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Glove Taps Released:
February 20, 1937 Skip
episode synopsis and go directly to commentary "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. A new kid named Butch shows up outside school one afternoon with his pal Woim. Butch tells the kids, just let out of class, that from this day forth, he is the tough guy in the neighborhood. He challenges one of them to step forward and try to prove otherwise. Alfalfa backs up, not wanting to be perceived as accepting Butch's challenge. But he backs right into another boy's fountain pen, sticking out of a textbook, and jumps forward from the jab. Butch, and the rest of the assembled group, takes this to mean that Alfalfa wants to fight. Despite Alfalfa's protests, Spanky eagerly starts training Alfalfa for the upcoming bout. In the "Ajax Athaletic Club", Spanky puts his reluctant fighter through a series of drills, most of which expose Alfalfa's lack of pugilistic skill. Alfalfa even resorts to donning a catcher's mask to instill some "confidence" in himself. At one point, Buckwheat knocks Alfalfa out during a sparring session. But before Alfalfa comes to, Spanky has Buckwheat lay face-down on the canvas, as if Alfalfa knocked him out. This emboldens Alfalfa, and he starts clamoring for Butch, letting us hear for the first time his patented Tarzan yell. 
A classic image of Alfalfa, ca. "Glove Taps" The day of the fight arrives. Surrounded by a boisterous audience of neighborhood kids, Alfalfa struggles to get through the first round. Back in the corner, Butch tells Woim that he will signal to his pal when he is ready to administer the big blow to Alfalfa. Meantime, Buckwheat and Porky sneak back behind a large draped wall that borders one side of the ring. When Butch and Alfalfa clinch along the ropes adjacent to these drapes, Porky and Buckwheat, from the other side, draw a bead on Butch from the shadow he casts. They smack Butch on the head with a boxing glove attached to a long pole, knocking out the new neighborhood bully. An exultant Alfalfa stands over the vanquished Butch and lets out another hearty Tarzan yell as the episode fades to black.
Commentary A
significant chunk of the visual gags and overall approach of the
training sequence in "Glove Taps" was reworked from a
Hal Roach feature-length film called "Kelly the Second",
released the previous year. "Kelly the Second" starred
Charley Chase and Patsy Kelly as, of all things, a boxing trainer
(hence the film's title) who trains a truck driver-turned title
belt contender. Coincidentally, Alfalfa has a small role near the
beginning of "Kelly the Second" as a Dondi-like young
boy who rushes into Chase's drug store to report that he has swallowed
twenty five cents (two dimes and a nickel). More information on
this film and Alfalfa's scene is contained in the internal link
"Alfalfaddendum" (go
there now, or visit later).
Among the reworked elements from "Kelly the Second" include
the "shadow boxing" scene, plus the vignette of Spanky/Patsy
sitting on a stool reading a fight manual while his charge is training.)
"Glove Taps" would be followed about a year after by its close cousin "Came the Brawn", which featured wrestling rather than boxing as its theme. Both shorts are very good, but "Glove Taps" gets the nod in a split decision over "Brawn" for its more interesting sight gags and elaborate staging and camera work. One such example in "Glove Taps" is the sequence in which Buckwheat spars with Alfalfa. As they circle each other warily, the camera swings around to track a circling Buckwheat in close-up first, then tracks Alfalfa in similar fashion, until Buckwheat hauls off and knocks out Alfalfa with one punch. Even this is handled with imagination: Buckwheat seems to punch the camera lens, as if we are looking at the oncoming jab from Alfalfa's point of view (similar to the trick which would be used in "Fishy Tales" involving a bow and arrow; that time, Alfalfa delivered and Buckwheat was on the receiving end). After Alfalfa crumples to the ground, we see him with his head and knees on the canvas, backside pointing northwards, blissfully dreaming in a double exposure that he is an angelic sprite frolicking around a wooded glen. Additional amusing touches include the Alfalfa effigy carried in on a stretcher by Buckwheat and Porky, Alfalfa's surprise donning of a catcher's mask so he can have "confidence", his hiking up his shorts to just below breastbone level because the rules say "no hitting below the belt", and of course, the now- famous Tarzan yell. And as they would do in "Came the Brawn", Buckwheat and Porky save the day at episode's conclusion with some fancy behind-the-scenes "manipulation" of the action, this time gliding along behind the expanse of drapery which demarcates one side of the ring. Then they get in a position where they can wallop Butch with a boxing glove attached to a long pole, making it seem like Alfalfa landed the decisive blow in the ring. We also get our first look at the welcome, second coming of Tommy Bond in the Rascals as Butch the neighborhood bully (and Sid Kibrick as his bodyguard and yes-man.) From his first scene where Butch camps outside school lying in wait for Alfalfa, Spanky, and company (apparently Butch and Woim's mothers didn't get around to registering them for school yet), we know that this "new" addition will be very special indeed. After the students get dismissed, Butch accosts them and is soon describing his usual method of establishing his sovereignty: "I usually prove it by lickin' everybody...but to save time, I'm just gonna lick the toughest one of ya'—alright, who's the toughest, step up!" By
the time Alfalfa has bested his newly-minted rival and let out a
triumphant Tarzan yell, we know we have seen a winner in "Glove
Taps", to which 4alfalfa.com awards 4 cowlicks (out of a possible 5) |
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"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 Co./ MGM. Episode commentary © 4alfalfa.com |
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