Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (82 page)

The way was clear for flat records to dominate the market.

AND THE WINNER WAS
…

Not Edison. One of his greatest attributes as an inventor was his stubbornness to see a project through to completion. But it was a bad quality for a businessman who needed to cater to his customers’ changing tastes. Edison clung to the cylinders for so long that soon his only sales were to older customers who were as stubborn as he was and refused to purchase new record players.

In 1912 Columbia ceded what little remained of the cylinder market to Edison and put all their efforts into discs. In a move that came too late, that same year Edison introduced the Edison Diamond Disc system, the finest-sounding—and most expensive—system of its day. The sound quality was so good that during barnstorming demonstration tours, audiences were often unable to tell the difference between the record and the real thing.

The problem, however, was that his new system was incompatible with any other company’s records. Diamond Discs were a quarter-inch thick and continued to make use of vertical “hill and dale” grooves. And Edison still hadn’t grasped that it was the music that sold records. Nobody wanted the best player money could buy if it limited their record selection to Edison’s inferior music catalog. Though he eventually developed an adaptor that could be used to play other companies’ records, Edison simply did not have the show business savvy to compete with Columbia and Victor.

SWAN SONG

Finally, in 1929 Edison made a feeble effort to begin producing what, by then, had become the standard record format: a 10-inch, 78 rpm record with lateral grooves that held four minutes of sound. These “Edison Needle Cut” records were of good quality, but his heart wasn’t in it. Later that year, America’s greatest inventor admitted defeat and withdrew from the record business once and for all. The Edison phonograph factory was converted to produce radio receivers. His only victory in the record wars was a symbolic one: by the time he quit the business, “phonograph” had become the standard American term for any type of record player.

The Moon’s pull on Earth changes by 23% over the course of a monthly lunar cycle.

THE BATTLE RAGES ON

Throughout the 1930s and ’40s, Columbia and Victor (which had merged with the Radio Corporation of America to become RCA Victor) fought for technical supremacy. Speeds of 33
¹
/3 and 45 rpm replaced the 78; vinyl replaced shellac as the material from which records were made; and in 1951, the first “stereophonic” records were introduced.

Grooved records that produced sound by causing a stylus to vibrate would remain the dominant recorded music format until 1983. That year, magnetic tape cassettes outsold disc records for the first time. In 1988—exactly 100 years after Edison sold his first phonograph—digital compact discs outsold vinyl records for the first time and condemned them forever after to antique or novelty status.

*        *        *

MORE DUMB CROOKS

•
Ear It Is
. “German police charged a man with drug possession when he entered a police station to check if he was on their wanted list. ‘I suppose he may have heard he was wanted for some offense and just wanted to see if the police had anything on him,’ said Volker Pieper, a spokesman for police in the city of Kassel. ‘It didn’t go quite as he had planned.’ As the 33-year-old man, a known drug abuser, questioned police, an officer noticed a suspicious lump stuck in his ear which turned out to be a gram of heroin. Police confiscated the drug before filing charges.” (Reuters)

•
Did I Say That?
“Dennis Newton was on trial for the armed robbery of a convenience store when he decided to fire his attorney and represent himself. Oklahoma City District Attorney said Newton was doing a decent job until the store manager testified that Newton was indeed the robber. Newton jumped up, accused the woman of lying and said, ‘I should have blown your [expletive] head off.’ The defendant paused, then added, ‘If I had been the one that was there.’ The jury deliberated for 20 minutes before returning a verdict of guilty, recommending a sentence of 30 years.” (
Deseret News
)

Why are leopards bad at hide-and-seek? They’re always spotted.

THE LITTLE RASCALS HALL OF FAME

More than 175 kids appeared in the
Our Gang
films between 1922 and 1944. Only 41 had major roles and even fewer became famous. Here are some of our favorites
.

P
ETE THE PUP
• The dog you remember as Pete, the one with the circle around his eye, was actually the third dog to be featured in the
Our Gang
series. The first was also named Pete (no circle); he appeared in the 1923 film
The Cobbler
. A dog named Pal appeared in several
Our Gang
films in the mid-1920s.

• When Pal left the series, producer Hal Roach selected one of Pal’s puppies to replace him. That dog was the one who became famous as Pete. How’d he get a circle around his eye? Purely by chance: before starring in the
Our Gang
series, he played a dog named Tige with a circle around his eye in the
Buster Brown
children’s film series. When Roach selected Pete for the
Our Gang
cast, he told the film crew to wash off the circle, but it wouldn’t come off—it had been painted on with permanent dye. “What the hell,” Roach replied, “leave it on.”

• Since the dogs that played Pete could be replaced every few years, he became the longest-running character in the film series, lasting from 1927 until 1938.

ALLEN “FARINA” HOSKINS
(105
Our Gang
films from 1922–1931—more than any other kid in the series)

• Farina got his name because a studio executive thought he was as “chubby and agreeable as breakfast mush.” The character that William “Buckwheat” Thomas made famous is modeled after Farina, and he was named after a cereal grain, too.

• Farina isn’t as well known as Spanky, Alfalfa, or Buckwheat are today, but in his day he was the most popular
Our Gang
character. His salary showed it, too—at his peak he made $250 a week, more than any of the other kids, who started out at $40 a week.

Some species of moth send out jamming signals that confuse bat “radar.”

JOE COBB (86 films, 1922–1929)

The original fat kid in the series, Joe stumbled into show business while vacationing in Los Angeles with his family in 1922. He and his dad decided to visit Hal Roach Studios one afternoon. Joe caught the eye of the casting people as they were heading off for lunch; they cast him right on the spot and he began working in his first silent movie that afternoon. He made his first
Our Gang
short,
The Big Show
, shortly thereafter.

ERNIE “SUNSHINE SAMMY” MORRISON (28 films, 1922–1924)

Ernie, who was black, was already a star at Hal Roach Studios when he was cast in the first
Our Gang
comedy in 1922. He was the most popular character in the earliest
Our Gang
films, but he left after just two years when he was offered more money to perform in vaudeville. In the 1940s he starred in several of the Dead End Kids/East Side Kids films.

BOBBY “WHEEZER” HUTCHINS (58 films, 1927–1933)

Two-year-old Bobby got his nickname, “Wheezer,” his very first day on the set—he was so excited to be there that he ran around until he lost his breath and started wheezing.

NORMAN “CHUBBY” CHANEY (18 films, 1929–1931)

When Joe Cobb grew too old for the series in 1928, the studio launched a nationwide publicity campaign to find a new fat kid. Eleven-year-old Norman Chaney reportedly beat out 20,000 other entrants for the part. His response when told he’d won the part: “Mister, are you just kidding me because I’m fat?”

MATTHEW “STYMIE” BEARD (36 films, 1930–1935)

• The kid with the trademark bowler hat (a gift from Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy fame) replaced Allen “Farina” Hoskins when Allen got too old for the series. The studio had already tested 350 kids for the part when Matthew arrived at the studio for his screen test. He never had to take it—as soon as director Bob McGowan saw him he shouted, “That’s who I want! Sign him up for five years.”

• Matthew’s character was originally named “Hercules.” But he was fascinated by the movie-making process, and his curiosity frequently interfered with, or “stymied,” the film’s progress, which earned him the new nickname.

What U.S. state has the largest formation of sand dunes? Nebraska.

• When Beard died in 1981, he was buried with his bowler hat.

TOMMY “BUTCH” BOND (27 films, 1932–1940)

Tommy was discovered by a Hal Roach Studios talent scout while walking down a Dallas street with his mother. He played two characters in the series: Tommy (1932–34) and Butch (1937–40).

GEORGE “SPANKY” MCFARLAND (95 films, 1932–1942)

• Three-year-old George had already appeared in a Wonder Bread ad when his aunt sent his photograph to Hal Roach, who liked what he saw and ordered a screen test. It went so well—the cameraman ran around the lot telling people, “You’ve got to see this!”—that George was immediately signed to a five-year deal.

• George’s screen nickname was going to be “Sonny” until a writer overheard his mother threaten him with a spanking by saying, “Spankee, spankee, mustn’t touch.”

• George reportedly learned how to do his double-take reaction shots from comedian Stan Laurel.

WILLIAM “BUCKWHEAT” THOMAS (93 films, 1934–1944)

So was the Buckwheat character a boy or a girl? It depends on what film you’re watching: William was actually the third actor to play the character; the first two were girls, and at first the character’s gender was ambiguous. Carlena Beard (Matthew Beard’s sister) played Buckwheat in two films; a young girl named Willie Mae Taylor played the character in three others.

EUGENE “PORKY” LEE (43 films, 1935–1939)

• Eugene joined the cast after his mother mailed a photograph of him to the studio; Hal Roach thought he looked like Spanky and would make a good little brother.

• When Eugene became too big to continue with the series, he was replaced by Bobby Blake.

BOBBY BLAKE (40 films, 1939–1944)

• Many
Our Gang
stars had fond memories of the experience, even if the typecasting later hurt their careers. Not Blake—he came from an abusive home and deeply resented being denied a normal childhood. “I wasn’t a child star, I was a child laborer,” he says.

Little red books? Mao Tse-Tung was once a librarian.

• Blake’s career path was the opposite of many of the Little Rascals. He signed on in 1939, after Hal Roach sold the
Our Gang
franchise to MGM. The series was heading downhill, and Bobby (who used his real name, Mickey Gubitosi, before adopting the stage name “Bobby Blake” in the early 1940s) appears in many of the worst films of the series. But he went on to have one of the most successful post
—Our Gang
careers of all. As an adult, Robert Blake won critical acclaim for his portrayal of a death-row killer in the 1967 film
In Cold Blood
, and won an Emmy for his work on the 1970s cop show
Baretta
.

WILLIAM “FROGGY” LAUGHLIN (29 films, 1940–1944)

Laughlin’s scratchy, “froggy” voice wasn’t his real voice—it was just a trick that he did for his character. His real voice was normal.

DARLA HOOD (52 films, 1935–1941)

• Three-year-old Darla, an Oklahoma native, was in New York with her singing instructor when the Edison Hotel’s bandleader unexpectedly invited her onstage and asked her to sing. Her performance thrilled the audience—including
Our Gang
casting director Joe Rivkin, who happened to be there that evening. He arranged for a screen test, and when that went well, signed Hood to a seven-year contract at a starting salary of $75 a week.

• Like a lot of the
Our Gang
child actors, Hood had trouble finding film work as an adult. She eventually went into background singing and commercial voice-over work; for a time, hers was the voice of the mermaid in the Chicken of the Sea tuna commercials.

CARL “ALFALFA” SWITZER (61 films, 1935–1940)

• Carl’s father lost his foot in an accident and had trouble finding work, so Carl and his older brother, Harold, sang at auctions, country fairs, and other venues to help make money for the family.

• In 1934 the family went to California to visit relatives; while there they decided to see if they could get an audition for Carl and Harold at the Hal Roach Studios. They couldn’t—but the studio commissary, the Our Gang Cafe, was open to the public, so the boys went in one afternoon during the lunchtime rush and started singing. Hal Roach was so impressed that he signed them both and wrote their act into the next film,
Beginner’s Luck
.

Q: Which major TV network uses lowercase letters in its logo? A: ABC.

• Roach considered naming Carl’s character “Hayseed,” but later settled on “Alfalfa,” which was taken from a character in a silent film that Will Rogers had made for the studio.

• Carl had a reputation as a prankster and a troublemaker. Once, he got mad at the director and urinated on the hot studio lights, shutting down production until the smoke (and the stink) cleared the studio. “They had to open the doors of the stage and run the big fans through there the rest of the day to get the smell out,” Robert Blake recalled. “Alfalfa could be a devil.”