Today in The Post, I review
the first authorized set of all 80 talkies produced by Hal Roach for the series known variously as “Our Gang” and “The Little Rascals” — the episodes best known from countless television showings, though they were often cut and edited out of political sensitivity. They hold up surprisingly well. The set from Genius Products includes a couple of featurettes, interviews with some of the lesser former rascals, and a booklet containing trivia (Buckwheat was first introduced as a female character, played by the same male actor).
Another long-running series of shorts that found a new audience (i.e., us boomers) on TV is featured in “The Three Stooges Collection, Volume 4.” This latest chronologically arranged set from Sony, covering the years 1943-45, contains some of the team’s best work, including the classic “Micro-Phonies,” wherein Curly impersonates opera singer Christine McIntyre, and a pair that were banned from TV: the ultra-violent “They Stooge to Conga” and the politically incorrect “The Yoke’s on Me,” which puts the boys against escaped Japanese POWs.
Warner Bros. has eschewed the chronological approach for its “Looney Tunes Golden Collection,” out in its sixth and final volume today. While an entire disc is devoted to World War II cartoons, the rest of the selections, some quite rare, run the gamut from a ’30s musical tribute to art moderne (“Page Miss Glory”) to a Dr. Seuss adaptation from the ’40s to a ’60s cartoon featuring Martin the Martian.
The Abbott and Costello feature “It Ain’t Hay,” long unavailable because of rights issues involving Damon Runyon’s original story, is included in a new set comprising their 28 films for Universal, plus three documentaries that turned up in previous DVD sets, and a new book detailing their films. As far as I can tell, the only Abbott and Costello film now unavailable on DVD is their remake of “Rio Rita” they made at MGM. Rumor has long had it that will be included in an upcoming set from Warner that will also include authorized versions of the public-domain staples “Abott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd” and “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
