In 1936, in an effort to move all his comedy stars into feature films, Roach produced the only Our Gang full length feature, GENERAL SPANKY. It was an artistic and box-office disappointment, and Roach never made another Our Gang feature.
The Our Gang shorts steadily continued, however, but they were changing again with the times. The heart-tugging stories of the early thirties faded away, replaced now by pure comedies and several "let's put on a show" shorts. The popularity of this latter type of film (beautifully illustrated by 1935's The Lucky Corner) convinced Roach to film yearly musical showcases: Our Gang Follies of 1936, Reunion in Rhythm (1937) and Our Gang Follies of 1938. Alfalfa, Our Gang's "crooner", usually stole the show in these mini-musicals.
In the late thirties, with his other comedy stars now either off the lot (Charley Chase) or moved firmly into features (Laurel and Hardy), and short films losing their importance on the average movie theater bill, Roach might have ended production on Our Gang, especially with the failure of GENERAL SPANKY. But MGM, Roach's distributor, convinced Roach that movie fans still wanted to see more Our Gang stories. Roach agreed to keep production going, producing a series of one-reel films.
These later films, which are the ones many people remember today, featured Alfalfa's off key singing and his crush on the adorable Darla Hood; a more mature take-charge Spanky; and the indecipherable mumblings of Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas and Eugene "Porky" Lee ("O-tay!"), who took over as the younger kids, a la Spanky and Scotty. This group, like every horde of kids before them, had enormous screen presence and an almost uncanny ability to be funny. Alfalfa, in fact, grew into one of the most accomplished comedians on the Hal Roach lot and the sometimes Laurel and Hardyesque dynamics between his dim-witted trust in Spanky ("Well, what are we going to do now?") and Spanky's indomitable optimism ("I've got an idea! Come on!") brought new levels of situation comedy to the series.
And the inspired reintroduction of former unsung member Tommy Bond as "Butch", also kept the series going strong late in the decade. Tommy, one of the mid-thirties kids, had been out of the series for two years, but came back to play the villainous Butch (usually traveling with his oily pal, "Da Woim"), and played it for all it was worth. Put on this
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