of things. Ultimately, this is interrupted when car thieves arrive at the club house to hide out from the cops. Amazingly, the kids grab a car and take off after the crooks!!

Another subplot is a bit problematic in this very politically correct age. Sunshine Sammy's dad (and his actual real life father) is delivering a lecture to his various black friends...and it degenerates to a dice game...a common but certainly unkind stereotype of the day. Still, the fact that there were several black kids among the gang make this a decent film and a very progressive one for its day.

It is curious that, despite the importance of Ernie Sunshine Morrison and little Farina in the cast, this Our Gang episode should have focused in this manner on race issues. It is not simply the Klu Klux Klan take-off and Ernie Morrison senior's caricature of an ignorant leturer and his shambolic lecture-hall. This sort of thing was associated primarily with the Southern states and Northern blacks were by and large equally prejudiced with regard to the South - similar scenes can also be found with regard to hell-fire preachers in the so-called "race" films - but here the mélange of ignorance and comic pretension is made to appear of general application to the "supposedly educated" African American population (a man who looks at first glance like a serious black intellectual is shown expressing his approval). Note that most reviewers here refer to the character as a preacher which he is not but this indicates how the slippage works.

But it is also, most nonchalantly and yet in way most significantly of all, the school-room setting itself with which the film starts. The black kids are of course not present there with their white counterparts but are seemingly in the yard outside and not themselves attending school at all. It is a significant feature in a film that also mocks black illiteracy and ignorance.

It is often not the things that are highlighted in films concerning race that are interesting but the things that are simply taken for granted, which meant that even supposedly "liberal" takes on race, as late as the sixties, contained implicit racist assumptions (the "that's just how it is " syndrome) which largely invalidate the proclaimed "liberalism" (the absolutely appalling To Kill a Mocking Bird is a perfect example - the heart-rending story of how tough it is to be a a white liberal - and, oh, an innocent black guy, so irritatingly fails to take his advice, gets shot somewhere along the line - as they do, foolish fellows!). It was excellent that Roach employed the black youngsters and that, for most purposes, they figure on an equal footing with their white playmates but it could not of itself touch the racism that remained. One often finds amongst US comments on such films a modern equivalent of the "just how it is" syndrome expressed as a "that's just how it was" justification for the films.

(remains?) so ingrained in US culture.

The version I saw of this fifteenth "Our Gang/Little Rascals" comedy short, Lodge Night, on YouTube was an abridged one from TV distributor National Telepix which had retitled the silent era of the series "Mischief Makers" complete with beginning and ending credit animation from Gene Deitch Associates and a theme song sung by kids. By abridged, I mean not only were some scenes cut but also some inter-titles although the narration supposedly took care of that. In this one, Joe is a new student at the school. While Mary and the other girls take a shine to him by giving him many kisses, Mickey and Jack and the other boys express jealousy and they invite him to a secret meeting for an initiation. This club is called the Cluck Cluck Klams, which although is a kids version of the Ku Klux Klan, has Ernie and Farina as members! I'll stop right there and say that statement alone might be enough for anyone with a sensitive mind toward anything politically incorrect may want to stay away from this short and I'd like to add that most of the scenes weren't funny. Exceptions were when Mickey and Jackie were trying to fool their parents that they were still practicing piano and saxophone, respectively, Mickey tied string to some cats attached to the keys and Jackie put a wind blowing gadget to the sax with string attached by Mickey to the father's rocking chair. I also liked the gadget at the club meeting that spanked Joe for his initiation and also knocked Farina into a barrel. Other than that, what I saw was probably sufficient for evaluating the quality of this "Our Gang" entry that was retitled by National Telepix as "The Secret Meeting". P.S. Ernie Morrison's father played a double-talk preacher in this one and Mickey Daniels' father, Richard, was himself. Update-9/21/14: I've now seen the complete version on Internet Archive with the original H.M. Walker intertitles. He wrote some amusing ones here like-"Mary-Not yet a vamp--But give her time." And "The teacher admits that she is 20-it's her second time around." But this one made me cringe-"Farina-Doesn't know what the lodge is all about-But is in favor of anything." I also liked the name attached to a warning sheet about auto thieves-Sheriff Big Bob McGowan! And there was also Mickey's looking at a small diorama of animated ants at the beginning that I enjoyed. Otherwise, the rating stays.

PC types would get a coronary over this film! Here, the Gang (including the black children Ernie Morrison and Allen "Farina" Hoskins) form a group called the "Cluck Cluck Klams" and don white sheets and chicken caps. Imagine a German kiddie comedy with Jewish children joining their Aryan pals in the Hitler Youth and you pretty much see how well this would go over today. There is also a long scene with Ernie Morrison Sr. as an illiterate African-American preacher whose foolish sermon is interrupted by a crap game among the congregation. In spite of the absence of good taste throughout much of this film, the kids in the gang still get along as well as always in spite of their racial composition during a time when the real Klan was at its peak in the US. (Ernie Jr. in fact helps engineer a prank on Joe Cobb as he tries to join the "Klams."). Tasteless, shocking, and un-PC? Very much. But fascinating to watch in the same manner as a car wreck.