Divot Diggers

This Hal Roach comedy short, Divot Diggers, is the one hundred forty-second entry in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the fifty-fourth talkie. Spanky and the gang are at a golf course just playing along when the manager there has to get some new caddies since the ones employed there have left because of their low wages! Guess who he gets to replace them? I'll stop there and just say this was quite a hilarious entry in the series, probably more so than usual. Maybe that's because this marked the return of one Robert F. McGowan as director to the series. Non stop laughs galore here thanks not only to the gang but also a monkey that's along for the ride! So that's a high recommendation for Divot Diggers. P.S. You may notice Darla Hood-in only her second appearance in the series-has blond hair here instead of her usual brunet. That's because she was also shooting Laurel & Hardy's The Bohemian Girl at around this time. She met Shirley Temple when getting the lighter color, perhaps the only time she met the girl who tried for OG but instead became a star herself in her own features during this period. Oh, and this was "Uncle Bob" McGowan's final OG short. He was doing features by this time. He finished his career in the late '40s as the producer of some Our Gang-inspired features for Hal Roach after the M-G-M-only produced series ended in '44. When I get to one of those features, I'll mention what happened to him after that.

Spanky, Alfalfa and the gang play a bunch of wanna-be caddies. It's a great situation for Our Gang, unfortunately it's wasted. A few scenes of them playing golf with gardening tools are good for some laughs, but eventually the film makes a major mistake. Rather than focus on the great talents of it's young stars, the film spends way too much time focusing on their pet monkey. All the chimp does is break golf clubs, eat golf balls and make whoopee cusion noises. It's not very funny.

This golf story - the boys (Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat, Porky and a chimp who makes weird noises) become caddies when the regular caddies quit suddenly - is funny on a two-fold front: how the kids play (what they use for clubs is a hoot), and how they torment the adult players.

The reactions of the adults are the funniest parts of this Our Gang short, in my opinion. It's interesting that the adult golfers ran the gamut from terrible to excellent. It didn't make a difference; the kids' antics made it impossible to play, anyway!

At least these older guys can laugh at themselves and the predicaments they get into with these lame-brain caddies. Sometimes, though, they don't laugh - which means the kids are doing something really funny.

This is one of the dumber Our Gang comedies. However, if you just turn off your brain and enjoy, it's not bad. Plus, unlike most of the shorts made with the kids at this time, at least this one does NOT have singing and dancing! The kids are trying to play golf at the local course but naturally, they are making a mess of it. Soon, a really crazy guy comes and offers to pay the kids to be caddies for a group of golfers. Now considering how young the kids are AND one of the new caddies is a chimp, this is why I assume the guy hiring them is certifiably insane. The four golfers seem no better, as they take the age and non-human status of one of them in stride. But, it turns out that the chimp is a regular ham and he creates a huge mess--culminating with some very contrived scenes involving a riding mower and the kids going tobogganing.

This short relies on lots of broad humor--goofy sound effects for the chimp, chicken feathers and the like. This is NOT an intellectual or especially well thought-out short...but, oddly, it did make me smile from time to time. Not great, not terrible.

"Divot Diggers" marks the welcome return of Bob McGowan to the director's chair. McGowan (not to be confused with Robert A. McGowan, also known as Anthony Mack, his nephew) helmed the Gang for about ten years, then left. Gus Meins adequately seated himself in the director's chair, but some of the films he directed took a noticeable drop-off in quality.

The story involves the Gang playing golf (or trying to!) at the nearby golf course. They get hired on as caddies with their monkey, and chaos ensues!!

This may be the last great "Our Gang" short. The reason? It was Bob McGowan's last directorial stint with the Rascals; the two-reelers were coming to an end to make way for the decent yet slick one-reelers; and, of course, in just two years, MGM would take over the entire series (ugh). Don't get me wrong, the Roach one-reelers are, for the most part, very good, but they just don't beat the 1930-36 period. "Divot Diggers" was one of the last films from the series' finest era. 8 out of 10.