Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader

by Michael Brunsfeld

  Ernie, who was black, was already a star at Hal Roach Studios when he was cast in the first Our Gang comedy in 1922. He was the most popular character in the earliest Our Gang films, but he left after just two years when he was offered more money to perform in vaudeville. In the 1940s he starred in several of the Dead End Kids/East Side Kids films.

  BOBBY “WHEEZER” HUTCHINS (58 films, 1927–1933)

  Two-year-old Bobby got his nickname, “Wheezer,” his very first day on the set—he was so excited to be there that he ran around until he lost his breath and started wheezing.

  NORMAN “CHUBBY” CHANEY (18 films, 1929–1931)

  When Joe Cobb grew too old for the series in 1928, the studio launched a nationwide publicity campaign to find a new fat kid. Eleven-year-old Norman Chaney reportedly beat out 20,000 other entrants for the part. His response when told he’d won the part: “Mister, are you just kidding me because I’m fat?”

  MATTHEW “STYMIE” BEARD (36 films, 1930–1935)

  • The kid with the trademark bowler hat (a gift from Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy fame) replaced Allen “Farina” Hoskins when Allen got too old for the series. The studio had already tested 350 kids for the part when Matthew arrived at the studio for his screen test. He never had to take it—as soon as director Bob McGowan saw him he shouted, “That’s who I want! Sign him up for five years.”

  • Matthew’s character was originally named “Hercules.” But he was fascinated by the movie-making process, and his curiosity frequently interfered with, or “stymied,” the film’s progress, which earned him the new nickname.

  What U.S. state has the largest formation of sand dunes? Nebraska.

  • When Beard died in 1981, he was buried with his bowler hat.

  TOMMY “BUTCH” BOND (27 films, 1932–1940)

  Tommy was discovered by a Hal Roach Studios talent scout while walking down a Dallas street with his mother. He played two characters in the series: Tommy (1932–34) and Butch (1937–40).

  GEORGE “SPANKY” MCFARLAND (95 films, 1932–1942)

  • Three-year-old George had already appeared in a Wonder Bread ad when his aunt sent his photograph to Hal Roach, who liked what he saw and ordered a screen test. It went so well—the cameraman ran around the lot telling people, “You’ve got to see this!”—that George was immediately signed to a five-year deal.

  • George’s screen nickname was going to be “Sonny” until a writer overheard his mother threaten him with a spanking by saying, “Spankee, spankee, mustn’t touch.”

  • George reportedly learned how to do his double-take reaction shots from comedian Stan Laurel.

  WILLIAM “BUCKWHEAT” THOMAS (93 films, 1934–1944)

  So was the Buckwheat character a boy or a girl? It depends on what film you’re watching: William was actually the third actor to play the character; the first two were girls, and at first the character’s gender was ambiguous. Carlena Beard (Matthew Beard’s sister) played Buckwheat in two films; a young girl named Willie Mae Taylor played the character in three others.

  EUGENE “PORKY” LEE (43 films, 1935–1939)

  • Eugene joined the cast after his mother mailed a photograph of him to the studio; Hal Roach thought he looked like Spanky and would make a good little brother.

  • When Eugene became too big to continue with the series, he was replaced by Bobby Blake.

  BOBBY BLAKE (40 films, 1939–1944)

  • Many Our Gang stars had fond memories of the experience, even if the typecasting later hurt their careers. Not Blake—he came from an abusive home and deeply resented being denied a normal childhood. “I wasn’t a child star, I was a child laborer,” he says.

  Little red books? Mao Tse-Tung was once a librarian.

  • Blake’s career path was the opposite of many of the Little Rascals. He signed on in 1939, after Hal Roach sold the Our Gang franchise to MGM. The series was heading downhill, and Bobby (who used his real name, Mickey Gubitosi, before adopting the stage name “Bobby Blake” in the early 1940s) appears in many of the worst films of the series. But he went on to have one of the most successful post—Our Gang careers of all. As an adult, Robert Blake won critical acclaim for his portrayal of a death-row killer in the 1967 film In Cold Blood, and won an Emmy for his work on the 1970s cop show Baretta.

  WILLIAM “FROGGY” LAUGHLIN (29 films, 1940–1944)

  Laughlin’s scratchy, “froggy” voice wasn’t his real voice—it was just a trick that he did for his character. His real voice was normal.

  DARLA HOOD (52 films, 1935–1941)

  • Three-year-old Darla, an Oklahoma native, was in New York with her singing instructor when the Edison Hotel’s bandleader unexpectedly invited her onstage and asked her to sing. Her performance thrilled the audience—including Our Gang casting director Joe Rivkin, who happened to be there that evening. He arranged for a screen test, and when that went well, signed Hood to a seven-year contract at a starting salary of $75 a week.

  • Like a lot of the Our Gang child actors, Hood had trouble finding film work as an adult. She eventually went into background singing and commercial voice-over work; for a time, hers was the voice of the mermaid in the Chicken of the Sea tuna commercials.

  CARL “ALFALFA” SWITZER (61 films, 1935–1940)

  • Carl’s father lost his foot in an accident and had trouble finding work, so Carl and his older brother, Harold, sang at auctions, country fairs, and other venues to help make money for the family.

  • In 1934 the family went to California to visit relatives; while there they decided to see if they could get an audition for Carl and Harold at the Hal Roach Studios. They couldn’t—but the studio commissary, the Our Gang Cafe, was open to the public, so the boys went in one afternoon during the lunchtime rush and started singing. Hal Roach was so impressed that he signed them both and wrote their act into the next film, Beginner’s Luck.

  Q: Which major TV network uses lowercase letters in its logo? A: ABC.

  • Roach considered naming Carl’s character “Hayseed,” but later settled on “Alfalfa,” which was taken from a character in a silent film that Will Rogers had made for the studio.

  • Carl had a reputation as a prankster and a troublemaker. Once, he got mad at the director and urinated on the hot studio lights, shutting down production until the smoke (and the stink) cleared the studio. “They had to open the doors of the stage and run the big fans through there the rest of the day to get the smell out,” Robert Blake recalled. “Alfalfa could be a devil.”

  • One of the running jokes with Alfalfa’s character was that he sang off-key but thought he was a great crooner. Tommy “Butch” Bond claims in his memoirs that Switzer wasn’t in on the joke. “He believed he could sing,” Bond writes. “That’s what made him so funny. He thought his off-key was on-key. Of course it didn’t help that people on the set told him he had a voice. He took them at their word, though they were joking and knew that the audience would howl with laughter on hearing his rendition of ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart’ or some other poor, mangled song.”

  • Carl’s “crooning” came back to haunt him when he outgrew the Our Gang series and tried to audition for older parts. “They used to say to him, ‘Hey Alfalfa, sing off key for us.’ It used to drive him crazy,” Darla Hood told Leonard Maltin in his book The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang.

  * * *

  SECRET SERVICE CODE NAMES

  Hillary Clinton: Evergreen

  Barbara Bush: Tranquility

  Nancy Reagan: Rainbow

  Rosalynn Carter: Dancer

  Betty Ford: Pinafore

  Pat Nixon: Starlight

  Lady Bird Johnson: Victoria

  Jacqueline Kennedy: Lace

  Mamie Eisenhower: Springtime

  Laura Bush: (It’s still secret.)

  Table talk: Only about a third of the world’s population eats with a knife and fork.

  LONGEST LASTING…

  We acted fast and put this pag
e together last.

  …Echo measured in a building: 15 seconds, in the Mausoleum in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire, Scotland.

  …Game of Monopoly: 1,680 hours (more than 70 days).

  …Rainbow: Residents of North Wales saw a rainbow on August 14, 1975, that lasted three hours.

  …Face-slapping competition: One held in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1931 lasted 30 hours.

  …TV series: Meet the Press (1947–present).

  …Live burial: Geoff Smith was buried in a box under a pub in England for 150 days, breaking the record of 101 days (which was set by his mother).

  …Volcanic eruption: The volcano on the Italian island of Stromboli has been erupting continually since 450 B.C.

  …Pope: Pius IX reigned for a record 31 years.

  …Continuous musical act: Les Brown’s Band of Reknown played from 1936 until 2000—64 years.

  …Single-family dynasty: An unbroken line of 36 heirs of Osman I ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1299 until 1922—623 years.

  …Tire fire: In 1983 nearly 7 million tires on a West Virginia ranch burned for more than 9 months. (It took 22 years and cost more than $11 million to clean it up.)

  …Tornado on record: On May 26, 1917, a tornado traveled 293 miles from western Illinois to eastern Indiana—more than seven hours on the ground.

  …Ice age: The Huronian ice age began 2.7 billion years ago. It lasted 900 million years.

  …Plant: “King Clone” is a creosote plant near Barstow, California. It is estimated to be 11,700 years old.

  …Marriage: John and Amelia Rocchio got married in 1923. He was 19 and she was 17. As of 2005—82 years later—they were still married.

  …Human: Jeanne Louise Calment of Arles, France, died in 1997. She was 122 years old.

  Where’s everyone going? The average American makes 4 car trips a day, for a total of 41 miles.

  ANSWER PAGES

  AUNT SHARI’S AMAZING POWERS

  (Answers for page 409)

  Peek-a-Boo: Aunt Shari wrote “Steve” on all five pieces of paper. She only pretended to write the other names down when I called them out. Then as soon as the trick was over, she took back the bag before I could discover the secret.

  Psychic Tattoo: When Aunt Shari picked up the sugar cube to drop it in the glass of water, she made sure to press down on the “U” with her fingertip. That transferred the “U” to her finger. Then when she took my hand, she pressed her fingertip against my palm, and that transferred the “U” from her finger to my palm.

  Full of Hot Air: This trick required advanced preparation. Aunt Shari knew I was coming over, so she mixed some water with an equal amount of lemon juice, then poured the stuff into the soda bottle until it was about a third full. (The real reason she wrapped the bottle in aluminum foil was to keep me from seeing that there was anything in it.) Then she spooned two tablespoons of baking soda into the balloon. When she attached the balloon to the bottle, she made sure not to spill any baking soda into the bottle. Then, when she was ready to do the trick, Aunt Shari lifted the balloon straight up, causing the baking soda to fall into the bottle and mix with the lemon juice and water. The chemical reaction released carbon dioxide, which inflated the balloon.

  Math Psychic: Aunt Shari knew that whatever numbers I picked, if I did the math calculations correctly, the answer would always be 1,089. That’s why she didn’t want to do it more than once—if we both got the same answer again, I’d know it was a trick.

  Keep the Change: When Aunt Shari had me press down on the coin with my finger, she wasn’t reading my mind…she was silently counting to 30. She knew that if I held my finger there for 30 seconds, my body temperature would warm the coin up. Then when she pretended not to be able to read my mind, that gave her the excuse she needed to pick up the coins and feel which one was the warmest.

  A killer whale can eat 2,000 pounds in one sitting. (Whales can sit?)

  THE POLITICALLY CORRECT QUIZ #1

  (Answers from page 114)

  1—b) When the British National Association of Master Bakers protested, the supermarket chain backed down. Gingerbread men are back; Gingerbread persons are banned.

  2—c) The vote was 4–3, and not everyone is happy with the decision. “I feel like we’re living in the middle of a George Orwell novel,” says Jap Road resident Jason Marshburn, 31. “It’s like me suing Keebler or Nabisco because the word ‘cracker’ is offensive to us white people.”

  3—b) After spending several hours watching old Lone Ranger reruns, the commission concluded that kemosabe means “trusty friend,” just like the store owner said it did, and ruled in his favor. “Both the Lone Ranger and Tonto treat one another with respect…At no time during the episodes is the term kemosabe ever used in a demeaning or derogatory manner.”

  4—c) The school backed down after the incident became public.

  5—b) The woman, who is now in college, is suing the school district for $50,000. “Her only dance for her senior prom was on the sidewalk to a song playing on the radio,” her lawyer says.

  6—a) Senator Shurden proposes that the chickens wear the gloves, along with tiny vests containing electric sensors that register every blow. “It’s like the fencing that you see on the Olympics, you know, where they have little balls on the ends of the swords and the fencers wear vests,” Shurden says. “That’s the same application that would be applied to the roosters.” He says cockfighting was a $100-million business in Oklahoma before it was outlawed in 2002. (At last report the legislation was still pending).

  THE POLITICALLY CORRECT QUIZ #2

  (Answers from page 371)

  1—c) Someone in the purchasing department took offense at the term, which refers to primary and secondary hard drives. The county’s Department of Affirmative Action tried to get the term removed from the packaging of any computer equipment purchased by the county, but backed down in 2004 in the face of strong public ridicule. The controversy was later named “the most egregious example of political correctness in 2004” by the watchdog group Global Language Monitor, beating out such terms as “waitron” (waiter or waitress) and “higher being” (God).

  Popeye-atollah? Spinach originated in Iran (back when Iran was known as Persia).

  2—b) One of the Oglala Sioux Chief’s descendants, Harvey White Woman, started a campaign to pressure Crazy Horse Paris to change its name. “When you say the name Crazy Horse, you don’t conjure up nightclubs. You conjure up the warrior,” White Woman says. (No word on whether White Woman finds his own name offensive.) In 1992 he and other descendants of Crazy Horse sued the makers of the Original Crazy Horse Malt Liquor and won a $150,000 settlement. The company no longer makes the Crazy Horse brand.

  3—c) Kraft suspended production of the road-flattened candy critters after the New Jersey SPCA threatened to launch petition drives, boycotts, and letter-writing campaigns against the product. “We take comments from our consumers really seriously and, in hindsight, we understand that this product could be misunderstood,” a Kraft spokesperson told reporters.

  4—a) Mercedes-Benz made the concession after receiving complaints from the German chapter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). “When you consider that the skins of four to fifteen cows are needed for each car this means thousands of cows will be spared,” says PETA spokesperson Edmund Haferbeck. So does Mercedes expect to make a lot of leather-free cars? No. “Our customers are more likely to want even more leather at the premium end,” says spokesperson Ursula Mertzig-Stein. “But we will make cars without leather on demand.”

  5—b) “Pubescent kids are not going to want to take part in sumo wrestling if they don’t look cool,” Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper quoted one local amateur sumo official as saying. Too bad: “We have no intention of allowing children in pants into the ring,” says an official with Nihon Sumo Kyokai, the national wrestling body.

  6—a) The BBC ruled that since narcolepsy (excessive sleepiness) is a serious sleep disorder, TV’s Greatest Moments shou
ld not have made fun of sufferers.

  7—b) Sure, ladies’ nights are popular. Sure, they’re profitable. But J. Frank Vespa-Papaleo, director of the State Division on Civil Rights, says they’re illegal in New Jersey because they go against the “important social policy of eradicating discrimination.”

  B-ball quiz: Who has the record for the most personal fouls? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (4,657).

  8—b) The company agreed to make the change after Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik accused the furniture giant of showing only men putting the furniture together. “IKEA will now review its instructions leaflets to get a more even balance between men and women,” a company spokesperson told reporters. “I myself have great problems screwing together such furniture,” the prime minister says.

  WORD GAMES

  (Answers from page 305)

  1. By the Numbers

  GENERATION

  • 1234 = GENE

  • 456 = ERA

  • 567 = RAT

  • 890 = ION

  2. Sum Fun

  When written out, the words form anagrams of each other.

  ELEVEN PLUS TWO TWELVE PLUS ONE

  3. Painful Words

  HEARTACHE and HEADACHE

  4. Looking Back

  They both contain all five vowels, which appear in reverse order.

  5. Magic Words

  They all change pronunciations when the first letter is capitalized.

  6. Branching Out

  MAPLE

  OAK

  ELM

  BONSAI

  PINE

  ASPEN

  BAMBOO

  7. Another Magic Word

  NOWHERE becomes…

  NOW HERE

  8. Weighty Riddle

  TON

  Soda accounts for 25% of all beverages consumed in the U.S.

  BRAINTEASERS

  (Answers from page 162)

  1. A Thousand Squares

  Inside a roll of toilet paper