Pups Is Pups

What a great short this is from the early talking Our Gang series. It is so endearing that it will bring a tear to your eye. The centerpiece of the film is Wheezer and his puppies. It is obvious that his exuberance with the pups is natural and so delightful. He was such an absolutely darling child and a good little actor to boot. His "jingle, jingle, jingle" will steal your heart. If you love this one, see "Dogs is Dogs", also with Wheezer. It will make you cry.

This Hal Roach comedy short, Pups Is Pups, is the one hundredth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the twelfth talkie. In this one, Farina gets a job as a page in an animal show and he encourages the rest of the gang to enter their pets in. Wheezer himself has five puppies and plays hide-and-seek with them often using a bell to get them to come. I'll stop there and just say this was another funny ep of Hal Roach's Rascals involving some clever sound effects as well as a wonderful music score. Incidentally, this was the first short in the series to involve the music of one LeRoy Shield. His score would be in most of these Hal Roach entries providing such a pleasing background to the goings-on. This was also the first appearance of Dorothy DeBorba as part of the gang. So on that note, Pups Is Pups was quite an entertaining Our Gang short. P.S. I saw this on disc 2 of the Little Rascals Collection. It has a nice intro by a children's TV host named Tom Hatten who showed these shorts when he was on the air during the '50s and early '60s.

An OUR GANG Comedy Short

Farina alerts Chubby, Jackie & the rest of the Gang about a fancy pet show taking place downtown, prompting the kids into entering their pig, goat, mice & toads. Meanwhile, little Wheezer is discovering that PUPS IS PUPS as he tries to keep his five rambunctious puppies from running all over town.

A funny little film, with lots of interaction between the Rascals & their animals. Recurring highlight: Dorothy & the mud puddle. That's Charlie Hall as the violin player.

The gang decides to enter their animals in a local pet show.

Due to perceived racism toward African-Americans, several scenes featuring Farina were edited out of the Little Rascals syndicated television prints in 1971. They remained in 16mm, VHS and DVD home video releases. The scenes were reinstated in 2001 in the prints shown on American Movie Classics until 2003.

The "perceived racism" is actually why I find the film interesting. Not that I like racism, but looking back now (2016), it is interesting to see the newspaper specifically ask for "colored" boys. The term is outdated, but more to the point: why only them? Could white boys not be pages? It is interesting to me how long the black community found work as servants, maids and so on... did the class divide ever really go away?

I give this Our Gang short a 9 simply because it's so dog-gone cute. Seeing Wheezer playing hide and seek with his five puppies makes this one worth seeing! Farina gets a job at the local society dog show. He and the gang misunderstand and plan on bringing their pets (pigs, goats, frogs and the like) to the show to win prizes. Much of the film, however, shows Wheezer playing with his puppies. He's taught them to respond to a bell--much like Pavlov's experiments. And, when they accidentally get loose, EVERY possible hell in town attracts the cute puppies. Of course they get into all kinds of trouble--as do the kids. It's all good fun and one of the better Our Gang comedies.

By the way, that's Charlie Hall with the violin late in the film. He was a familiar face in various Hal Roach films--especially ones with Laurel & Hardy (such as in "Tit For Tat" and "Them That Hills").