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1-5 of 5
- Robert E. Hutchins was born March 29th, 1925, in Tacoma, Washington. He was born to James Hutchins and Olga Hutchins (nee Roe). Robert was a very outgoing boy with a charming personality, because friends persuaded James and Olga to go to a Hollywood photographer and get his picture taken. The photographer was impressed by Robert's intelligence, and asked to take a few feet of film of him. The results were so good that the film ended up in the projection room at Hal Roach Studios. Hal Roach decided the boy would be a good addition to his "Our Gang" short films, and signed him to a five year contract.
On his first day at the studio, Robert didn't have an identity for his part in the movies, and he was running around so much that he began to wheeze. Such led to the coining of the "Wheezer" name, one he carried for the rest of his time in Our Gang. Robert played the perky, tag-along little brother that was always anxious to be part of the mischief that the gang was getting into. He played such a part in both the silent films and the talkies.
Jackie Cooper recalls, "You'd go to play with Wheezer, and his father would pull him away, very competitive. I didn't get a satisfactory answer from my mother or grandmother as to why, but he was to be left alone. I guess his father was trying to make him a star or something. Obviously it never happened as it did for Spanky or some of the other kids."
In trying to make Robert a star, his father malnourished him, and isolated him from the other kids when not filming. James had a plan to keep him small and employable by underfeeding him, and wanted to ensure that Bobby and his siblings never learned that normal kids got a lot more to eat than they did. Nobody ever intervened upon the children's behalf. It's made worse by the fact that his plan backfired. While Robert was incredibly photogenic, and had some fine moments on screen, he looked and acted more like the slow-witted, malnourished child he was, as he aged. Sharper boys were given the leading parts, while Robert spent the last portion of his contract as a background player.
After he left Our Gang with 1933's "Mush and Milk", his film career was essentially over -- with an appearance in Pie for Two, Yoo-Hoo, and Strange Roads outside of his Our Gang shorts -- and he did no more acting after that. His mother and father divorced, and he, his brother James, and his mother moved back to Washington. They lived in a household with their grandmother, and Olga's new husband.
Robert got a job as a gas station attendant in 1942, and enrolled as an air cadet sometime in 1943, with speculation being that he enrolled sometime in August. He was very close to completing his advanced flight training, until a very unfortunate event occurred May 17th, 1945, and he perished. He was killed in a mid-air collision while trying to land a North American AT-6D Texan, at Merced Army Air Field Base in California. The other pilot involved received only minor damage, and landed safely. - David Clyde was born on 27 March 1885 in Blairgowrie, Perthshire, Scotland, UK. He was an actor, known for Suzy (1936), Bulldog Drummond's Peril (1938) and The Scarlet Claw (1944). He was married to Fay Holden. He died on 17 May 1945 in San Fernando Valley, California, USA.
- Shayle Gardner was born on 22 August 1890 in Auckland, New Zealand. He was an actor, known for The Phantom Fiend (1932), Detective Lloyd (1932) and Comin' Thro' the Rye (1923). He died on 17 May 1945 in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England, UK.
- Henry Herbert Knibbs was born to American parents on October 24, 1874, in Clifton, Ontario (later known as Niagara Falls). He became fascinated by the fiddle and learned to play at an early age. He suffered from a respiratory ailment for most of his life. Knibbs never worked as a cowboy, but he wrote western short stories, novels and poems. His father, George Knibbs, was a bank clerk at Pierce, Howard and Co., Bankers in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Eventually the company failed, casting the family into hard times. Knibbs spent summer vacations at his grandparents' farm in Pennsylvania. On the farm, he developed a love of horses nearly as great as that for his fiddle. Though he never earned a college degree, Knibbs attended Woodstock College and Bishop Ridley College in Ontario and studied English at Harvard. Leaving college, he spent two years hoboing in the American Midwest. In 1899, he married Ida Julia Pfeifer and went to work for the railroad in Buffalo, N.Y. In 1910, he moved to California and wrote his first Western novel, Lost Farm Camp. He then left on a long trip through New Mexico, Arizona and California to soak up local color for his writing. In 1929, Knibbs left his wife to live with Turbesé Lummis Fiske. Ida refused to grant him a divorce and wrote him daily begging him to return home. Turbesé, whose father, Charles Lummis, was a Western writer, influenced and edited much of his later work. Knibbs wrote 13 novels and six books of poems. His novels are out of print and largely forgotten, but his poetry remains popular in cowboy poet circles. Among his best remembered poems are Boomer Johnson and When the Ponies Come to Drink. Seven films made between 1919 and 1930 were based on his stories and novels. Knibbs career as a Western write came to a sudden halt when he mistakenly gave the period of a mare's gestation as nine months in a story published in the Saturday Evening Post. He was crucified by his peers for the mistake. He certainly knew that the correct period was 11 months, but this slip of the pen cost him his writing career, as he was never able to get another piece published. He died in San Diego, California, on May 17, 1945, from respiratory illness.
- Hans Georg von Friedeburg was born on 15 July 1895 in Straßburg, Alsace, Germany [now Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin, France]. He died on 17 May 1945 in Flensburg, Germany.