Uncle Tom's Uncle (1926) Online

Like a lot of people my age I grew up with the Our Gang kids, and when I first watched them on TV I was around the same age as the youngest kids in the group. I knew them as The Little Rascals, as they were renamed for television, but the rascals I knew were the ones from the '30s: Spanky, Buckwheat, Darla, Alfalfa, and sometimes Jackie Cooper. I didn't discover the silent era comedies until I was older, and it's been a pleasant surprise to find that a lot of the silent Our Gang shorts are highly enjoyable comedies made with real verve and energy. I also enjoy the look and feel of these films, which are generally rougher, funnier, less polished and sometimes less polite than the later ones. The silent era kids appear to live in a tough, hard-scrabble environment but it doesn't faze them a bit; they're always cooking up great projects and (with a little help from the Hal Roach Studio prop department) building really cool-looking playhouses, soap-box cars, and similar stuff.

In Uncle Tom's Uncle the kids get the jump on Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland by putting on a play in a barn. As the title indicates, they choose to stage that phenomenally popular 19th century warhorse "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Sight unseen you'd expect this film to be full of embarrassing racial gags, but it's surprisingly benign. The kids are innocent of the heavier implications of Harriet Beecher Stowe's story and just play it straight -- or at least that's what they think they're doing -- the way grown-ups of the time would do. Farina, the African-American kid of the gang, alternately plays Topsy & Eliza and also entertains the crowd by dancing a spirited Charleston. At one point a rowdy boy in the crowd throws a lit firecracker at him, and I was especially pleased to see him catch it and throw it back. Rotund Joe Cobb "blacks up" with shoe polish to play Uncle Tom, but is repeatedly pulled away from his dramatic duties by his mother, who insists he finish his yard work. Freckle-faced Mickey Daniels doesn't make a very fearsome Simon Legree, and he is also hassled by hecklers in an amusing running gag. It's noticeable that at this time the Roach Studio was still relying on rudimentary animation gags, the sort of material we tend to associate with the Mack Sennett crew: for instance, when a mule brays he emits a cartoon-style "HEE-HAW!" The primitive special effects are charming, however, and add to the fun.

The studio carpenters did a terrific job with the scenic design for the kids' show. It's more elaborate than anything real kids could do without adult supervision, and yet they also managed to make the sets look kind of raggedy and half-finished, as if they'd actually been built by children. The highlight is the climax, when Eliza flees the bloodhounds across the ice floes. The "bloodhounds" are scruffy neighborhood dogs with hot-water bottles hanging across their heads to simulate long ears, while the "ice floes" are white boxes linked together with ropes and yanked back and forth by stage hands while Eliza and the dogs struggle to make it across. Meanwhile, cardboard waves roll back and forth as a paper snowstorm falls. It's a great scene! I wish I could have been on the set while they were shooting this sequence—it must have been fascinating to watch.

Because of its subject matter Uncle Tom's Uncle isn't the best choice for general audiences today, but anyone who appreciates the Our Gang comedies of the silent era is likely to enjoy it, and of course it'll be of special interest to theater historians. This short reminded me of the 1933 Disney cartoon Mickey's Mellerdrammer, in which Mickey Mouse and his pals stage their own rendition of the time honored story, a similarly budget-strapped but resourceful version. Stage adaptations of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" were hugely popular for decades after the Civil War, and this Our Gang comedy (like the Disney cartoon) captures a time when the events of Stowe's tale were still within the living memory of many viewers.

I first saw this at a friend's house on a 16mm projector when I was 12, and this was my introduction to the silent Our Gangs.

Essentially, our heroes try their hand at staging "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and of course everything goes wrong. Slapstick and malapropisms galore! Joe Cobb shouts from the stage "I can't die now, my ma is calling me!" The kids in the audience have a field day peppering the gang with vegetables and garbage to express their disapproval of such corn. Mickey Daniels' (doubling as the MC and Simon Legree) facial reaction to the audience's wrath is priceless and worthy of a good belly laugh in itself.

It's easy to see why this was a hit in 1926 when the original "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was common knowledge to most Americans, but the modern audience would need some familiarity with the story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" to really "get it." Joe wears blackface to play "Uncle Tom" since Farina, the series' black star, is already on stage as Topsy, but the viewer of today might fail to put this in it's proper context. That aside, it's good for a laugh after a hard day's work (if you can find it-collectors still have to hunt hard for silent Our Gang films in good condition).

This Hal Roach comedy short, Uncle Tom's Uncle, is the fiftieth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series. Mickey and the gang are staging their production of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in his barn for the neighborhood children, but many of them seem more enthused about throwing various food at them than enjoying the show. Mickey, especially, when coming on stage between acts is a victim of those and prepares each time to protect himself. Joe ends up playing the title role with the burnt cork but is often interrupted by his mom's calls to him to do his chores. Oh, and Bonedust keeps getting confused by all the whistle-blowing when deciding whether to open or close the curtain...This was another hilarious Our Gang short I just watched on the Internet Archive. Director Robert F. McGowan was at his most creative here what with the many props made for this production. So on that note, I highly recommend Uncle Tom's Uncle.

Uncle Tom's Uncle (1926)

** (out of 4)

Bland Our Gang short has the kids in Mickey's barn trying to put on a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The only problem is that Uncle Tom (Joe Cobb in blackface) keeps getting in trouble by his mother so the play is constantly being put on hold. I'm sure there are many out there that would be up in arms about this play being done by white kids and having one of the kids in blackface but this part really didn't bother me. If you've seen enough of these early pictures you simply understand that's how ways were back then and we can't change them today. The biggest problem with this film is that it's simply not funny and there really wasn't that much imagination put into it. The entire running gag has Joe's mother getting onto him for not picking up the yard so he is getting called away from the play. The only problem is that nothing funny happens when he's called away. The next gag has local kids throwing lettuce at Mickey when the play goes down but again it's never funny. Also, am I the only one who thinks the real Mickey wouldn't have allowed kids throwing stuff at him?