Doin' Their Bit

Poor Spanky and Buckwheat. MGM made them appear in drivel like this because they were under contract. It's sad to see them go downhill like this.

Needless to say, this is a "revue" short. Some guy who keeps reappearing to goad the kids into performing cutesy little numbers, goads the kids into performing cutesy little numbers. After a quick proto-Riverdance which is even more stultifyingly boring, Janet Burston sings "I Love a Man In Uniform" in a passable and yet not entertaining fashion. Spanky and Froggy then do an army camp skit with Froggy's raspy voice destroying the punchlines. Finally a young Virginia O'Brien wannabe sings about the Allies while solemn and depressed-looking kids parade by with flags. (Buckwheat gets the Haiti flag. Make of that what you will.) I think the war effort could have done without this "bit", and judging by the fact that this short was the first to lose money, I think America felt the same way about it.

I TOTALLY disagree.

"Doin' Their Bit," even though it might have seemed a little "put-on," is one of my favorite MGM-produced "Our Gang" musicals. For somebody who wasn't even around when this film was released (I was born in April 1962), and considering the historical significance embodied into it (World War II was eight months old in mid-July 1942), it made me appreciate how people back then banded together to help our country, much in the same way the 9/11/2001 incident did recently.

And even though some people didn't like Janet Burston's big number, I thought it was rather funny, especially after reading how, in Leonard Maltin and Richard Bann's 1992 "Little Rascals" book, the two authors "dissed" it (they said, "Judging from the applause this generates, the soldiers in the audience must have been starved for entertainment").

I also thought the "Allies on Parade" finale was rather good (Buckwheat carrying a Haiti flag? I'll have to check that out if and when I ever see this short again); to me, it was kind of like the "Main Street, U.S.A." 2-parter of "The Lucy Show" - even today, it has a "feel-good" quality to it that, when you look beyond when it was made - well, makes me GLAD to be an American citizen! (And by the way, that "Virginia O'Brien wannabe's" real name was Beverly Hudson; she also had a small part in "Our Gang's" much-worse "Family Troubles" a year later.)

Yes, I too, as Maltin and Bann also said in their negative "Doin' Their Bit" review, was "weaned on earlier and better 'Our Gang' comedies" - but I DIDN'T think "Doin' Their Bit" was "coy and plastic" or "(a) cute and stale little revue," nor lacked any "heart, humor, or talent." I thought the short was rather enjoyable and well-done!

(Warner Home Video, any chance you'll put out a compilation of the last 52 MGM-produced "Our Gangs" on DVD? If so, I hope you'll include "Doin' Their Bit" and perhaps other favorites like "Mighty Lak a Goat" - but, as I said before, DON'T include such God-awful shorts as "Ye Olde Minstrels!")

I give "Doin' Their Bit" an 8. Happy 4th of July!

This M-G-M musical short, Doin' Their Bit, is the two hundred eighth entry in the "Our Gang" series and the one hundred twentieth talkie. For the last time, Froggy's Uncle Walter Wills (this turned out to be his last film overall) persuades the gang to put on a show, this time for U.S. service men stationed in Greenpoint. This all-kiddie revue starts out entertainingly enough with boys dressed in military uniform marching in dance step with Janet Burston later doing a cute number called "I Love a Man in a Uniform". Then there's an awful sketch with Spanky as a superior officer bemoaning how dumb Private Froggy is with his replies-even worse when you can't understand half what he's saying with that voice of his! The final number "Allies on Parade" with a young woman singing it while the kids are wearing the flags of the countries united with America in the war effort and walking by her is an okay morale booster for the time period. So on that note, Doin' Their Bit is worth a look for any Our Gang completists out there. P.S. This was the first series entry directed by Herbert Glazer. Unlike the other OG directors, these entries were the only films he'd make as such.

* Many viewers of these MGM-produced "Our Gang" musicals truly fail to understand that they were parodies of the those Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland era "Hey Gang, lets put on a show!" feature length movies. Rather than going for the usual neighborhood kids laugh comedy the MGM era Our Gang films such as this were show-casing the musical talents of the youngsters that MGM had under contract at the time. While it seems to me that many folks fail to appreciate Froggy who replaced Alfalfa (who had outgrown the series) as a kind of "Shemp" to Alfalfa's "Curley" Froggy was indeed a good child actor and an asset to the series. His "frog" voice was his impersonation of the Popeye cartoon character.

Even taking into account that this "Our Gang" short was meant to be a morale-booster for the home front and nothing more, it's just downright awful. The opening production number, with 15 or so young boys dressed in military uniforms doing a precision tap-dance routine, is not particularly good but turns out to be the best thing in the picture, which rapidly goes downhill from there. Froggy and Spanky do an army-camp "comedy" routine that has nothing whatsoever funny about it--as another reviewer mentioned, Froggy's voice makes it almost impossible to understand the "punchline"--and a young girl who looks to be about five or six years old sings a number in which she keeps repeating dreamily "how I love a man in uniform" that comes perilously close to being creepy. The closing "Miss Liberty" number is so bad, and the kids in it look so bored, that it's downright embarrassing. The "Our Gang" kids have done several cute and interesting little musicals in this series, but this dud is definitely not one of them. Skip it.