I know for a fact that I had no idea who Leonard Landy was when I captured his autograph in my little blue book on July 31, 1980 at the Our Gang reunion meet-and-greet during the Sons of the Desert Hollywood ’80 convention. Looking at his signature in my book for a year or so after the fact caused me to scratch my head and wonder who exactly this was. In fact, Maltin and Bann’s Our Gang: The Life and Times of the Little Rascals was unable to identify his character in the cast listing of the films – so his name meant little to me. It was only in the appendix to the book did he receive a byline indicating that a man has identified the character of ‘Leonard’ as his cousin Leonard Landy.
The mystery autograph
Later in life when I became more of an Our Gang aficionado, I realized that Leonard Landy had in fact played a pretty important role in the series, appearing in more than twenty of the Our Gang films, albeit mostly in the later, inferior M-G-M pictures. At that point, I began to boast that I had actually met this kid Leonard (also known at times as ‘Percy’).
Fortunately, I got to meet up with Leonard again – 17 years later! At that time, I chatted with him, got my picture taken with him, and had him actually sign a photo (below). And still later after my resurrection of Dante’s Info in the early 2000’s, Leonard granted me an interview and I subsequently published an article about him – as well as provided him with video tapes of the bulk of his Our Gang appearances. He still uses that tape to this day when he does presentations at community events in his hometown Palm Desert, California about his days with the Our Gang.
Spanky McFarland with Leonard Landy in Clown Princes
The Our Gang stars of 1980 will conclude in the next posting…
I am sorry to hear that Mr. Landy passed away. My condolences to his Family and Friends….
Dave Chasteen
July 29th, 2017