[1] The project was shelved—perhaps because Paramount had already fudged Bartlett's age—and the film was ultimately made with Billy Cook as Sawyer and new find Donald O'Connor as Huckleberry Finn.

By the early 1940s, Bartlett had outgrown child roles and was playing incidental parts in feature films like Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943, as a theater call boy).

After his enlistment was over, he resumed his acting career at PRC, where he co-starred in the Gas House Kids comedies, an imitation of The Bowery Boys with Our Gang alumni Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer and Tommy Bond.

Bartlett left the series in 1949 and was replaced by Buddy Gorman, a utility player in the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys franchises.

Bartlett did try to break away from the series (he has a bit in the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock thriller Rear Window, and he accepted small roles on television).