Baby Blues

If there was ever an MGM version of the 10 Commandments regarding the Our Gang shorts, the 1st amendment should be ---

Thou Shalt Not Let Mickey Be The Center of Attention

His voice is so whiny which makes his delivery of lines damned uncomfortable to listen to! And it's made all the more obvious in Baby Blues, as he rants and raves to everyone about the baby's arrival, worried that his mom might have a Chinese baby (he recently reads a statistic: "every fourth child is born Chinese").

It's too bad Mickey is so problematic, since Baby Blues is not an altogether bad short. What's most interesting about this film is that it makes an effort to be "politically correct" even before "political correctness" ever became fashionable.

For example, when a bunch of bullies pick on Lee Wong for being a "ching chong Chinaman," Spanky (who consider's Lee a "swell guy") admonishes them by saying that it doesn't matter if one is Chinese, American, etc., as long as he's a decent person. In another scene, when the gang is invited for lunch at Lee's house, they worry that they may get "mouse tails" or "bird's nests," only to be served ham and eggs (gee, the Chinese eat just like us...who'd have thought? ha ha).

Now, this being 1941, there are still the expected stereotypes about the Chinese. Lee Wong speaks quietly and calmly and quotes Confucious; however, he DOES make it a point to remind us that Chinese people don't wear pigtails anymore.

Baby Blues boasts a rather neat story, and has some things to recommend it (including a scene where the kids go to the zoo to speak to "the stork"). Unfortunately, Mickey's performance detracts from the quality of this short. Well, it could have been worse...Mickey's part could have gone to Janet Burston (who plays his sister). Thank goodness for small favors.

With Mickey, Janet and a bland older sister as part of the family, you'd think Mickey's parents would invent birth control early, but it's not the case: a fourth child is due, and thanks to an almanac, Mickey learns that "every fourth child is born Chinese." Fearful of such a circumstance, Mickey stops being an irritating little brat and asks the Gang to help him to stop it.

After talking to a nurse and a stork, Spanky decides to introduce Mickey to Lee Wong, a friend of his whose dad runs a laundry (did Chinese people do anything else?) Surprisingly, the rest of the short is a pretty good plea for tolerance for the time period. Lee turns out to be a swell guy, whose family makes all-American meals, so Mickey is satisfied. Unfortunately, his next sibling is neither Chinese nor male nor singular, so Mickey decides to do the family a big favor and run away.

Clumsy in the MGM way, but it can't be faulted for its ultimate message, even if it's still grounded in stereotypes. (Every fourth word in the last half of the film is "Confucius.") One weird shot, though, is even after the Gang has clearly established that they're not getting "bird's nests" for lunch, Mickey is still making worried faces until he sees his OWN plate. Maybe he thought he alone would be poisoned. Who could blame him?

This M-G-M comedy short, Baby Blues, is the one hundred ninety-seventh entry in the "Our Gang" series and the one hundred ninth talkie. Mickey's mother is expecting and he's excited...until he reads an almanac that says "Every fourth child is born Chinese". After getting no answers from the zoo stork, Spanky takes his pal to see his Chinese friend Lee Wong (Edward Soo Hoo) whose family turns out to be not that different from us. I'll stop there and just say this is a far cry from the early silent short in the series, Lodge Night, when the gang had an organization called the Cluck Cluck Klams (no need to mention what that name spoofs) even with Sunshine Sammy and Farina as members! While it's nice to see the gang practicing tolerance here, there's hardly anything funny in the short, certainly nothing that made me laugh since neither trying to talk to the stork nor their assumptions of lunch consisting of rats' tails or birds' nests was what I'd call hilarious. So on that note, Baby Blues isn't recommended except for any OG completists out there. P.S. Since I always like to cite when a player from my favorite movie-It's a Wonderful Life-is in something else, here it's William Edmonds, Mr. Martini in that film, as Mickey's father. And Janet Burston here plays one of Mickey's sisters.

Mickey (Robert Blake)'s pregnant mother is ready to give birth to her fourth child. He mistakenly thinks that the baby will be Chinese. Our Gang is all confused and goes to the doctor's office. The nurse tells them about the stork and they next go to the zoo. Finally, they seek help from Chinese kid Lee Wong. Lee is being bullied by other kids and Our Gang comes to the rescue.

Our Gang is trying to be expand their racial inclusivity. It could be worst. It's Mickey, Froggy, Spanky, and Buckwheat. It has its fun like the zoo side trip. Then it has its serious lesson by standing up to the bullies.