Our Gang, also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's
Rascals, was a long-lived series of comedy short films
about a troupe of poor neighborhood children and the adventures
they had together. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach,
Our Gang was produced at the Roach studio starting in
1922 as a silent short subject series. Roach changed distributors
from Pathé to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1927,
went to sound in 1929, and continued production until
1938, when he sold the series to MGM. MGM continued producing
the comedies until 1944. A total of 220 shorts and one
feature film, General Spanky, were eventually produced,
featuring over forty-one child actors. In the mid-1950s,
the 80 Roach-produced shorts with sound were syndicated
for television under the title The Little Rascals, as
MGM retained the rights to the Our Gang trademark.
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