Sunshine Sammy Morrison

A history of the famous vampire of books and movies, using film clips, previews and other methods.

Join all your favorites—Spanky, Buckwheat, Alfalfa, Darla, Butch, Froggy and more—in a jam-packed special covering more than twenty years and 200 episodes of Hal Roach's inimitable brand of childhood magic. This fascinating video offers insight into the Gang's personal lives, as rare footage follows each member's career through the joys and misfortunes that went along with being one of America's most beloved kids. See how the series began in 1922 and changed after the first all-talking release in 1929, why Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney never made the Gang, a fifteenth anniversary reunion, and clips from their only feature.

Steve Allen hosts this collection of clips of some of the greatest comedy teams in movie and television history, including Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, Burns and Allen, The Three Stooges, The East-Side Kids, Abbott and Costello, and Martin and Lewis.

An unhappy, self-centered woman runs off with her sister's husband, wreaking havoc and ruining the lives of those around her.

A group of delinquents on their way to summer camp get stuck in a haunted house.

The East Side Kids try to fix up a house for newlyweds, but find the place next door "haunted" by mysterious men.

Sheriff Holt is determined to prove that prisoners can be rehabilitated and released into society in this prison drama. In charge of a new kind of program, the sheriff places inmates in a clean environment and makes them build a road. Despite the improved conditions, the criminals continue to pull off a few shady shenanigans as an innocent man who is sent there soon discovers.

Rejected by the Army, Marines, and Navy for being too young, the punks help the war effort by throwing fruit at a shop they believe is owned by a Japanese American. Confronted by him wielding a short sword, the gang decides to come back at night but find him dead.

Street kids get sent to the country, where they get mixed up in murder and a haunted house.

Muggs is tricked into entering a Civilian Conservation Corps camp by Danny in order to get in shape. Muggs resists and battles with the camp captain and with other campers. He also becomes involved in trying to help one of his friends get out of trouble.

The East Side boxing champion Muggs answers a challenge to a fight against the West Side champ but just before the match he is kidnapped. His friend Danny Lyons takes his place and wins the fight, only to have Mugs believe that Danny was responsible for his kidnapping.

In I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby, Broderick Crawford plays a sentimental gangster who abducts songwriter Johnny Downs and forces him to write a love ballad. It is Crawford's hope that the song will reach out and touch his long-lost childhood sweetheart. I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby was based on James Edward Grant's short story Trouble in B Flat; echoes of the basic premise later resurfaced in the 1957 "A" picture The Girl Can't Help It.

The East Side Kids discover that one of their own, Danny, is torn between staying in school and becoming a boxer, and is getting mixed up with gangsters.

A street kid has dreams of becoming a jockey. He gets his chance when he and his gang discover a poor old man who has a championship race horse. The man agrees to let the boy ride his horse in a race, but first the gang must get enough money to pay for the race's entry fees.

Two mobs fight for control of the jukebox racket.

A group of young men who work at an aviation factory begin to suspect that a doctor who runs an air ambulance service is secretly a spy transporting secret information from the plant to enemy agents.

Muggs' rich Uncle Pete is coming to visit. Unfortunately, Muggs' late father had bragged that he had seven kids, so Muggs recruits the members of the gang to pose as his family. Things turn sour, however, when a local mobster finds out about Muggs' deception and threatens to expose it.

The East Side Kids find a young girl in the apartment of a man who has just been murdered. Believing her to be innocent, they hide her in their clubhouse while they try to find the real killer. The killer, however, used a baseball bat as his murder weapon, and the bat has the fingerprints of one of the gang on it.

An auto accident hurls Snub into a skating rink, where he encounters Rowe and Marie. Among the various slip-and-falling going on, two frisky escaped monkeys from a show put on skates to join in and create pandemonium.

An unethical merchant moves into town and steals customers from the widowed owner of an established store; the gang steps in to help.

Young rapscallion Penrod Schofield causes a good deal of trouble in his community, all in the name of protecting kids from too-strict parents and nasty neighbors. He heads the ABPA (American Boys' Protective Association) and through it disrupts a number of local social events. The townspeople are pretty fed up with Penrod and his gang, but when a couple of outlaws come to town, Penrod shows his mettle.

The gang is trying just about anything to pass the time during their summer vacation. As usual, Mickey and Jack are trying to win the affections of Mary. In the interim, the village blacksmith, "Dad" Anderson, receives a lucrative contract to produce a creation of his: a sail-propelled scooter. The gang is lucky enough to get a hold of a few of these scooters, and happily sail down the city streets.

A tenderfoot arrives in a western town and the inhabitants give him a rough time.

James Parrott doing all kinds of handy work.

The gang wages war using old vegetables as munitions. Later, they ruin a movie in progress when they double-expose the film.

While attempting to hunt a formidable Peruvian Duck, Snub Pollard and Ernest Morrison inadvertently come to the aid of a kidnapped tourist.

Fast Company is the sixteenth short in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series created by Hal Roach. Many of the boys here want to go swimming but Mickey has to make a delivery. On the way, he encounters a rich boy waiting at a station for his mom and as they get to talking they trade places since Mickey has never seen the inside of a hotel and the rich kid just wants to play. When the rich kid returns to the gang with the goat-pulling wagon, however, they resolve to go where Mickey is which is where the fun really begins...

Centering around the closing days of the school year, this is a view into the life of a one-room schoolhouse. This type of learning institution has long vanished from the landscape being continued in Amish communities and such. We get kid-centric amusement as various skills of music are performed by youngsters who were probably coaxed by parents to take up the instruments used.

Snub conducts a blind pig in a barn, where the village cronies gather for their "licker," and the place is raided by revenue officers.

A typical Pollard-Morrison outing is Rush Orders (1921), in which the pair ride into town on a railroad handcar (with Morrison providing the locomotive muscle). When there it's all about the hustle for food with rivals and advertisement in the café business..

A once-act farce about two neighbours who purchase a car that they can use to go on drives with their wives.

As tens of guests pile out of a wedding ceremony a jilted and bitter rival (Eddie Boland) vows revenge on the new bride. The wedding limo pulls off leaving the groom (Snub Pollard) behind, who then has to chase it down the street. He catches it up but is made to sit on the back of the car "as ballast". The car comes to a halt where the groom mistakes a policeman's gesturing of traffic as an offer of a handshake. Finally, the groom arrives at his house where his servant greets him, but unbeknownst to him, the servant's child (Ernest Morrison) has set up a scare in the shape of an "angora" bird in a cage under the dinner table before they get there.

The comic adventures of a new car owner.

The kids pretend to be hunting a variety of animals when they're invited to a farm where they try to capture real game. This gets boring after a while so they decide to try and track a bear. Soon the bear is stalking them!

Rivalry over a girl in this country moves to the heart of Africa, where the principals get into difficulties with man-eating cannibals.

Snub Pollard and Sunshine Sammy Morrison are on a storm tossed ship that soon sinks leaving the pair stranded on a nearby island where comic situations ensue.

Snub, the delivery man, and his assistant, Sunny, are returning from a delivery when they almost run over a lost woman. After she asks for directions, they accompany the woman to a dance school, where Snub is mistaken for the new professor.

This Our Gang short has the group playing pirates and building a ship to sail in. Once the ship hits water it sinks but they end up on another boat when the dog unties the rope and the kids head off to sea where they must be rescued by the Navy.

'Snub' Pollard in a lot of wedding problems.

The monkey gland operation is about to be performed upon Snub. A flash-back shows how the lack of pep has affected his spirits. While under ether he dreams that he has become an ape and is forced to swing upon the chandeliers and walk up the sides of the buildings. He wakes up just before the operation is performed and takes the chance to beat it out of the hospital. The horror of the dream gives him more pep than monkey glands.

The gang mistakenly believes a police patrol is after them for beating up a cop's boy; they wind up encountering the police's real quarry: Red Mike.

The Rascals, feeling unloved at home, decide to become pirates. Meanwhile, a mother, an aunt and a valet join the cops in searching for the runaways.

Snub goes butterfly hunting in Grffith Park and catches Marie Mosquini by accident. They go to a café where all the men have a lot of hair on their faces and the usual mischief ensues.

After his car runs out of gasoline, the son of a rich man takes his vehicle to a garage run by women.

An opportunistic umbrella salesman attempts to save a musician and his daughter from blackmail.

After being ejected from an establishment for being drunk and disorderly, George Rowe, Sammy Brooks, Hughie Mack and Snub Pollard form a drunken singing quartet in the street before a car comes and takes Sammy and George away, leaving the other two staggering in the road. Snub and Hughie agree to go somewhere "where there are no wives, landlords or prohibitionists", and so three months later they emerge on a prairie with supplies dwindling.

A kindly old schoolteacher helps the gang escape from a cruel boarding school, but they wind up in a bootlegger's booby-trapped house.

After numerous failed attempts to commit suicide, our hero (Lloyd) runs into a lawyer who is looking for a stooge to stand in as a groom in order to secure an inheritance for his client (Davis). The inheritance is a house, which her scheming uncle "haunts" so that he can scare them off and claim the property.

At the start we learn that Farina is suffering nightmares each time he eats meat. His mom tells him to stay away from the stuff but he loves it so much he sneaks out of the house and ends up eating several chickens. That night she puts him to bed and sure enough he begins to have nightmares that the other kids are chasing him. Basing a kids comedy around one kid having nightmares and being stalked by other kids might seem rather bizarre but this was 1924 we're talking about.

Mickey and Jackie feud over Mary, so Sammy schedules a championship bout between the two rivals.

A cobbler receives his back pension and invites the gang to celebrate with a picnic, but his car stalls along the way.

The boys cannot go fishing because they have to take care of their baby brothers and sisters. After trying unsuccessfully to sell their babies to some traveling gypsies, Mary shows up and tells them that her little sister just won a prize at the baby show.

This one has to be seen to be believed. Apparently the gang has witnessed a Ku Klux Klan meeting. They decide to form their own lodge. They call themselves the Cluck Cluck Clams. There is nothing racist about their lodge, which includes member Sunshine Sammy Morrison. The film ends with a chase. The gang gets tangled up with bank robbers. Sunshine Sammy gets his uncle and his pals to chase the bank robbers with the gang riding along.

The Honorable Hugh Wentworth, arriving from England with a valuable diamond to millionaire Edward Ensloe. Ensloe's eldest daughter Eleanor has romantic designs on Hugh, but he is more attracted to her tomboy sister Peggy. Eleanor is concerned with fashion and society while Peggy prefers tomboy pursuits with her younger brother Bob.

A giant cave man kidnaps beautiful Adorable from the cave clan and the man who rescues her can have her hand and a new suit of clothes.

Marie and her friend Billy are playing pirates and Marie is the pirate and Billy is her assistant. Marie's widowed mother becomes engaged to Mr. Cross , whom Marie doesn't like -- she much prefers Jack Laird, a secret service man. Laird's investigation of opium smugglers leads him to suspect that Cross is involved, but Marie's mother refuses to let him be searched.

A comedy short starring Mildred Davis & 'Snub' Pollard

Dolly lives with her aunt, who is a seamstress. The child is sent home from school because she has been naughty, and finds her aunt in the act of making a Red Cross costume for a huge mechanical doll. The doll can walk and talk and excites Dolly's interest intensely.

Christine, known as Tiny, whose mother eloped with a circus clown and became a parachutist, spends most of her time with her lame dog and an elephant.

Marie attempts to select a new husband for her mother and a father for herself.