In the late 1940’s – long after Hal Roach had sold the rights to his Our Gang series to M-G-M – the Roach studios made an attempt to cash in on the success of their mega-series that had run for well over twenty years between the two studios. This attempt came in the form of another assemblage of young actors in two new films called Curley (1947) and Who Killed Doc Robbin? (1948). The efforts were weak at best and not widely accepted as a substitute for the original Little Rascals series.
The only direct link to the original Our Gang that any of the kid cast members had was that one of them was the younger brother of the irrepressible Stymie Beard. Rene Beard was much too young to have ever appeared in the real Our Gang, not having been born until 1941 – but he was cast in these two Roach revivals as Dis, one half of Dis and Dat. Dat was played by a young actor named Donald King.
I was excited to meet Rene because his brother Stymie had always been my favorite Our Gang member and I unfortunately never got to meet Stymie. Rene had appeared at several of the Hollywood Collectors shows in the past, often selling (and signing) photos of his brother Stymie. Although never actually claiming to be Stymie (that I know of), he generally didn’t correct anyone who thought that he was! As seen above, the resemblance is uncanny.
I was more interested in getting a photo of the real Rene Beard signed, especially considering that he had actually appeared in two Roach films. Bob had already had the photo below made up and signed for me at an earlier show (on which Rene misspelled his character name This intead of Dis), so when I actually met him on February 16, I didn’t purchase anything from him. He was a bit hesitant to pose with me until Bob assured him that I had been a former customer.
Celebrities and autographs from Hollywood ’07 will continue…
Not sure if everyone’s aware of this, but in this picture of the Doc Robbin cast, the boy on the far right, in the front row, is none other than Billy Gray, who later played James “Bud” Anderson, Jr. , in the long running sitcom, “Father Knows Best”.
Bruce
December 8th, 2007
And the boy in the front wearing the plaid shirt is Larry Olsen – the much older brother of Susan Olsen who played Cindy Brady on the Brady Bunch.
Jim
September 14th, 2008
Dear Brad,
Would you know of any way to get in touch with Rene Beard? I am doing research into a script on Stymie Beard’s life and would LOVE to talk to Rene. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Joe Riordan
February 16th, 2012