Review of Our Gang Follies of 1938

This M-G-M-Hal Roach musical comedy short, Our Gang Follies of 1938, is the one hundred sixty-second entry in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the seventy-fourth talkie. It's also the last in the series to run two reels and the only one produced by Roach to have the headline "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presents" instead of his name before "presents" as this one was heavily financed by his distributor. Anyway, Spanky has put on a revue at his clubhouse and the headliner is Alfalfa, King of Crooners. But Alf has a swelled head and wants to sing Opera from now on as he keeps singing "I'm the Barber of Seville" to boos. He goes to an Opera house and finds the boss there who's played by Henry Brandon who makes a "promise" to draw a contract-effective in 20 years! Alf comes back to Spanky and tells him his future is set though Spank tells him he'll eventually be on the streets with a cup in his hand! At this point, Alfie dreams it's 20 years later (though he and the other kids haven't aged) and he's a success but his debut in Opera is greeted by food thrown at him! No matter as his boss-Brandon again though now he's aged and made to look like Barnaby from Laurel & Hardy's Babes in Toyland-makes him sing Opera in the streets like Spanky predicted. Spank sees him-after putting a coin in his cup-and invites him to Club Spanky where Darla is the headliner and Buckwheat is a popular bandleader. I'll stop there and just say this was quite an entertainingly bombastic short full of enjoyable musical acts like that of Annabella Logan warbling her swing version of "Loch Lomond" or Georgia Jean LaRue and Phil MacMahon dueting on "That Foolish Feeling" and "There's No Two Ways About It" alongside Spanky and Darla in their numbers. Of course, Alfalfa ends the show with his enjoyably off-key version of Bing Crosby's "Learn to Croon" for a boffo finish. So on that note, Our Gang Follies of 1938 is quite a show for the gang. P.S. This is on Disc 7 of "The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection" of which the intro on it is done by Annie Ross, the grown-up version of Annabella Logan that I just mentioned. She's one of the few survivors from the series today.