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Explanation
of figures listed at the beginning of each episode commentary
Released
Director
Episode length
Alfalfa’s screen time
Lines of dialogue spoken by Alfalfa
Song
Red and green text
Figures in (parentheses)
"The
Little Rascals" and Little Rascals characters © and TM
King World Productions, Inc. This website based in part upon a television
series distributed by King World Productions and Turner Entertainment
Company / MGM.
Released
The date on which each Little Rascals short
subject was first released in theatres to contemporary audiences.
The films were generally released about two months after completion
of principal photography, with a few exceptions, the most notable
being “The Lucky Corner”. This film was released about
one year after its production.
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Director
The 34 Alfalfa/Hal Roach films were directed
by five different individuals, as listed below along with the number
of episodes each was in charge of:
•Gordon
Douglas: 20
•Gus Meins: 8 (including Alfalfa’s first six episodes)
•Fred Newmeyer: 3
•Nate Watt: 2
•Robert McGowan: 1 (“Divot Diggers”, a one-shot comeback
attempt from the legendary Rascals’ directorial dean’s
self imposed semi-retirement)
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Episode
length
Virtually all of the Little Rascals films
were either “one-reelers” or “two-reelers” (the
two exceptions being two 1929 entries, a silent called “Spook
Spoofing”, and "Small Talk", which was the Little
Rascals' first sound film. Both of these episodes were three reels
long.) Each “reel” is generally ten minutes in length,
although Little Rascals episodes almost never ran exactly ten minutes
or twenty minutes. The 12 two-reelers Alfalfa appeared in—his
first 11 episodes, plus “Our Gang Follies of 1938”, later
in his career—ranged in length from 13:58 (almost a long one-reeler!)
to 20:52 (“Follies of 1938”). One reelers—comprising
roughly the final two-thirds of Alfalfa’s Rascals/Hal Roach
career—ranged in length from 9:18 (“Two Too Young”)
to 10:15 (“Framing Youth”) (by the way, we do not include
opening and closing titles in our episode length.)
The
reason for the switch from two-reelers to the shorter one-reeler
format? The major studios were by 1936 beginning to rely more heavily
on full-length feature films as the linchpins of its programs; the
inclusion of two-reel short subjects would, it was feared, make
the overall programs too long. Rather than shut down production
on his beloved series, Hal Roach agreed to reduce his Little Rascals
films in length to one-reel as a standard; this shorter length was
easier to squeeze in with the longer features. The Little Rascals
one-reeler era was kicked off with “Bored of Education”.
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Alfalfa’s
screen time
The amount of time Alfalfa is visible on-screen
during each episode, even if he appears in the background, as he
did for long stretches in such earlier episodes as “The Lucky
Corner”, “Divot Diggers” and “Arbor Day”.
As Alfalfa became a more popular and integral member of the Little
Rascals troupe, his “background” appearances decreased
dramatically in favor of his being shown more prominently as a featured
cast member.
Along
with actual “minutes/seconds” screen time, we have provided
"screen time percentage”, which is simply the amount of
time Alfalfa is on screen as a proportion of the overall length
of each episode. According to this criteria, the average Little
Rascals episode in which Alfalfa appeared saw our hero on-screen
47% of the time.
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Lines
of dialogue spoken by Alfalfa
We consider complete sentences or sentence
fragments to be one “line”. Exclamations (such as “Whoa!”,
for instance) are also counted as a line of dialogue. Not counted
as dialogue are the contents of the songs Alfalfa sings; however,
we have counted as dialogue the lines in his recitation of "Charge
of the Light Brigade". Alfalfa was virtually mute in “Divot
Diggers”; he had only one line of spoken dialogue, although
he was seen fairly often in the film. By contrast, “Bear Facts”—made
when Alfalfa had ascended to the top of the Little Rascals pecking
order, even ahead of Spanky—required that Alfalfa talk virtually
nonstop: 96 lines of dialogue in a film running just over ten minutes!
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Song(s)
In 16 of his 34 episodes, Alfalfa favored
us with one (sometimes more) of his famous singing performances.
We are not counting in this category the following four fragmentary
pieces of singing:
•brief
quartet performance of “Home Sweet Home” with Spanky,
Buckwheat and Porky in the opening scene of “Night ‘N’
Gales”
•sarcastic rendition of “Good Morning, Teacher” in
“Bored of Education”
•the “Happy Birthday, Mr. Hood” preamble to his birthday
gift to Darla’s father (we do, of course, include “Many
Happy Returns of the Day”, which Alfalfa sings near the end
of this same episode.)
•various “me-me-me” vocal exercises, heard most notably
in “Framing Youth” and “Our Gang Follies of 1938”
Alfalfa
sang two different tunes in the same episode four times:
•Our
Gang Follies of 1936 ("She’ll be Comin’ Round the
Mountain" and "Object of My Affection")
•The Pinch Singer ("On the Road To Californy" in
three different guises, and the immortal "I’m In the Mood
For Love")
•Arbor Day (Arbor Day preamble "Behold the Little Woodsman’s
Shout", and Joyce Kilmer’s poem "Trees")
•Our Gang Follies of 1938 (excerpt from "The Barber of
Seville" and "Learn to Croon")
Opportunities
to link to “Alfalfa’s Greatest Hits”—our extensive
collection of information, lyrics, etc. for each of the songs Alfalfa
sung—are made available within the episode guide of the film
in which the songs were performed. For now, we have only included
songs sung by Alfalfa in the Hal Roach episodes; we will be continuously
adding various Alfalfa musical performances from the MGM Little
Rascals episodes and his post-Rascals career (check our regular
What’s New listings on 4alfalfa.com’s home page.)
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Figures
in red and green
We have established “averages” for
three categories of Alfalfa’s Little Rascals episode data:
•Lines
of dialogue: 32
•Screen time: 5:37
•Screen time percentage: 47%
•Category
data for any episodes below these averages is printed in red.
•Category data for any episodes which equals or exceeds these
averages is printed in
green.
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Figures
in parentheses
These figures show how selected categories
in each episode stand up against other episodes. For instance, in
“Divot Diggers” Alfalfa’s lines of dialogue are represented
as (34/34) . This means that his one line of spoken dialogue is
the lowest number of lines he spoke in any of the 34 episodes. Conversely,
the 96 lines he spoke in "Bear Facts” is shown as (1/34)
, meaning that is the most lines he spoke in any of the Hal Roach
episodes. Figures followed by the notation “ –t ”
indicate that it is tied for that position with the same category
result in another episode (i.e., the number of lines, screen time,
or screen time percentage was exactly the same in at least one other
episode.)
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