Orphaned shoeshine boy Spanky is working on a Mississippi riverboat during the Civil War. There he befriends young runaway slave Buckwheat. After wronging a vicious gambler, Spanky and Buckwheat are forced to jump ship. Finding solace at a nearby house, the two are picked by Marshall Valiant for an important mission. This inspires Spanky to organize the local kids to form a small army of their own.
12-11-1936
1h 11m
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Directors:
Gordon Douglas, Fred C. Newmeyer
Writers:
Hal Yates, Richard Flournoy, John Guedel
Production:
Hal Roach Studios
Key Crew
Sound:
William Randall
Original Music Composer:
Marvin Hatley
Presenter:
Hal Roach
Producer:
Hal Roach
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
George McFarland
George 'Spanky' McFarland was born on October 2, 1928 in Dallas, Texas, USA as George Robert Phillips McFarland. He was an actor, known for General Spanky (1936), Our Gang Follies of 1938 (1937) and Beginner's Luck (1935). He was married to Doris. He died of a heart attack on June 30, 1993 in Grapevine, Texas.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Phillips Raymond Holmes (July 22, 1907 – August 12, 1942) was an American actor. In 1928 Holmes was spotted in the undergraduate crowd at Princeton University during the filming of Frank Tuttle's Varsity and offered a screen test. In the early 1930s he became a popular leading man, playing leads in a few important productions, notably in Josef von Sternberg's An American Tragedy.
At Paramount, Holmes starred in melodrama and comedy. In 1933 his Paramount contract ran out and he moved to MGM for one year. As the decade progressed, his career declined, and he appeared in a few box-office failures, including Sam Goldwyn's poorly received Nana (1934). His last American movie was General Spanky (1936). In 1938 Holmes appeared in two UK movies. Housemaster was his last film. Then he returned to acting on stage in the United States.
At the start of World War II, Holmes joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was killed in a mid-air collision in northwest Ontario, Canada in 1942.
For his contributions to the film industry, Phillips Holmes was posthumously given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
Ralph Morgan (July 6, 1883 – June 11, 1956) was a Hollywood film, stage and character actor, and the older brother of Frank Morgan (who played the title role in The Wizard of Oz, 1939).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Ralph Morgan, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Irving Pichel (June 24, 1891 – July 13, 1954) was an American actor and film director. He married Violette Wilson, daughter of Jackson Stitt Wilson, a Methodist minister and Socialist mayor of Berkeley, California. Her sister was actress Viola Barry. The Pichels had three sons, Pichel Wilson, Julian Irving, and Marlowe Agnew.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Irving Pichel, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer was born on August 7, 1927 in Paris, Illinois, USA as Carl Dean Switzer. He was an actor, known for The Defiant Ones (1958), Our Gang Follies of 1938(1937) and I Love You Again (1940). He was married to Dian Collingwood. He died on January 21, 1959 in Mission Hills, California, USA.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Middlemass (3 September 1883, New Britain, Connecticut – 10 September 1949, Los Angeles, California) was an American playwright and stage actor, and later character actor with over 100 film appearances. usually playing detectives or policemen.
Middlemass graduated from Harvard University in 1909 and initially went into the insurance business, but soon went on the stage, joining the Castle Square Theatre stock company in Boston. He debuted on Broadway in September 1914 in The Bludgeon at the Maxine Elliott Theatre.
His best known play was a one-act melodrama written with Holworthy Hall (real name H. E. Porter, a college roommate) titled The Valiant, which was also made into a film of the same name in 1929, and as The Man Who Wouldn't Talk in 1940. The play became a favorite for amateur and local theater groups, and is still performed today.
Middlemass moved to Los Angeles around 1935, and began appearing in films. He died there in 1949.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Louise Beavers (March 8, 1902 – October 26, 1962) was an American film and television actress. Beavers appeared in dozens of films and two hit television shows from the 1920s until 1960, most often cast in the role of a maid, servant, or slave. She was a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a member of Sigma Gamma Rho sorority, one of the four African-American sororities.
Beavers was a breakthrough actress for black women and became known as a symbol of a "mammy" on the screen. A mammy archetype "is the portrayal within a narrative framework or other imagery of a black domestic servant, generally good-natured, often overweight, and loud".
Louise Beavers started her career in the 1920s. At the time, black people in films were limited to acting in only very few roles, usually as slaves or domestic help. She played the "mammy" in many of the movies she acted in. She started to gain more attention in the acting world after she played the role of Julia in Coquette, which starred Mary Pickford. In this film she played the black maid and mother figure to a young white woman.
She once received a review which stated: "Personally, Miss Beavers is just splendid, just as fine as she appears on screen, but she also has a charm all her own, which needs no screen role for recognition. She has a very pleasing personality, one that draws people to her instantly and makes them feel that they are meeting a friend instead of a Hollywood Star."
Beavers had an attractive personality, and often played roles in which she helps a white protagonist mature in the course of the movie.
In 1934, Beavers played Delilah in Imitation of Life in a dramatic role. Her character again plays a black maid, but instead of the usual stereotypical comedic or purely functional role, Delilah's story line is a secondary parallel plot. The public reacted positively to Beavers' performance. It was not only a breakthrough for Beavers, but was also "the first time in American cinema history that a black woman's problems were given major emotional weight in a major Hollywood motion picture". Some in the media recognized the unfairness of Hollywood's double standard regarding race. For example, California Graphic Magazine wrote, "the Academy could not recognize Miss Beavers. She is black!"
As Beavers' career grew, some criticized her for the roles she accepted, alleging that such roles institutionalized the view that blacks were subservient to whites. Beavers dismissed the criticism. She acknowledged the limited opportunities available, but said: "I am only playing the parts. I don't live them." As she became more famous, Beavers began to speak against Hollywood's portrayal and treatment of black Americans, both during production and after promoting the films. Beavers became active in public life, seeking to help support African Americans.
In later life, Beavers was plagued by health issues, including diabetes. She died on October 26, 1962, at the age of 60, following a heart attack.
Beavers was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1976.
William “Willie” Best (May 27, 1916 - February 27, 1962), sometimes known as “Sleep n' Eat,” was an American television and film actor. Best was one of the first African-American film actors and comedians to become well known. In the 21st century, his work, like that of Stepin Fetchit, is sometimes reviled because he was often called upon to play stereotypically lazy, illiterate, and/or simple-minded characters in films. Of the 124 films he appeared in, he received screen credit in at least 77, an unusual feat for an African-American bit player. Willie Best appeared in more than one hundred films of the 1930s and 1940s. Although several sources state that for years he was billed only as “Sleep n' Eat,” Best received credit under this moniker instead of his real name in only six movies: his first film as a bit player (Harold Lloyd's Feet First) and in Up Pops the Devil (1931), The Monster Walks (1932), Kentucky Kernels and West of the Pecos (both 1934), and Murder on a Honeymoon (1935). Best was first loved as a great clown, then later in the 20th century reviled and pitied, before being forgotten in the history of film. Hal Roach called him one of the greatest talents he had ever met. Comedian Bob Hope similarly acclaimed him as “the best actor I know,” while the two were working together in 1940 on The Ghost Breakers. As a supporting actor, Best, like many black actors of his era, was regularly cast in domestic worker or service-oriented roles (though a few times he played the role echoing his previous occupation as a private chauffeur). He was often seen making a brief comic turn as a hotel, airline or train porter, as well as an elevator operator, custodian, butler, valet, waiter, deliveryman, and at least once as a launch pilot (in the 1939 movie Mr. Moto in Danger Island). Willie Best received screen credit most of the time, which was unusual for “bit players,” most in the 1930s and '40s were not accorded due credit. This also happened to white actors in small roles, but black actors were not credited even when their roles were larger. In more than 80 of his movies, he was given a proper character name (as opposed to simple descriptions such as “room service waiter” or “shoe-shine boy”), beginning with his second film. Best played “Chattanooga Brown” in two Charlie Chan films —The Red Dragon in 1945 and Dangerous Money in 1946. He also played the character of “Hipp” in three of RKO’s six Scattergood Baines films with Guy Kibbee: Scattergood Baines (1941), Scattergood Survives a Murder (1942), and Cinderella Swings It in 1943. (Actor Paul White, who played a young version of Best’s “Hipp” in the first film, went on to play “Hipp” in the next three films. Best returned to the role in the last two.) After a drug arrest ended his film career, he worked in television for a while and became known to early TV audiences as “Charlie the Elevator Operator” on CBS's My Little Margie, from 1953 to 1955. He also played Willie, the house servant, handyman and close friend of the title character of ABC’s The Trouble with Father, for its entire run from 1950 to 1955.
Hooper Atchley (1887–1943) was an American film actor.
He appeared in 214 films between 1929 and 1944 and is known for his appearance as the inconsiderate father in the Our Gang film Birthday Blues.
Frank LaRue was born on December 5, 1878 in Ridgeway, Ohio, USA as Frank Herman LaRue. He was an actor, known for Boothill Brigade (1937), Sidewalks of New York (1931) and Mesquite Buckaroo (1939). He was married to Elsie May Payne. He died on September 26, 1960 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
