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Part
2: Judiann's memories of her Uncle Alfalfa, her grandparents, and
the Little Rascals
TL:
I suppose when you were growing up, the Little Rascals weren't really
in everyone's consciousness like they are now, because they still
hadn't been syndicated on television too much, but did you ever
tell the other kids at school that your father and uncle were in
the Little Rascals?
JH: I tried to tell them and they would call me a liar and
that we didn't know what we were talking about.
TL:
Was there any kind of secret information you would give that would
prove it?
JH: Well, we were more into what Alfie was doing in later
movies. So we related more to what he was doing in the later movies
than the Little Rascals. When they came on TV, then we got into
it more. In fact, I think I remember I wanted a picture of Alfie
and my mother looked in up in some kind of book, an encyclopedia
or something…anyway, it was just a little tiny shot, and lo
and behold, what we didn't know was that my grandmother had all
these... but we knew Alfie was in the movies. You know, they talk
like Alfie was grubbing to get parts and all that stuff. Alfie wanted
a hunting lodge and wanted to be a scout. That's where he was happy.
That was the life he wanted. And that's how we remember him.
Candid
family snapshot
of Harold and Alfalfa
shortly after their
arrival in California.
TL:
What kind of uncle was he?
JH: He was awesome! He would come and kidnap me and come
over to grandma's… he would bundle me up and take me and grandma
would say, "Frederick's going to have a fit, you better not
take her", and he would take me home and I would stay with
him and Diane at their house. Alfie took me— I gained my name
of "Stool Pigeon" because Alfie would take me on some
of his dates with him. My grandfather had a yellow Oldsmobile. He
took me on this date and the wrong thing for him to tell me was
"Don't tell her that this really isn't my car". Well,
you know little girls… the first thing, when we went to the
restroom, I had to tell her. So she told him I told her. So after
that point, my nickname was "Stool Pigeon".
TL:
Did that ruin the date, when you spilled the beans about the
car?
JH: I don't know if he ever went out with her again, for
sure. But I remember we went to the movie "Godzilla".
I still remember that.
TL:
What kind of women did he date, if you can remember. Were they women
he met through the movies, or…
JH: The only woman I ever really saw my uncle with was Diane.
And he adored her.
TL:
I was confused about why your uncle was always thought to be a failure
as a grownup, because if you look at all the actors in the Little
Rascals, maybe two or three really achieved success, especially
without any controversy later in life. I guess the main one was
Jackie Cooper.
JH: There were only a couple of them that really stood out.
Hollywood has this thing that they have to beat up on somebody.
And they have to make you the bad guy. But you know what? How many
people can say, that have been in any type of movies or anything,
is as well-known as that boy is?
Drawing
by Judiann Hancock
of her uncle Alfalfa. Judiann
presented this as a gift to
her grandmother (who she
referred to as "Mom" as a
sign of affection.)
TL:
How do you feel about all the attention that's given to the way
your uncle died? Do you think it's exploitive?
JH: I don't think it's exploitive, I think it needs to come
out on Alfie's side of the story. I think it needs to be known that
there was a whole different side of the story than what was ever
told, it just came out that as if Alfie was an idiot, that he went
there and he caused the whole thing. The fact is, why would he have
thrown the gun back to him? They had been drinking and partying
all night and yeah, the guy probably owed— and from what I
understand, this guy owed Alfie this money. Of course, they said
they were gambling— we're never going to know the whole story,
and the whole truth. But I will tell you this, and I believe it
in my soul…my grandmother grieved over it, agonized over it,
and my grandfather went to his grave over it. My dad made sure that
Stiltz got a card every year for a long time that said "From
all of us to all of you, see you soon. Alfie", and he was on
the front of the card. We would have carried the tradition on but
we finally let it lie after my dad died. And we hushed dad's death
up because we didn't want— you know, if the news media had
gotten a hold of who he was…we got him buried with very little
publicity. It wasn't easy. Stiltz finally left town, where nobody
could get a hold of him. My dad— if you want to know my honest
opinion— if my dad had ever come face to face with him, he
would have killed him. I watched my dad fall to his knees, and my
dad was a very proud man. Very few times in my life did I ever see
him cry, but he agonized. When Alfie died…my dad died, my grandmother
died, Janice [Alfalfa and Harold's sister] died, and Pop died. They
all stopped totally living.
TL:
I've watched all your uncle's episodes very closely a number of
times, and it seemed that in the early episodes, when they were
singing especially, that your father sort of would give your uncle
a sideways glance, as if he was checking to see if your uncle was
doing what he was supposed to be doing. Did you ever notice that?
JH: Yeah, yeah… I think he was very protective over
Alfie. But he was the one who always kind of kept Alfie on key and
kept him in line. They were both very quick studies. Alfie wouldn't
look at his script until he was on his way to the studio.
TL:
I've heard that he had almost a photographic memory, that he would
usually do everything in one take.
JH: Yes. And he ad-libbed a whole bunch.
TL:
I heard that your uncle and Darla really didn't get along too well.
JH: They were just bratty kids, you know…they fought
and everything. Because Alfie and Spanky messed around a whole bunch.
They'd do things. But a lot of things that were caught on film,
was just the kids' genius, just doing it.
TL:
And to their credit, Hal Roach and the producers and directors,
they left all of that stuff in. I often think today, the comedies
they make today, they would never leave that in—
JH:—No…
TL: …they
would just think it was a mistake and do it over ten times or something,
but it's so much more natural just to leave that stuff in.
JH: Right. There are several of them, you know, where Alfie
sings and he stretches his neck and he's trying hard to sing, and
he's just so adorable. I have a grandson, and my son that passed
away, they resemble him a lot. It's funny to watch the resemblance.
And actually, as the grandchildren are coming up, we're seeing more
and more. It seems like it's rolling back now. My children are interested
in it, and of course I buy them all the tapes and tell my children
about it.
TL:
The one singing performance that's my favorite from the earlier
episodes is "Little Brown Jug", when they're singing next
to the lemonade stand…
JH: You mean the one where they have the banjos?
TL:
Right, your father was sitting and your uncle was standing up, and
they both had their cowboy outfits on.
JH: Yes. The cowboy chaps that Alfie had— and I could
just kill myself over this, they opened a trunk one time…we
lived in Santa Monica, and we got out a whole bunch of stuff, the
chaps were one of them. That's when we really found out that Alfie
and them were really in the movies. And they had these little books,
these square books they had back then, and they had these newspaper
clippings on… they advertised a lot for Nestle's candy bars.
That was some of the things that Alfie advertised for, was for the
Nestle's candy bar. And we just got in there, we had all that stuff
in our hands and we were just playing with it. And whatever happened
to most of it, we'll never know.
TL:
When they were singing "Little
Brown Jug", I always found it interesting that your uncle,
as he usually did, forgot some of the words—
JH: Yes—
TL: …but in the background, very faintly, you heard
your father. He kept going, he knew it note by note, he knew exactly
how it should have been sung.
JH: Yes. My dad listened to music and would play it. He didn't
know notes of music. He could hear an instrument and he could sit
down and mess with it, but it was so interesting that he never played
anything after he was grown. And he could yodel…I mean, amaze
me. He would do that for me when I was a little girl. Then when
my mother and him divorced, I came back for another summer, and
he never yodelled again. There was something about my dad, you had
an impasse in life somewhere, when if he did something, he would
just totally stop doing it.
TL:
Did your father ever tell you about
how they actually did the songs, what I mean is if they told them
something like "Now listen to this song and play it"?
Did he ever say how any of that worked?
JH: I think my grandfather and grandmother
were more part of that. They would rehearse them, the songs they
knew and stuff like that, then they would put it in…You know
the one where he played the opera singer?
TL:
Where he gets hit with the tomatoes?
JH: He was mad! He was really mad. Because they hurt him.
TL:
I'm glad you mention that, because I always thought to myself, that
kid got killed! He got pelted with that stuff.
JH: They really hurt him. And they let him keep it up. He
was going to whip some of them when he came off, they were going
to clean up. They told him they were going to be soft tomatoes.
And they hit him with everything. They had all that stuff there
to hit him with. That wasn't just little kids back there throwing
it.
TL: One of the things that got thrown, I think a cabbage
hit him in the head. That must have hurt.
JH: That's when he got mad. That's when he was gonna whip
them.
  
 
Above:
Video still captures of the famous sequence in
"Our Gang Follies of 1938" in which Alfalfa gets pummelled
with fruits and vegetables from an audience unimpressed
with his operatic efforts. Alfalfa's real-life shock and
anger over the veracity of this attack is clearly evident.
TL:
And he had the straight-edge razor, and he really hit the leather
strap with it.
JH: Oh, he was mad. My dad said he was so mad. And he said,
[laughs] "C'mon Harold, we're gonna whip their ass!" That
was his word. And you know, they did stuff like that to him and
they wondered why those kids would get mad. He didn't cry. We were
brought up with that. You don't cry, and you don't give in. You
can get even…but you follow through with it. My grandmother
was infuriated when it was over. She had a few things to say. You
know, I think they did this because they knew how strong their parents
were on having them stand before the camera. They knew he wouldn't
have walked off. And I think that they could get by with that with
him more. But they lived, basically, on the studio, and that's where
they played…the teacher didn't like Alfie. She never tried
to encourage him. And he hated her. There was a reunion and he met
her, and he told her off.
TL: Her name was Fern Carter.
JH: Oh, he hated her.
TL: You
said that she never encouraged him?
JH: No, and was very hateful to him. It was almost like she
had her picks of who she wanted. If she didn't like you, that was
it. They talk about the pranks— Alfie did pee on the camera
thing. But he had worked all these hours, and they were told that
they weren't going to get a break. So Alfie peed on it. But those
were the reasons he did it, not— and if you notice, the ones
who have the bad things to say about him are the ones that never
made it very far in it.
Next
page: Part 2 continued.
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