Captain Spanky's Show Boat (1939)
Genre : Comedy
Runtime : 11M
Director : Edward L. Cahn
Synopsis
An abandoned old show boat is moored in a lazy creek. The Our Gang put the old vessel back to use when they stage a show featuring "Darla's Dancin' Dandies" and a "meller dramer" entitled "Out in the Snow You Go." All is not smooth sailing however, as Butch seeks revenge for having been excluded from the cast.
Spanky and Alfalfa fake a toothache to get out of school.
The gang decides to enter their animals in a local pet show.
Alfalfa gives up being "King of the Crooners" to sing opera, but a nightmare of being under the thumb of an evil producer sends him back to his roots.
A cobbler receives his back pension and invites the gang to celebrate with a picnic, but his car stalls along the way.
Mickey is a poor boy who lives with his Uncle Pat. While they're broke, they're also very happy. Since Pat hasn't legally adopted Mickey, Aunt Kate gains custody and takes him to her mansion.
The schoolchildren lost their last teacher because she got married and quit her job. When the brother of their teacher Miss Crabtree comes to visit, the children mistake him for a suitor. The children tell abominable lies about Miss Crabtree to try to discourage the man. Meanwhile, one of the children is selling answers to the upcoming oral exam. Unfortunately for the students, the young entrepreneur used a book of minstrelsy and blackface as his source for the "answers".
The kids' adopted grandma decides to sell her store, but can't decide whom to sell it to. The kids try to help her out.
When the caddies at the local golf course go on strike, the gang steps in to earn some money.
The gang is participating in a program sponsored by the Golden Age Dramatic League. They present their own fractured version of Quo Vadis. Things go from bad to worse when the neighborhood tough kids disrupt the show. The pie fight is given a new twist by use of some slow motion sequences.
Spanky and the gang discover a demonstration of a "human-like" robot named Volto and are inspired to create a robot themselves to do their chores for them. Slicker Walburn convinces them they will need "invisible rays" to bring it to life which he just happens to have to sell to them. As they rush off to get their money, Slicker gets Boxcar Smith to wear the robot's outer body so when he "brings" the robot to life, it will be Boxcar bringing it to life. The gang unsuspectedly gets their robot to mow the lawn at Froggy's house, but with a signal from Slicker, Boxcar runs amok and mows down everything in his path. Froggy gets to explain what happened to his parents who bust up the fraud and get the miscreants to work with the gang to clean up the mess.
Jackie prepares a series of elaborate jokes for his new teacher.
The Rascals have a boxing arena that could pack them in if they could find fighters who would actually mix it up. Harry and Farina notice a rivalry between two very large young kids, Joe and Chubby, that would fill the bill if only the two heavyweights would put aside their gentle natures. Farina gets an idea: tell each of the lads that the other will take a dive in the second round. So the fight begins and the stands are filled; but will the combatants actually throw a punch? Ernie has one more trick up his sleeve to get the fists flying and the crowd on its feet. Sweet science indeed.
Jackie gets in a duel over the affections of Mary Ann.
Rich boy Waldo gets his clothes dirty playing football with the gang just before he has to go to his mother's society party. The gang tries to help him clean up.
In this short the kids are managing their own barber shop, with harrowing results. No one gets hurt, but most of the customers wind up bald or close to it: one kid even gets a prematurely fashionable Mohawk! Scenes involving close calls with sharp scissors might make some viewers wince, while the manicurist uses a device that looks like a wire-cutter.
Mickey's mother makes him dance and won't let him fight. Only his grandma understands what it's like to be a boy. When Mickey gets into a fight, his grandma must cover for him.
Many of the "Our Gang" kids are in their secret clubhouse - so secret that some wannabe members have troubles trying to find the tunnel entrance - planning their next game, which will be a Wild West shootout. They run into some obstacles in playing the game, including objections from parents, and as such they decide to postpone it until the wee hours of the next morning and play it in the streets of the neighborhood. As it begins to rain during the middle of their shootout that morning, they decide to take refuge in a neighborhood house. What they are unaware of is that the house belongs to inventor W.R. Jones, who rigged it to be a "magnetic house", a demonstration for a possible amusement park attraction. Not knowing about the house's rigged contraptions leads to a lot of misadventures for the gang not related to shooting Indians as they try to figure out what's happening around them.
This Our Gang short has the group running an athletic club where Joe is put through a couple fights. They also appear to be running a wireless shoe-shining gig where they get customers by splashing paint on their shoes.
The gang decides to go camping with a little bear hunting on the side. A pair of poachers decides to try and scare them off with a gorilla suit but the gang decides to try and capture the gorilla instead.
The gang wages war using old vegetables as munitions. Later, they ruin a movie in progress when they double-expose the film.