This film, a Civil War period piece, was intended as an experiment to determine if Roach could move Our Gang into features, as the double feature and block booking were slowly smothering his short subjects production. The film was a box office dissapointment, and, after another year of shorts production, Roach ended up selling the Our Gang unit to MGM in May 1938.
During these years, Hal Roach tinkered with the format of the series a bit, filming one feature-length film, “GeneralSpanky”, which was something of a flop, and also filming annual musical revues, which were very well received.
Spanky was still around, but more of the plots centered around Alfalfa - his unrequited crush on Darla Hood, his constant harassment by bully Tommy Bond, and his frequently hilarious attempts at singing.
They were revived in the fifties and sixties under the television banner of ’The Little Rascals’ (necessary because MGM retained the rights to the original Our Gang name), and a new generation was treated to the antics of the whole succession of adorable youngsters from the early years.
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