Boxing Gloves

Our Gang made a very easy transition from silent to sound in 1929 with some of their best shorts being made in the early sound era. Our Gang made its "all-talking" debut in April 1929 with the three-reel "Small Talk". Note that this is before many of the larger studios went to sound, and yet the children are much more natural in their performances than their adult counterparts. That's because the theory behind Our Gang from the start was for the children to behave as naturally as possible.

The acting by these kids is terrific, but this is what is known as a part talkie, and if you don't know that you'll keep playing with the sound thinking something is wrong. It is not. Here the Gang goes outdoors for a boxing match between two rivals, and outdoors was a place early sound equipment could not easily follow. Thus when there are close ups of just a few kids talking, even outside, you have true synchronized sound. Sound effects are added at certain other points outside to give the illusion of truly synchronized sound. However, for the long shots of the boxing match itself with a crowd of the kids making noise, these scenes are silent film with no crowd sounds even dubbed over.

Realize this and just sit back and enjoy the short and I think you'll like it.

Boxing Gloves (1929)

*** (out of 4)

Fat Joe and Chubby agree not to fight over girls and that promise lasts a few seconds until one walks by wanting a soda. Farina sees them fighting and decides to put them in his boxing ring in order to make some money. This is the first of the sound Our Gang shorts that I really liked and this one here benefits from a nice screenplay as well as better technical qualities. It seems the quality of this early sound features finally went over well as there aren't any annoying glitches or performances due to the new technology and this makes for a more pleasant film. The screenplay here also has a narrative for the first time out of the first four shorts and it's a very good one. We get all sorts of nice and funny action with the two fat kids running around having their pants ripped and fighting. The boxing match contains plenty of laughs as the two kids think the other is going to fall down in the second round but the thing just keeps going. Jackie Cooper makes his first appearance here.

This is one of my favorites!Very funny.Joe and Chubby are at odds over the lovely Jean.They won't fight because:Joe can't get mad enough,and Chubby is a scared!Of course fight promoter Farina convinces each one that the other will throw the fight! At that time women weren't allowed at boxing matches,so poor Mary Ann is refused admittance and resorts to a few failed attempts,before finally sneaking in.I read that this was Jackie Cooper's debut with the gang,and it was an auspicious one.His big contribution was to be dragged from ringside by Mary Ann,only to have her take his place dressed in his clothes! Still it's entertaining and the fight scenes are very funny!

This is the fourth Little Rascals sound film. It is very short, at only 17 minutes. Unfortunately, about half the sound track is missing, so that as the film is cut, we go from sound scenes to silent scenes and back and forth like that. Farina is trying to make some money out of staging a boxing match for which he can charge admission. Farina sees Joe and Chubby fighting rather feebly over a girl and decides that they would be good in the ring. The only problem is that 'Joe doesn't get mad and Chubby is scared', so something must be done to get them fighting properly. They agree to go into the ring. But Farina has discovered a secret about Joe which is that Joe is very vain about his hair, which must always be neatly combed. As Joe says: 'There ain't nothing that gets be madder than havin' my hair mussed.' So as the fight proceeds, Farina arranges for Joe to get his hair mussed up, which drive him wild and a savage fight then takes place. Although they wear heavily padded gloves, the kids are doing their own fighting and they whack each other with terrible force over and over again, and nowadays nothing like that would be allowed. But it was 1929 and 'everything goes'. At one point they knock each other out simultaneously. During all of this, Mary Ann keeps trying to sneak in to see the fight and being thrown out, but disguises herself as a boy and even wears a false moustache at one point. She ends up being able to see the fight, and Pete the Dog does as well. (He looks really interested in it.) Some of the regulars do not appear in this film, and a large extra cast of boys appears in the film as the audience and as troublemakers because they are older. All the long shots of the roaring audience of boys have lost their sound. The directorial credit for this film says it was directed by Anthony Mack 'under the supervision of Robert A. McGowan', but as IMDb makes clear, Anthony Mack was a pseudonym for McGowan for numerous Little Rascals films. I must confess myself puzzled as to why it was necessary for McGowan to pretend to be somebody else under the supervision of himself. Perhaps someone cleverer than myself knows the answer to this mystery. This is a rather disappointing Little Rascals film, and seems a bit half-hearted.

Sometimes I am shocked how bad (i.e. "Harry, Joe, Wheezer") or how good (i.e. "Farina, Chubby, etc.") some of these young kids are in the acting department. In these early Our Gang shorts, a few got a little famous, though, and no more more than the kid who makes his debut here in a cameo role: Jackie Cooper.

Cooper plays a paying customer to a fight being promoted by Farina and Harry with the boxers being Wheezer and Beezer - two little guys who have no clue what do to in the ring and don't have their heart into it anyway. When Cooper demands his "money" back, Farina asks, "Whad'ya expect? Jack Dempsey and Benny Leonard?" In the next Our Gang short, Cooper is part of the group but I don't think they explained how that happened.

Anyway, the promoters - speaking of Dempsey - need some heavyweight boxers to draw a crowd, so they get Chubby and Joe after Farina spot the two fighting over a girl. He puts their temporary animosity to good (and funny) use! The boxing match between the two heavy kids takes up almost the entire second half of the film is pretty comical. Check out the misspelled signs, too, which are cute.

The odd thing is that the sound goes off a number of times when the camera pans back for a crowd shot. Only the closeups then does the sound return. Since this was 1929 and the beginning of "talkies," crowd noise was obviously too difficult to handle here.

Still, the short provides a number of good slapstick comedy scenes, something you always got with old-time comedies featuring boxing.