Stage Fright

This Hal Roach comedy short, Stage Fright, is the seventeenth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series. It's also the first one listed on this site that has yet to have a review of which I'm going to be the first. In this one, the kids are forced to do a play about ancient Rome. Anything that can go wrong does, from Joe nearly falling with the chair he's sitting on to a couple of guards and Jackie keeping on switching positions on stage, to a little girl trying to recite a poem at the wrong moments. Add in a cow and some firecrackers and there's no way this is going to go smoothly, to our enjoyment! Robert McGowan has done it again in bringing another hilarious short starring those mischievous kids! So on that note, I highly recommend Stage Fright.

Visiting con man William Gillespie lectures Our Gang's mothers on an impoverished tribe he made up. "The Trombonians do not ask for charity," he says. "Just money." So the mothers decide to produce a play for the kids to act in.

I am not fond of the kiddie movie in which the kids put on a show, which is rotten, but this one avoids the problems I hope with that situation by placing the blame for the disaster on the mothers, who are all geniuses and so are their kids. Which they are not. Our Gang, as envisioned by studio head Hal Roach and so ably executed by series producer-director Robert MacGowan, was about ordinary kids, with plenty of imagination. Good kids, too. Anyone could join, and that was comforting to parents and children alike. And if things go wrong, well, that's the trouble with parents.

When the story begins, a con-man who calls himself 'Prince Dalmar El Faro' is addressing a group of women about the plight of the poor, starving Trombonians. Of course such a group of people don't exist and it's all some sort of scam. But this scam is pretty much forgotten about soon after when the mothers decide to put on a fundraiser....but no word about the faux Prince after this.

The parents all think it would be wonderful to have a fundraiser where their talented (?) kids put on a play. The kids are terrible, as you'd expect, and the audience seems to enjoy watching the fiasco. My favorite part was the obnoxious mother who insisted her daughter do a recitation...one that has nothing to do with the play and which keeps interrupting the production.

Overall, this is a cute film...not among the best of the Our Gang shorts but a very good one that has a few nice laughs.