Boys to Board

In this, the tenth episode of the popular series, Our Gang are orphans and at the boarding school run by Richard Daniels and his wife, Helen Gilmore. Daniel is a mousy little bloke who spends his time when he should be teaching the rascals, reading dime novels. Miss Gilmore, on the er hand, is a tartar who feeds them poorly and beats everyone, including Mr. Daniels. So they decide to run away, including Mr. Daniels.

This being a boarding school, only the male cohort is present -- apparently in this one, Farina, played by Alan Hoskins is a boy; the character changed sexes or remained undefined as suited the plot. Whenever there was a plot at all. The best of the series had none.

The story is set at an odd sort of orphanage. First, there are only about half a dozen kids residing there. Second, 'Mother' Malone runs the place....and she's a monster who takes pleasure in beating the snot out of the kids, staff and even her husband, 'Pop' Malone! It's so bad that eventually the kids work together to escape from this horrible place...and they even take Pop with them! What's next? See the film and find out for yourself.

While the violence was pretty unsavory and not fun to wach, fortunately the short didn't go too far in portraying Mother's violence. Plus, the ending was fun, as you see Pop finally lose it and teach Mother a lesson. Not a great installment but still quite good.

By the way, originally like nearly all silent films, this one came with no music and it was provided by the theaters (usually with an organ or piano). However, many silents later had musical scores added. Oddly, the copy I watched on YouTube kept losing the musical accompaniment...and it just kept coming and going throughout the short film.

Boys to Board, the tenth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the last one directed by Tom McNamara, is the old hat story of orphan kids being stuck in a boarding school with perhaps the meanest schoolmaster in Mother Malone. Her husband, Pop Malone, is too reticent to even confront her, busy as he is reading pulp westerns under the textbook that he's supposed to look at. After Sunshine Sammy arrives and causes havoc, Mrs. Malone punishes him by making him wash dishes. The rest of the gang resolve to escape later that night with Sammy and Mr. Malone...While there's some amusing gags early on like Pop Malone's hair raising up when he reads something exciting in his western book or the cat on top of a lounge chair being sent to the chandelier after Pete the Pup rushes to the front of the chair hard, the overall effort was a little blah after a while. And it's so obvious that many of the "nighttime" scenes were shot in broad daylight. Still, it ends on a good note and I loved the LeRoy Shield music the YouTube poster added to this silent that brings back such memories of the talkie "Little Rascals" shorts I used to watch on weekday afternoons on WBRZ-TV in the late '70s. So to any fan of the gang and silent comedy, Boys to Board is worth checking out once. P.S. Pop Malone was portrayed by Richard Daniels, Mickey's father.