Tired Business Men

I thought I had seen just about every one of the Our Gang shorts, from the early, plotless ones before they figured out what they were doing, to the last obnoxious MGM offerings. I was delighted to find one new to me in a fuzzy but pleasantly amber-toned copy. Fat boy Joe Cobb wants to join the kid's club, but their initiation is rougher than a fraternity hazing, and he gets kicked out. He vows his vengeance, so the Gang threatens to cut off his appendix. Joe's father is a cop, so he convinces them he can use his whistle to summon a horde of policemen and bluffs his way into leadership and tormenting them as they had him.

It's one of the shorts in which Our Gang has duplicated a private club to the best of their ability, using old junk and animal-powered contraptions. While it's not my favorite variety of the Gang's adventures -- those are the ones in which the kids fill up two reels with random bits of kids doing kid's stuff -- it does showcase series mastermind Bob McGowan's charming ability to remember how we thought when we were kids and were so anxious to be adults. Alas, now that I am, I never realized how good I had it!