Marie Blake's greatest claim to fame was being Jeanette MacDonald's sister, or maybe for playing Grandmama on the 1960s sitcom THE ADDAMS FAMILY (where her talents were fairly wasted on a tiny part) but to me this talented character actress will always be Aunt Penelope, the pretentious old biddy aunt of Alfalfa in the classic Our Gang comedy short ALFALFA'S AUNT (1939), surely on everyone's list as one of the best OG comedies and certainly one of the greatest from the MGM era.
Alfalfa's mother's sister comes to stay with the family for a period much to his father's annoyance. Aunt Penelope is apparently an old maid with artistic delusions, an amateur sculptor and now embarking on an attempted career as a murder mystery novelist. Aunt Penelope is to sit a night with Alfalfa as his parents enjoy a night away. Alfalfa meanwhile has come across his aunt's book manuscript (written in first person form) in which the narrator announces her plans to murder her nephew to inherit the family fortune. This terrifies Alfalfa and he enlists the gang to secretly stay with him that night in order to protect him from harm. The gang makes such a racket in their hidden guarding they manage to scare the *beep* scared out of not only Alfalfa but his jittery aunt as well! And their actions spook the gang, too!!
The film has a wonderful GHOST AND MR CHICKEN type vibe about it and manages to be amusingly creepy in haunted house fashion even if this is just midnight at Alfalfa's own two-story home.
All of the performances in this short are wonderful most especially the wonderfully eccentric Marie Blake and her definitely nephew under the skin Alfalfa. Alfalfa Switzer was one of the greatest child comedians of all-time and this episode is one of his best showcases. Spanky and Buckwheat are good too and it is fun to see the underrated Porky Lee get one of his better showcases in the series with good gag lines and bits. I was delighted to discover Alfalfa's mother was played by the silent film star Barbara Bedford (THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS), I never realized that before seeing her name on the IMDb credits.
This was Aunt Penelope's only appearance in an OG episode (Marie Blake had previously appeared once as Tommy "Butch" Bond's mother in a minor role) although she makes such a vivid impression she's certainly among the series' most memorable adult characters, indeed she's mentioned in at least one other episode. Scotty Beckett would later guest star as Alfalfa's Cousin Wilbur in two episodes and his plain, glasses-wearing, nerdy demeanor suggests perhaps that he may be Aunt Penelope's son but this was never confirmed on those episodes and indeed in her lone OG episode Aunt Penelope's personality seems to be in keeping with the stereotype of a rather cross, melodramatic old maid. One wishes there had been at least another episode with Marie Blake and not only Miss Phipps had come back, but Aunt Penelope as well.
