The Little Rascals

In 1922, Hal Roach inaugurated a new series of short film comedies called Hal Roach's Rascals. The series featured ordinary kids, usually poor, getting into the usual types of trouble that ordinary kids get into. There was no running plot throughout the series. Each film was an entity unto itself. For instance, in "When The Wind Blows," Mary Ann has a crush on neighbor boy Jackie. But in "Love Business," Jackie and Mary Ann are siblings. In most films, the kids have parents, but in at least a couple of films, they live in an orphanage. This provided the series with quite a wide range of potential situations. There were many fairly ordinary episodes, but also quite a few that are truely unique.

The first film was titled "Our Gang" and was previewed in the early half of 1922. Reviewers at the time began referring to the series as Our Gang, and the studio adopted it as the official name soon thereafter. The Hal Roach Rascals name also continued on into the early '30s, so the series had two names for about a decade.