Arbor Day

This Hal Roach comedy short, Arbor Day, is the one hundred forty-fifth entry in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the fifty-seventh talkie. It's also the last regular two-reeler with only a special one to come a couple of years later. There's an Arbor Day pageant at school with Spanky among the reluctant participants. He tried to skip school but the truant officer caught him. He also "caught" a couple of midgets-or little people-dressed as children in order to spend some time outside of their side show for a few hours so now they're forced to attend the performance. I'll stop there and just say this was quite an amusing and funny enough short what with Alfalfa's hilarious warbling of the song "Trees" and those midgets' performance of a song one didn't hear at school in those times! So on that note, that's a recommendation of Arbor Day. P.S. This marked the return of Olive and George Brasno who both previously appeared in Shrimps for a Day, as well as of Hattie McDaniel who reprises her role as Buckwheat's mom from Anniversary Trouble. And this marked the first appearance of Rosina Lawrence in the series.

An OUR GANG Comedy Short.

It's ARBOR DAY and Spanky's school is putting on a pageant - which he is determined to have nothing to do with. Eventually he agrees, but the real surprise of the proceedings is the short performance put on by a couple of midgets disguised as children.

Not much plot in this one, but it's enjoyable. That's George & Olive Brasno as the little people. Film mavens will spot Hattie McDaniel as Buckwheat's mother. Alfalfa warbles `Trees', badly.

For me, the highlight of this film is a spoof of childrens' Arbor Day celebrations everywhere. With more heart than art, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer performs an hilarious rendition of Oscar Rasbach's setting of Joyce Kilmer's poem "Trees."

With the arrival of Alfalfa Switzer and Darla Hood to the Our Gang shorts, the comedies began taking a turn for the worse in my opinion. This is because practically all their films together up through "Arbor Day" involved singing and dancing--two things you NEVER saw in earlier Our Gang comedies. And, now that I think about it, because of all the singing and dancing, comedy was NOT as evident in these shorts. I still have a quite a few more shorts to see in the Our Gang DVD collection--hopefully they'll get better, but at this point I sure have noticed that the earlier shorts were simply a lot better.

In this contrived singing and dancing short, there is to be an Arbor Day pageant at school and Spanky is trying to play hooky to avoid seeing it...something which I can EASILY understand! However, in addition to the truant officer chasing Spanky to school, he comes across two midgets from the nearby circus and mistakenly thinks they are truant children and he forces them to go to school. The two are George and Olive Brasno--who previously guest starred in the Our Gang short "Shrimp For a Day".

If you do see this rather limp short, look for Hattie McDaniel who plays Buckwheat's mother.

Too much singing and dancing and not enough plot!