Clown Princes

An OUR GANG Comedy Short.

The Gang agrees to become CLOWN PRINCES for a good cause. They're putting on a circus show in the barn to help raise the $3.00 Porky's family needs to pay their rent. With Spanky as ringmaster, Buckwheat as a wildman, Darla as the lion tamer & Alfalfa as the man on the flying trapeze, all seems headed for success - until the landlord shows up...

Few real laughs in this otherwise innocuous little film. Made after MGM got direct control of the Gang, and with the kids themselves noticeably growing up, it bears scant resemblance to the Rascals' classics of yesteryear.

That's old Clarence Wilson as the vile landlord.

The gang stages a circus in order to raise money for Porky's rent.

There are a few hints of the MGM films to come. First, we open on a crying Gang member, which became a popular MGM Our Gang motif. In this instance, Porky doesn't pull it off terribly convincingly, but we can be thankful it isn't the whiny Mickey who we're supposed to root for. Second, Darla's gone overboard into overacting land with her lion tamer routine, sounding like she's shouting her lines off a cue card. Finally, the circus itself is a little too elaborate; there sure were a lot of kids willing to donate their services! However, it's still good fun. The main four kids are still charming, as well as Shirley "Muggsy" Coates. Spanky and Leonard are funny as the "swell acrobats" and it's always amusing to see Clarence Wilson do his crotchety mean old man routine. It could probably rate pretty well against a Roach short, so that can't be too bad.

Clown Princes (1939)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

One-reel comedy from Hal Roach and his Our Gang. This time out, Porky is about to be kicked out of his home because of the greedy landlord. The kids decide to put on a circus to raise the money for him but of course things don't go as planned. This is a pretty good entry in the long-running series but I must admit that there weren't enough laughs to make the film a complete success. The best sequence would have to be when Darla is pretending to be the lion tamer but the lions are actually dogs made up. Some might object as there are several scenes where dogs are tied to wires in order for the "gags" to go as planned. There's also a rather silly scene with Buckwheat playing a cannibal from Africa. Clarence Wilson gets a few nice laughs as the landlord including drinking the penny lemonade instead of the two-cent one.

This M-G-M comedy short, Clown Princes, is the one hundred seventy-ninth entry in the "Our Gang" series and the ninety-first talkie. Porky's family is threatened with eviction so Spanky raises money by putting on a circus complete with various domesticated animals disguised as wild ones and Alfalfa singing "The Man on the Flying Trapeze". Using elements from previous entry Barnum & Ringling, Inc. and having Alf perform something Spanky had done with previous members in Mike Fright, this was another pleasingly amusing entry in the M-G-M-produced-only series along with a welcome return of Clarence Wilson-from Shrimps for a Day and Little Sinner-as the mean landlord. So on that note, Clown Princes is recommended. P.S. This was the first in the M-G-M series to have a credit for editor who in this case was Roy Brickner, brother of former Our Gang director Gordon Douglas (Brickner).