Meanwhile, MGM's Our Gang series (1938–1944) is currently owned by Warner Bros. through Turner Entertainment Co.. New productions based on the shorts have been made over the years, including the 1994 feature film The Little Rascals, released by Universal Pictures.

Later Our Gang directors, such as Gus Meins and Gordon Douglas, streamlined the approach to McGowan's methods to meet the demands of the increasingly sophisticated movie industry of the mid-to-late 1930s.

The five black child actors who held main roles in the series were Ernie Morrison, Eugene Jackson, Allen Hoskins, Matthew Beard and Billie Thomas.

One early Our Gang short, Lodge Night (1924), revolves around the kids forming a parody club based on the Ku Klux Klan (though the Black children are still allowed to join).

[14] Early in the existence of Our Gang, these theater owners complained to Pathé that Morrison and Hoskins had too much screen time and their prominence in the shorts would offend white audiences.

[14] A later Our Gang spin-off film, Curley (1947), was banned by the Memphis, Tennessee censor board for showing black and white children in school together, a characteristic common to even the earlier shorts.

[17] Other minorities, including Asian Americans Sing Joy, Allen Tong (also known as Alan Dong), and Edward Soo Hoo, as well as Italian-American actor Mickey Gubitosi (later known as Robert Blake), were depicted in the series with varying levels of stereotyping.

Other early Our Gang children were Eugene Jackson as Pineapple, Scooter Lowry, Andy Samuel, Johnny Downs, Winston and Weston Doty, and Jay R. Smith.

[27] New faces included Bobby Hutchins as Wheezer, Harry Spear, Jean Darling and Mary Ann Jackson, while stalwart Farina served as the series' anchor.

It took a year for McGowan and the gang to fully adjust to talking pictures, during which time they lost Joe Cobb, Jean Darling and Harry Spear and added Norman Chaney, Dorothy DeBorba, Matthew "Stymie" Beard, Donald Haines and Jackie Cooper.

Cooper proved to be the personality the series had been missing since Mickey Daniels left and was featured prominently in three 1930/1931 Our Gang films: Teacher's Pet, School's Out, and Love Business.

Jackie Cooper left Our Gang in early 1931 just before another wave of cast changes: Farina Hoskins, Chubby Chaney, and Mary Ann Jackson all departed a few months afterward.

Matthew Beard, Wheezer Hutchins, and Dorothy DeBorba carried the series during this period, aided by Sherwood Bailey and Kendall McComas, who would play Breezy Brisbane.

[26] The first two entries of the season in fall 1933, Bedtime Worries and Wild Poses (which featured a cameo by Laurel and Hardy), focused on Spanky and his hapless parents, portrayed by Gay Seabrook and Emerson Treacy, in a family-oriented situation comedy format similar to the style later popular on television.

However, by 1934, many movie theater owners were increasingly dropping two-reel (20-minute) comedies like Our Gang and the Laurel & Hardy series from their bills and running double feature programs instead.

Most casual fans of Our Gang are particularly familiar with the 1936–1939 incarnation of the cast: Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla, Buckwheat, and Porky, with recurring characters such as neighborhood bullies Butch and Woim and the bookworm Waldo.

Other popular elements in these mid-to-late-1930s shorts include the "He-Man Woman Haters Club" from Hearts Are Thumps and Mail and Female (both 1937), the Laurel and Hardy-ish interaction between Alfalfa and Spanky, and the comic tag-along team of Porky and Buckwheat.

In Follies of 1938, Alfalfa, who aspires to be an opera singer, falls asleep and dreams that his old pal Spanky has become the rich owner of a swanky Broadway nightclub where Darla and Buckwheat perform, making "hundreds and thousands of dollars".

[39] Tommy Bond, Darwood Kaye, and Alfalfa Switzer all left the series in 1940, and Billy "Froggy" Laughlin (with his Popeye-esque trick voice) and Janet Burston were added to the cast.

In 1971, because of controversy over dated racial humor in the shorts and other content deemed to be in bad taste, King World made significant edits to Little Rascals TV prints.

[50] It starred the voices of Patty Maloney as Darla; Peter Cullen as Petey and Officer Ed; Scott Menville as Spanky; Julie McWhirter Dees as Alfalfa, Porky and The Woim; Shavar Ross as Buckwheat, and B.J.

The film, directed by Penelope Spheeris, starred Travis Tedford as Spanky, Bug Hall as Alfalfa, and Ross Bagley as Buckwheat; with cameos by the Olsen twins, Whoopi Goldberg, Mel Brooks, Reba McEntire, Daryl Hannah, Donald Trump and Raven-Symoné.

The film was directed by Alex Zamm, and starred Jet Jurgensmeyer as Spanky, Drew Justice as Alfalfa, Eden Wood as Darla, and Doris Roberts as the kids' adopted Grandma.

Mickey Gubitosi later became Robert Blake and found great success in the 1960s and 1970s as an actor, particularly known for In Cold Blood (1967) and the television series Baretta (1975–78), which netted him an Emmy Award.

Several of the others, including Farina, Mickey Daniels, Mary Kornman, Stymie, Spanky, Alfalfa, and Darla, performed some small roles in film or television, but eventually moved away from acting as a career.

A long list of people, including persons famous in other capacities such as Nanette Fabray, Eddie Bracken, and gossip columnist Joyce Haber[58] claimed to be or have been publicly called former Our Gang children.

[59] Among notable Our Gang imposters is Jack Bothwell, who claimed to have portrayed a character named "Freckles",[59] going so far as to appear on the game show To Tell the Truth in the fall of 1957, perpetuating this fraud.

On August 26, 1997, a limited-edition volume, For Pete's Sake, was released in honor of the Rascals' 75th anniversary with an introduction from original cast member Tommy "Butch" Bond and "Petey", the dog from the 1994 feature.

The King World/CBS Little Rascals package was featured as exclusive programming (in the United States) for AMC from August 2001 to December 2003, with child actor Frankie Muniz hosting.

As of 2024[update], the sound Little Rascals shorts in the CBS package air on the MeTV network's spinoff channel MeTV+ as part of its Comedy Classics block alongside Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges.