Saturday Morning

It's a Saturday morning and there are better things to do than to practice the cello. There's a nap to take, and the frogs -- real frogs, kept in the bath room -- need a good scrubbing, but mother has a switch....

When Hal Roach thought up Our Gang, he wanted to populate it with the sort of kids he knew when he was growing up in Elmira, New York, not with clean-scrubbed child stars. Along with series director Robert MacGowan, he recreated the life of incidents and gentle humor and dangerous thrills that kids actually have, before they grow up. There's not much of a real plot -- but what kid thinks in those terms? In the meantime, they have a swell time and those of us who remember being kids have one with them.