Rediscovering The Little Rascals with Sound
Thursday July 10, 2008
These days, one of my favorite pleasures is to watch YouTube videos of the Little Rascals (Our Gang). Using the cochlear implant, I am able to pick up at least a few sentences. One thing that helps is that I had read this book on the Little Rascals.
 Courtesy of Pricegrabber |
That book gives examples of classic sentences from equally classic scenes in the Our Gang films. It has been so long since I was able to hear, and even longer since childhood when I grew up watching the Little Rascals on TV. I do not remember if I had ever been able to hear these sentences before.
It is a big pleasure for me to hear for the first time (?) things like "You're darn right its Butch!," "Run, Alfalfa, run!" and "The dunking you got is worth the whipping I'll get!" I probably would not be able to understand those sentences if I did not have the book to help me out. I'm not yet at the point where I can easily understand a non-captioned video without knowing the words to listen for in advance.
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Margaret Kerry, who modeled to Tinkerbell for the Disney animators, was among the Little Rascals. She played the role of Peggy for three film shorts. Kerry will be signing photos and autogarphing for fans at the September 2008 Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in Aberdeen, Maryland, along with many other celebrities such as Patty McCormack, Edd Byrnes, Mickey Freeman, Larry Storch, Kathleen Hughes and Jon Provost. September 18 – 20, 2008. I was there last year when they had a Lassie and Little Rascal retrospective and it was great. I bought the Leonard Maltin book at the convention it is magnificent.
http://www.midatlanticnostalgiaconvention.com
Jamie, many thanks for sharing your personal experience with the sounds from “Little Rascals” or “Our Gang” film serials. How interesting!
I haven’t checked out whether the “Little Rascals” on DVD are captioned or not.
Margaret,
Many thanks for the link to the Mid-Atlantic Nostaglia Convention in Aldreen, MD. I truly appreciate it very much.
Jamie and Margaret,
I did write the blog posting on the retrosepective of “Speed Racer cartoons”, “Kimba”, “UltraMan” and “Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot” all Japanese television products shown on DC’s WDCA-20 tv channel during my childhood at WVSD, but didn’t publish it. This blog posting was mysteriously disappeared.
I always identifed myself with Spanky, because of being the leader. I liked Froggy and Butch characters. I ever liked Alafa’s girlfriend, Darla. I enjoyed Buckwheat character, too. Eddie Murphy done the good job of impersonating the adult Buckwheat on SNL.
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
I recently viewed the Columbia Picture’s 1940s film serials with Batman and Robin from Netflix. How interesting! Yes, both DVD versions with different actors were captioned.
The first Batman film serial of the 1940s had plenty of racist comments, but I don’t find them a big deal anyway.
RLM
Interesting that you have a difficult time understanding without first seeing it in print.That’s how we feel about signing. My husband and I still have a hard time understanding sign without knowing the general context first.We’ve been studying ASL for 6 mo.I really enjoy your blogs about your experiences with your new implant.Here’s to both our endeavors and our success at understanding one another.
Have you heard the voices of Alvin and the Chipmunks in their new movie recently? The sounds were soooo cute! Jesse McCartney did the voice for one of the chipmunks. (Teens love Jesse!)
Regarding Batman and Robin, watch the first serial, simply titled Batman. In chapter 6, cigarettes and an empty pack falls out of Batman’s cape.
I pre-ordered the Little Rascals shorts. Now I am hoping that Turner puts out the MGM shorts. I also plan to get my box set autographed by Kerry if the box arrives before the convention.
Hi Jamie,
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Congrats on the CI. I’m about to have one very soon. I’ve never really talked with anyone with a cochlear and have no clue what to expect, I mean, my doctors can say whatever they want, but without having lived it, they really are really just paying it lip service.
I’ve been searching like crazy for Little Rascals/Our Gang that are closed captioned, they’re very hard to come by. Most of the releases are by GoodTime, and I haven’t seen one that they’ve distributed yet that is cc. If you run into any, let me know. I did find some on Amazon (The best of Alfalfa, Buckwheat and Spanky) with s/h they’d run about $15 per dvd, and have average running times of 70 minutes, sort of steep for me, but at least you know where to look
Best of luck!