Mickey McGuire
Rides Again!

While pretty much everyone is familiar with the long-running and highly popular series of short films for children produced by comedy legend Hal Roach and dubbed “Our Gang,” far fewer film buffs are aware that there was another, equally prolific and popular series of short comedies for kids, produced at the same time, called the “Mickey McGuire” series. The star of the series was a scrappy little boy named Mickey McGuire, (birth name Joe Yule, Jr.) who went on to have a fabulous career as an actor under the name Mickey Rooney.

Like the Hal Roach films, the McGuire series covered both the late silent era and the early sound era (1927-1934), and like “Our Gang,” the McGuire series featured a “gang” of kids who stuck together to achieve all sorts of wonderful adventures. Both were filmed in and around the fields of Los Angeles, California, and at first blush, the two series might look remarkably similar.

Although they shared the box-office success of the “Our Gang” films during their original theatrical release, the Mickey McGuire films sadly fell by the wayside thereafter, and never achieved the lasting popularity of the Hal Roach series, which gained an impressive second life on television, and subsequently on home video. For reasons largely unknown, the Mickey McGuire films were barely syndicated to television, and were rarely seen by anyone after their original run in theatres.

It is thus nothing short of a revelation that, thanks to the tireless film archivists at Video Legacy, this remarkable series has once again seen the light of day in a stunning newly-remastered DVD release, "MICKEY MCGUIRE AND THE SCORPIONS". Take our word for it; these films are adorable and remarkable, and the Video Legacy DVD release really does them justice. We recently spoke with Video Legacy president Dave Clevinger about this exciting new release.

KiddieMatinee.Com: I think like many film buffs, I was barely aware that these films existed. I had a few “Mickey’s Gang” silent films on 8mm when I was a kid, and I thought I recognized Mickey Rooney as the star, but I kind of brushed them aside as an obscure one-shot bunch of films. However, a little research shows that the Mickey McGuire series was hugely popular in its original release, easily on par with Hal Roach’s “Our Gang” series.

Video Legacy: That’s true, if the little 8mm "Mickey's Gang" digests like that are all someone has seen or even has knowledge of, they have only encountered a tiny fraction of the immense output of the Mickey McGuire series. It’s believed over 70 films were produced. You can see the titles of most of them on the Internet Movie Database, but that may not be all-inclusive. I have a film titled "Mickey’s Brigade" that is not on that list, but whether or not that film was re-titled or not, who can be sure? One of the things that attracted me most to the series is it’s obscurity. I enjoy the challenge of films like that, shrouded in mystery, lost to time. It’s 99% of the fun in collecting! That and also because Mickey McGuire is a sort of relative of mine.

KM.C: You’re really related to Mickey McGuire? Wanna give us the full dope on that?

VL: Sure, but it’s no big deal. Mickey McGuire became “Mickey Rooney” when the film series ended. Rooney grew up had a few different wives and around 1958 met a cousin on my mother’s side of the family named Barbara Ann Thomason. She became Mrs. Mickey Rooney the 4th or 5th, I can’t recall which. But she was murdered in the late Sixties – so I guess Mickey McGuire was my cousin-in-law or something like that for awhile anyway. Regardless, I am kin with the children from their marriage, they all have names that start with a “K” – Kerry, Kelly, Kyle and Kimmy Sue. So that’s the dope on that.

KM.C: The silent Mickey McGuires are some of my favorites. Can you give the readers any more information about the history of them?

VL: What has survived of the silent era of Mickey McGuire series has filtered down to modern collectors in various forms. There are 16mm and 8mm “digests” – usually very short clips (50-100ft in length) duped from original prints, or possibly other dupes and also the less edited films that were seen on 1950’s and early 1960’s television shows like “Scalawags and their Gangs” or “The Mischief Makers”. These TV shows hallmarked many of the early silent kid’s comedies. Whimsical accompaniment music and sound effects were dubbed onto the films for added comic effect. Original 16mm “two-reelers” of McGuire from the silent period are quite scarce.

One reel of 35mm film was about 1000ft. or about 11-12 minutes of run time – in the 16mm reduction process two reels equaled around 18 minutes. A full two-reeler should run about 18 minutes. but you do well to find prints that haven’t been somewhat edited. The majority of the shorts on “Mickey McGuire and the Scorpions” are truly full reels, but not all of them – we attempt to explain this on our website page.

KM.C: I noticed that the silents really do differ greatly from the soundies. Different cast members too, I think, or did they just age fast?

VL: That’s a good question, but difficult to answer without having access to more of the early silent prints to study. I think it’s safe to say that from studying the action and the title cards seen on the silents we have in our archive, that the producers did have a regular retinue of reoccurring characters. The polarization of “Mickey’s gang” vs. Stinkie’s gang” and the competition between them is the backbone of nearly all the plots of the McGuire series shorts that I have been associated with.

I also think it’s safe to say that the “core” group of the Scorpions from the outset of the series consisted of: Hambone, Tomboy, Katrinka, and of course Mickey. The character of Stinkie Davis (seen spelled both ways – Stinky and Stinkie) was also a stand-by as Mickey’s foil. Aside from these you also have the character of “Mary Ann” the town’s “little princess” who resided in the series as a sort of competitive love interest. We also don’t want to forget “Mickey’s Little Brudder”, an otherwise nameless toddler who Mickey was often stuck babysitting and who was eventually replaced by Billy Barty.

There was also in the silent films the Scorpions' dog, at first simply called “the dog” but was later known more familiarly as “Buster”. And there were the other stereotypical characters that generally populated films of the genre and era – the fat one, the redheaded one, the skinny one, etc… the stage names of many of these are probably lost to time due to the scarcity of the films. Oftentimes, in the later dupes many of the titles cards were stripped out further obfuscating the identities of secondary characters besides making the action harder to understand. In the interest of producing quick kid’s TV fodder, these companies did film history a great disservice by their heavy-handed treatment of these precious gems of the past. It didn’t bother the people who did the editing if the boss said “Make room for more commercials”, they just followed orders – then again, the films they were using may have already been “chopped up”, who knows?

KM.C: So you feel the television industry hasn’t always been a champion of film preservation and it’s historical aspects?

VL: For sure, the television industry has always treated programming as a disposable commodity, to be used and tossed aside for the “next new thing”. But I would also have to say that films relegated to “kid’s shows” have taken more abuse and suffered greater neglect – and I think the attitude was, “Hey they’re just dumb kid’s shows and only dumb kids are going to be watching anyway”. But kids aren’t always so dumb…I well remember seeing cartoons on the rebound where chunks that had been present the first time I saw them televised were noticeably missing. And a lot of great stuff you can only have as memories nowadays – if you can’t find it in a video store. And basically this is the very reason for the existence of our website, the “8Store”, to make readily available to collectors and fans the “shows that time forgot” and the industry deems insignificant, out-dated or otherwise “unusable”. Our burden has been to keep programs like “8th Man” (the site is named after this vintage English-dubbed anime), Prince Planet, Marine Boy, The Amazing 3 and many others from vanishing out of sight and mind. Mickey McGuire and the Scorpions was added for the same reason.

Anyway, the core group made the transition from silents to sound films while the lesser characters started to drop off – and for the most part the actors who played the parts of the core group remained mostly the same even through the transition period.

KM.C: Can you tell our readers the names of any of the regular cast of Mickey McGuire?

VL: I wish I could tell you all of them, but I don’t have that much information at present. What I can share with you is this:

Mickey McGuire was played by Joe Yule Jr., whose name was later legally changed to Mickey McGuire, and then Mickey Rooney. Yule played McGuire for the duration of the series, except a couple of shorts when supposedly he was injured he was temporarily replaced by another boy, name unknown.

Hambone Johnson was played by James Robinson Jr., for the duration of the series, except for an occasional short, perhaps due to illness. He was credited both as Jimmie Robinson and James Robinson.

Tomboy Taylor, played by an unknown actress for the duration of the silent era and part of the sound era, until she was replaced by Shirley Jean Rickert. The earlier actress possibly “outgrew” her role. Rickert was also credited sometimes as Jeane (with an "e").

Katrinka or Katrink was played by various actors. Marvin Stephens took the role as a regular in the later sound-era films.

Stinkie Davis was played by many various actors. He was played by Douglas Scott in the later sound period.

Mary Ann was played by Delia Bogard for the duration of the series, although the character dropped out of sight in the later sound-era films.

Mickey’s Little Brudder was played by different unknown toddlers during the silent period. He was then played by Billy Barty, who first appeared as a nameless “smart aleck kid” in the early sound period. Barty soon became a regular, and a favorite as “Billy,” the younger brother of Mickey.

Mayor Davis’/Stinkie Davis’ Dad was played by various actors. The role was a regular character in the later sound-era films.

Uncle Nemo was played by an unknown black actor. He was Hambone’s uncle during the sound period.

Police Officer. He isn't in the credits but his stage name is Mr. Donovan.

Another bit player who showed up now and then was Kit Guard. (He played Stinky's coach in MICKEY'S TOUCHDOWN).

In addition to these there were other “regulars” that you can see reoccurring in many of the shorts: a very large fat man, an actor who played an emcee, an auctioneer, and a snake oil salesman (who was doubtless in other films as well), plus a regular black actor who made many appearances such as Mayor Davis’ chauffeur, etc.

KM.C: What are some of the defining characteristics of the Mickey McGuire series? Did they develop over the series' duration?

VL: I would say they certainly developed over time. You can see radical differences between the early shorts produced by Standard Cinema and the ones produced near the end of the series by Post Pictures.

The scripts for the silents asked for fast and furious action – loads of sight gags, and a lot of pure old-fashioned slap-stick. With the introduction of sound, of course, came the things like kid’s variety shows, vaudeville-type acts, and short singing numbers – that tended to “mellow” the series but not overly-much. Certainly by the time sound pictures arrived they had tried just about everything imaginable in the area of slap-stick and stunts so sound opened up new horizons and possibilities for the series. The young “soon-to-be Mickey Rooney” was an excellent dancer for his age and bursting with talent that was put to good use, in the RKO years especially.

In the latter years the writing tended to lean in the direction of a more mature and benevolent McGuire and the Scorpion gang would often be involved in some activity concerning helping people. Things like raising money for a children’s milk fund or a new wheelchair and hosting parties for poor kids. At rare times even the self-centered Stinkie would “pitch-in” to help, which was way out of his character and something the “silent Stinkie” wouldn’t have been seen doing. So you definitely see many changes from the inception of the series until it’s final days.

KM.C: What are some of the defining elements of the characters in Mickey McGuire series? And how did they develop over the series duration?

VL: In the original comic strip, “Toonerville Folks," which inspired the film series, Mickey McGuire was basically the town bully - but the celluloid incarnation of McGuire placed the character more in a role of “king of the kids,” at least for the more underprivileged ones of Toonerville. In the silent films Mickey McGuire was the quintessential example of a street-wise kid who didn’t take any guff from anybody even if they were twice his size. To his faithful followers, McGuire stood out unchallenged as teacher, leader and hero and those who did challenge him discovered despite his diminutive size he was a force to be reckoned with, and so even these kids learn to respect him. There could be no doubt that Mickey was the greatest of them all and invariably he stole the show completely.

Conversely Stinkie Davis was the leader of all the “rich kids” in town so the two factions were constantly at odds with one another. Just about the whole series was built around this model of Mickey and his Scorpions vs. Stinkie and his pals and the unavoidable and often disastrous interactions these two warring factions imposed on the hapless town-folks of Toonerville during their escapades.

There was a certain impishness and air of mischief in the silents that seemed to be lost in the later sound period. The early silents portrayed very “rough and tumble” kids of that era in scenes that defy the constraints of “acceptable behavior” even just a decade later. You witness a very different world in those early films. It’s very gritty and intense. These films were shot before a lot of regulations had been imposed on the movie industry and it shows.

The character of Hambone was pretty typical for the time, he was the guy who took most of the pratfalls and if there was “dirty work” to be done then Hambone was the first to be elected. Sight gags based on “white & black” were often employed when Hambone was on the scene, such as Mickey’s goat yielding white milk while Hambone’s goat’s milk was strange enough, black. Though often the underdog, Hambone would get his chops in; just as when reluctant to be the recipient to catch a cannonball, Mickey remarked, "Aww, you’re yella!" To which Hambone responded – “You’re color-blind! But Hambone’s role was second only to Mickey and provided an irreplaceable element of fun that certainly made the series what it was.

Katrinka was a male character endowed with great strength and occasionally you would see him use it – the poor kids that played the role had to wear a sweater full of holes and something under that with all sorts of padding for his “muscles”. It must’ve been pretty uncomfortable to say the least. Tomboy Taylor was the only girl in the Scorpions Club proper, she kept her hair piled up on her head inside a hairnet that so that it stuck straight up and her bloomers showed from under her dress and this is how her costume always looked. When Shirley Jean replaced the older Tomboy, she was outfitted pretty much the same only her hair wouldn’t stick up quite as much.

I think my favorite character is Billy, as he was given this role as the “runt” of the bunch but oftentimes turned out to be the smartest of the gang or the hero in the end. Billy always has something clever to say and he gets these bright ideas that “save the day” as well. I have seen Billy Barty in bit parts in other films around the same time but he really shines in McGuire and is quite a scene stealer in his own right.

KM.C: At first blush, the Mickey McGuire series and the "Our Gang" series appear strikingly similar in their comedy, casting and general look. But upon further inspection, some interesting differences stand out. What do you think distinguishes the two series?

VL: I am not that familiar with the pre-sound "Our Gang" shorts, so my thoughts may not be historically correct, but for the record, this is my opinion. I think the stand-out difference is that you have an undisputed "leader" character in Mickey McGuire, whereas in "Our Gang," most of the kids were more or less, all on equal footing. Doubtless the "big kids" would lord it over the younger ones, but they were "bigger," weren’t they? In the McGuire series it's really the opposite, with this little guy bossing them all around or taking on anybody no matter their stature or age. Instead of being big in size, McGuire was big in "attitude." Whether or not there was a similar characterization found in the old Our Gangs...I can't say for sure.

KM.C: As in the Hal Roach films, there are several instances in the Mickey McGuire films where the "kids" build strange, Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions to further their adventures. The sailing vessel in "Mickey’s Brigade" and the amazingly convoluted wagon train in "Mickey’s Covered Wagon" come to mind. This brings up the notion of who do you think was borrowing (or stealing) ideas from who?

VL: To give credit where credit is due, Leonard Maltin & Richard Bann's excellent book on "Our Gang" would be the best authority to answer this, and the "Our Gang" comedies would have beat the McGuire films to the punch in this respect. "Our Gang" was using these kind of contraptions in the early silents, several years before a single McGuire film had been shot. However, I have a question (this is food for thought): was Hal Roach the innovator of this type of comedy, or did he COPY the idea from even earlier silent films? Not being an expert on silent films, I can’t give you the answer, but I would wager that someone else had cooked up similar elaborate props before "Our Gang" did so.

KM.C: Why do you think the Mickey McGuire films, which for my money are in every way the equal of the "Our Gang" films, never achieved the popularity of the Hal Roach series?

VL: I think you mean why are they not as popular today, and I’ll address that. But first I would just like to say upon their release these films were immensely popular. I don’t think they would have stayed in production for nearly 9 years if they weren’t. The reason they inevitably ended was because Rooney and the others outgrew their parts. I don’t think there was any viable substitute for Rooney or Robinson either and the producers knew that. Its true that "Our Gang" successfully re-invented their main cast many times with new talent, but I don’t see how that would’ve work for Mickey McGuire, because the lifeblood of the series was contained in this one central character.

As for why the "Mickey McGuire" series isn’t as popular TODAY as "Our Gang," I have a few of theories. One is the McGuire films didn’t get national airplay throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s like "Our Gang" did, under the syndication title "The Little Rascals." So Baby boomers didn’t grow up aware of the McGuire films as they were of the "Little Rascals." I belong to this group, and I never saw even one Mickey McGuire film on TV when I was young, and we lived in a lot of different places, in different TV markets. Plenty of "Little Rascals" on the tube, though!

To the best of my knowledge, only the SILENT McGuires were used in TV shows like "Scalawags and Their Gang" and "Mischief Makers," and those TV shows were off-the-air by the early-to-mid 1960’s. You could also add to this that the fact remains that the “Our Gang” comedies were first, and there were more of them. Hal Roach undoubtedly had the bigger “name” and did many other types of film work. And from the TV industry’s point of view on these programs, one series is just as good as the other. If the Hal Roach films were easy to access (and they were) and always had the preeminence over the lesser-known series, then why bother with "Mickey McGuire" when you can have "Our Gang"? It’s very logical when you think about it.

One other factor (only a theory, mind you), might have been the fact that Mickey Rooney was suffering the doldrums of his career through the 1950’s and 1960’s. Marketing experts will tell you, it is not good strategy to associate with the name of someone who is considered a has-been or failure. Could this have been a factor in in the lesser popularity of the "Mickey McGuire" series?

Possibly the main reason is just lack of exposure. If you don’t have pleasant childhood memories of a film, you aren’t going to want to see it again as much. It fails as an experience to “relive.” Also, most of the people who saw the "Mickey McGuire" films at the theater are by now either dead or in nursing homes! I am not trying to be disrespectful here, just stating what I believe to be fact. This age demographic is tops among customers who buy Geritol and Depends, but – not DVDs! ; )

Finally, I think the content of the McGuire films wouldn’t meet the politically correct standards of today, at least for broadcast purposes. Even in the 1960’s and 1970’s, some of the "Our Gang" films were “blacklisted” for content having to do with race, and others were edited as well.

The "Mickey McGuire" films are indeed outrageous, irreverent, bodacious, and chock full of “personal violence,” but remove any of this content and you will also strip the “soul” of the films out of them. They are a snapshot of the culture of those times, and I think whatever that culture happened to be, just because we have a different viewpoint now, it should not be sanitized or whitewashed.

KM.C: Well, the series is spectacular, and your DVD restoration is simply stunning. We would like to thank you for stopping by to tell our visitors about Mickey McGuire and the Scorpions, and sharing all this fascinating information. Thanks also for sharing these wonderful films with a new generation. Personally, I think this is a group of films just waiting to be rediscovered. Is there anything else you’d like to say before closing?

VL: The only thing left to say is no matter how much I might expound on the McGuire series here in print, the best testament by far is the series itself. Each Mickey McGuire and the Scorpions DVD provides a sampling of excellent sound and silent shorts that is unique in the market right now. So get ‘em while they’re hot! Thanks!

Don't forget to check out the newly restored Mickey McGuire DVDs at 8thman.com. Believe us, this is a film buff's paradise!