Our Gang Dudley D Watkins Dandy 70 years young

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 01 Nov 2007, 00:43

Our Gang Dudley D Watkins

It went on for 10 years and is based on Hal Roach film the characters..a bit Film fun the feature..how good was the strip when looking at the film any differences...or were they the same...?

Just wondered as have not seen many maybe due to the black character...
Whether they did anything for the war effort like Lord Snooty...were there any surreal stories or was it grounded...

the 40's book Favourite of the forties Beano and Dandy is a favourite of mine to read....hope they do another book like more from the 40's..the 40's can be over looked But there were some gems there...

Dandy 70 years young lets have some good Dandy posts and topics to celebrate this amazing achievement....

Kashgar · Post by **Kashgar** » 01 Nov 2007, 14:00

'Our Gang' wasn't based on a single film but on a series of twenty minute short features, think the Laurel and Hardy shorts also produced by the Hal Roach studios and you'll have the general idea, from the late 1920's onwards.
Because the gang was composed of children in the course of the film series a number of child actors outgrew their roles and left to be replaced by others so that the Dandy 'gang' were really the second generation in filmic terms.
In the early issues Watkins does very fair representations of the gang members although on the downside his natural cartoon 'edge' suffers somewhat as a result and appears a little stilted. As time progressed though and he stopped being so artistically literal in his caricatures the strip did take on a good deal more life.
Apart from 'Our Gang' (which used to appear on British TV in the 1970's and 1980's under its other oft used title 'The Little Rascals') Watkins only other attempt at producing a similar picture strip from a movie source was 'Geordie' for 'The Peoples Journal' in the 1950's (reprinted in Diana in the 1960's) in which he does pretty fair representations of the stars involved in the original film Bill Travers, Alistair Sim etc.

ISPYSHHHGUY · Post by **ISPYSHHHGUY** » 03 Nov 2007, 12:02

I remember seeing some wartime-propaganda 'SNOOTYS' at D.C.T.homson when i visited there around 1984........this was long before reprints had gained historical value, and this was the first time i had seen such early WATKINS work........i was struck by how relatively crude his drawing style at this time was, it was still recognizably D.D.W.------and they were pretty surreal by later 'SNOOTY' standards.........one memorable strip involved PROF. SCREWTOP supplying a jet-rocket, in which the gang duly use to bomb 'HITLER'S PALACE' [labelled such]........brilliant stuff, much more entertaining than the Bunkerton-grounded strips of my youth.

ISPYSHHHGUY · Post by **ISPYSHHHGUY** » 03 Nov 2007, 12:18

In the early '70s, the local ODEON ran a Saturday-morning film club for kids [virtually no SAT morning kid's T.V. then]-------and one item used to be ancient [even in 1971] 20-min featurettes about a 'SNOOTY-' like gang, the leader, MICKEY, had a bowler hat and may even have been a very young MICKEY ROONEY------I ain't too sure, but there was even a little African girl in it, who resembled POLLY out of SNOOTY. This film series was very early talkie stuff, with speeded-up slapstick gags, and 1971 kids certainly enjoyed it. It was so ancient, it probably pre-dated SNOOTY/OUR GANG and may well have been an inspiration..........there are definate similarities.

Kashgar · Post by **Kashgar** » 06 Nov 2007, 12:43

Re the members of 'Our Gang' as they featured in Dandy No 1 a few details
Darla Hood (1931-1979)
Eugene 'Porky' Lee (1933-2005)
Patsy May (1934- ) the only surviving member of the Dandy line-up.
George Emmett 'Spanky' MacFarland (1928-1993) during his tenure in the gang he became the leader and a lot of the plots were developed around him.
Billy Thomas / Buckwheat Thomas (1931-1980) Weirdly in the Dandy strip two of the characters, the little black boys, were actually only one in the films and in real life, Billy 'Buckwheat' Thomas.
Scotty Beckett (1929-1968) committed suicide after years of drug addiction.
Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer (1926-1959) In 1959 he got into a heated argument with his business partner over a fifty dollar debt and in the ensuing fracas his business partner shot him dead.
Spot the Pup - a Thomson invention. The gang did have a pet dog, a pit-bull called Pete or Petey so why Thomsons didn't stick with that is impossible to say.
BTW while Thomsons were running the 'Our Gang' strip an ex member of the gang, Matthew 'Stymie' Beard, was also featuring in rival publishers AP's 'Radio Fun' in the strip 'Stymie and his Magic Wishbone' drawn by Roy Wilson. In fact the Stymie strip did even a little better than the Our Gang strips eleven years running in Radio Fun from 1938-1947 and then in Jingles from 1947-1949.

David Gerstein · Post by **David Gerstein** » 07 Nov 2007, 04:49

ISPYSHHHGUY wrote:[...] ancient [even in 1971] 20-min featurettes about a 'SNOOTY-' like gang; the leader, MICKEY, had a bowler hat and may even have been a very young MICKEY ROONEY [...] It was so ancient, it probably pre-dated SNOOTY/OUR GANG and may well have been an inspiration...

Right on both counts, sort of.
Mickey "Himself" McGuire was indeed played by a young Mickey Rooney, and the films you recollect seem to have been produced from about 1926 to 1936, so did predate Lord Marmaduke of Bunkerton?but not Our Gang, which began as film shorts in 1922.
The Mickey McGuire character was himself drawn from a comic strip, Fontaine Fox's "Toonerville Folks"/"Toonerville Trolley" (1908-1955). "Toonerville" wasn't really a kid strip, though; Mickey, portrayed as more of a bully than on the screen, was only one of a cast largely dominated by adult characters.
Interesting, huh?

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 07 Nov 2007, 15:18

Thanks for all this detailled information...and other facts
showed this to my Dad...who thought Kashgar had a great way of writing and very informative.

Kashgar · Post by **Kashgar** » 08 Nov 2007, 11:54

Peter Gray wrote:Thanks for all this detailled information...and other facts
showed this to my Dad...who thought Kashgar had a great way of writing and very informative.

Your Dad sounds like a very perceptive chap, Peter. Please pass on my regards.

ISPYSHHHGUY · Post by **ISPYSHHHGUY** » 10 Nov 2007, 12:11

There was also a 'TOONERVILLE TROLLEY' animated shorts series produced in the U.S. possibly released by TERRYTOONS ['MIGHTY MOUSE, HECKLE and JECKLE', etc]-----by PAUL TERRY standards, this is meant to be quite well-animated, though I have never known of it being aired on U.K. TV.

ISPYSHHHGUY · Post by **ISPYSHHHGUY** » 10 Nov 2007, 21:27

BLOODY HELL, DAVID GERSTEIN.....I am truly astonished that any of our U,S. cousins has even heard of 'LORD SNOOTY'.....please explain how you came into contact with our [very perochial] stuff....[!]

Peter Gray · Post by **Peter Gray** » 20 May 2009, 18:03

Bumped up for people to read...
shows how old this post is..my Dad was alive then...

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