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!!

An OUR GANG Comedy Short.

The Gang coerces Spanky into watching their younger siblings. Caring for these FORGOTTEN BABIES turns out to be quite a chore, leaving the little nipper with no choice but to come up with some ingenious solutions to the baby-sitting problem...

Spanky is in his glory in this hilarious little film, arguably his best. Highlight: Spanky's retelling the plot of the TARZAN movie he's recently seen to the audience of infants. Movie mavens will recognize Billy Gilbert's voice in the radio drama.

This is probably the best episode made. The story that Spanky tells is timeless humor. To this day December 2021 I still don't know what he's saying but it's hilarious.

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 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.