Forgotten Babies

The greatest Our Gang short ever. 4 year old Spanky gets stuck babysitting with 6 toddlers - need I say more? It's nothing short of miraculous how Robert McGowan was able to get this on film. Included are scenes like a two-year-old standing on a table between two teetering towers of china, putting a china cup on one, watching it fall, then saying "Remarkable" on cue as the other one falls. This all in one take without any special effects or trick photography. Or how about Spanky's near-perfect retelling of a Tarzan movie, with one baby's random reaction of falling head-first off a chair and getting up unfazed. You couldn't film this today even if you had McGowan's genius. Remarkable!!

This Hal Roach comedy short, Forgotten Babies, is the one hundred twenty-first in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the thirty-third talkie. The gang-after temporarily watching their infant and toddler siblings outside-decide to go on their own for some play and leave Spanky-a toddler himself-to watch those little kids. They're all at his house while he spins his own Tarzan story but they're bored so the house becomes quite a mess! And it gets messier when a phone is off the hook while a mystery program is playing on the radio...This was a fine showcase for Spanky in not only doing a free-form monologue but also in his constant running around trying to take care of many kids not much younger than himself without losing control. Of note is the appearance of Spanky's actual younger brother, Tommy McFarland, jumping on the bed and wrecking it and also, Wheezer's younger sibling Dickie Hutchins being the one saying "Remarkable!" constantly! Oh, and this short also marked the first appearance of one Tommy Bond, years before becoming Butch! So on that note, I highly recommend Forgotten Babies.

This is a really great short from Hal Roach. This is because of two main reasons: The littlest kids in the short are among the cutest to have ever been on film and the plot has so many funny and well-written elements.

As for the littlest of the Little Rascals, I honestly can't think of a cuter kid than Spanky at about age four. Despite being a rather chubby and unattractive kid in later years, he was just precious here. And, placing the little tiny boy in charge of babysitting the even younger kids was not only funny, but once again high on the cute factor.

After the older kids blackmail Spanky into doing this awful babysitting job, all kinds of funny mayhem breaks loose. The gags are pretty effective and well-done for the time--with an accidental crank call involving a murder and a final scene where Spanky FINALLY gets control of the little ones being the most memorable. I haven't seen these shorts in many decades and I am glad I gave this one a chance.

One of my favorite OUR GANG shorts. Spanky is conned into babysitting a house full of infants. He resorts to scary actions, even gluing a toddler to the floor. When Spanky is surrounded by the out of control tykes, and he looks in a drawer and says "Ah, glue....". It's with as much menacing glee as the line "No Prisoners" in LAURENCE OF ARABIA. My favorite bit is when one of the babies turns on the radio to a Radio Horror Show about the screamingly insane Dr. Nemo (Voiced over the top by the monsterously funny Billy Gilbert) What radio station would broadcast such lunacy? You couldn't make these sort of fun movies today because modern day audiences want realism. Shame.

This is an unusual 'Our Gang' as it completely centers around Spanky McFarland. Luckily, he is one of the few 'rascals' who can handle the lone spotlight. The children he is supposed to babysit are little more than props in this one man show. Spanky's retelling of Tarzan is hilarious. What struck me most about his performance, especially his reactions to things, is the similarity to the work of fellow Roach actor Oliver Hardy. Spanky dealing with the babies reminds you of a small Hardy battling several young Laurels.