Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (26 page)

The future for independent short-subject producers like Hal Roach looked grim, so Roach switched gears and started making feature-length films. Any short-subject that didn’t work as a feature was discarded, and soon the
Our Gang
series was the only one left at the studio. Roach ordered up a feature-length
Our Gang
film called
General Spanky
. When it died at the box office, the fate of the
Our Gang
series was sealed…or was it?

It turned out that Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM, was an
Our Gang
fan, and he thought there was still a lot of demand for the films. Mayer promised Roach that if he cut the films down to 10 minutes in length, he’d see to it that they got distribution. Roach agreed and made another 23 shorts over the next two years. But even with MGM’s support, demand for short comedies kept falling, and so did the profits. In 1938 Roach sold the
Our Gang
unit to MGM, including all of the films made between 1927 and 1938.

Cats have no collarbones.

THE SHOW’S OVER

The quality of the
Our Gang
series suffered terribly at MGM. Instead of assigning a single top-notch director to film the shorts, the studio used the series to prepare inexperienced directors for feature film work. As Leonard Maltin and Richard Bann write in
The Life and Times of the Little Rascals: Our Gang
, “Hal Roach Studios was geared to making nothing but good comedy shorts, while MGM was geared to make everything but. The result was a strictly-for-kids mixture of ten minute morality plays and pep talks pushing American virtues during wartime.”

As the quality deteriorated so did audience interest; after 16 years of solid profits the films started losing money. MGM ended production in 1944; the last original
Our Gang
film,
Tale of a Dog
, was released in April 1944.

LIVING ON

The era of first-run
Our Gang
shorts may have ended, but the age of reruns was just around the corner. In 1949 Hal Roach bought back the rights to his
Our Gang
shorts and began licensing them for television (MGM kept the rights to the ones they made). The only problem: MGM kept the rights to the
Our Gang
name in case they ever decided to make more films. Roach had to come up with another name for his films. Since the kids were already known as “Hal Roach’s Rascals,” he decided to name the series
The Little Rascals
for television.

Thanks to TV, by the mid-1950s the classic films were more popular than they’d ever been, entertaining a new generation of kids and bringing back fond memories for people old enough to remember them from the first time around.
The Little Rascals
has been airing almost continuously since then and is now available on video as well.

Do you have a favorite
Little Rascals
character? Visit the “Little Rascals Hall of Fame” on
page 508
to learn more about them. For a darker view, see “The Curse of the Little Rascals” on
page 337
.

There are exactly 216 noodles in every can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.

IT’S A WEIRD, WEIRD WORLD

Proof that truth is stranger than fiction
.

H
I-HO, HI-HO, IT’S OUT OF WORK WE GO
“Snow White had to make do with just four dwarfs due to cost-cutting at a theater in the German town of Stendal. The Altmark Stendal theater said it could afford only six actors for its Christmas rendition of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
, which led to protests from theater-goers from the nearby city of Hanover who wanted to see all seven dwarves.

“The theater attached two puppets in dwarf outfits to a background wall to give the production six dwarfs. And the actor playing the prince was supposed to double as the seventh dwarf, but only made one brief appearance on stage. ‘That dwarf wasn’t on stage the whole time,’ theater spokeswoman Susanne Kreuzer told reporters, ‘because he was stuck down in the mine working overtime.’”

—Gold Coast Bulletin
[Australia]

LIFE’S UPS AND DOWNS

“For months, 14-year-old David Mossmann constructed a roller coaster in the back yard of his parents’ house in Offenburg, Germany. Now he must tear it down. The roller coaster stands about 325 feet long and 16 feet high, and can reach a speed of 30 mph, but according to city officials, the wood construction does not comply with safety regulations, and it must be demolished.

—N-TV [Germany]

NEIGHBOR’S PLOT FOILED

“A home in a Sacramento, California, neighborhood is surrounded by sheet metal, and neighbors are calling it an eyesore. But the residents, the D’Souza family, say the aluminium pieces are necessary to protect them from neighbors who have been bombarding them with radio waves and making them sick. ‘It’s a protective measure,’ Sarah D’Souza said. The family claims the bombardment began after the first anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and that the radio waves have caused them health problems ranging from headaches to lupus. Sacramento officials have ordered the family to remove the metal and they say they will comply with the order, but also plan to gather evidence to show city officials the problem with radiation.”

Women of the Warramunga tribe in Australia don’t speak for a year after their husbands die.

—Wall Street Journal

TIME TO GET UP

“After Bill DiPasquale was dismissed from his waiter’s job at Abe & Louie’s steakhouse in Boston because of a booze problem, he locked himself in his home and drank himself unconscious. Relatives found him near death and took him to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was put on life support, but with hope fading, last week they decided to pull the plug. When the dying man’s ex-boss, Charles Sarkis, heard about it, he barked, ‘You tell him to wake up and get his a** back to work!’ DiPasquale’s friend Ralph Nash figured there was nothing to lose, so he delivered the message, whispering into his pal’s ear, ‘Charlie says to get out of bed and get your a
_**
back to work.’

“Five minutes later, DiPasquale suddenly awoke and uttered, ‘I’ve got to get to work.’ And he began a quick recovery. DiPasquale believes God is giving him a second chance. ‘He’s telling me, ‘If you want to be struck out, have another drink.’ It will not happen. The show must go on.’”

—New York Post

LAKE WHOA BE GONE!

“A Russian village was left baffled Thursday after its lake disappeared overnight. NTV television showed pictures of a giant muddy hole bathed in summer sun, while fishermen from the village of Bolotnikovo looked on disconsolately. Officials in Nizhegorodskaya region, on the Volga river east of Moscow, said water in the lake might have been sucked down into an underground cave system, but some villagers had more sinister explanations. ‘I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us,’ said one old woman, as she sat on the ground outside her house.”

—Reuters

Instant makeover: Ribbon worms can turn themselves completely inside out.

BRAINTEASERS

BRI stalwart Maggie McLaughlin collected these puzzles and dared us to solve them. Uncle John immediately took them straight to our “research lab.” We now pass them along to you. (Answers are on
page 518
.)

1
.
A Thousand Squares
A rich old lady died and left a precious diamond to her family, but first they had to find it. She gave them one clue: “It is inside a cylinder surrounded by a thousand squares.”

Where did she hide it?

2
.
Horse Sense
The dying king wanted to pass his crown on to the wiser of his two sons, so he held a horse race. He told them: “The son whose horse rides to the lake and returns to the castle
last
will inherit my kingdom.” The younger son immediately jumped on a horse and rode away. Instantly, the king knew the younger son would inherit the kingdom.

How did he know?

3
.
Wrong Way Corrigan
A truck driver named Corrigan traveled three blocks down a one-way street—in the wrong direction. Along the way, he waved at a passing cop, who did not arrest him.

Why not?

4
.
Holed Up
Down at the city park, a baby bird fell into a hole that was four feet deep but only eight inches wide. Some kids who were playing on the swings nearby came over to help the bird, but just couldn’t reach it. Their parents, who were sitting on a bench, couldn’t reach, either. They wanted to try using a stick but were afraid it would hurt the bird. Little Julia, who was playing in the sandbox, came over and said, “I can save this bird, but it will take some time.”

What did she do?

5
.
Dollars to Dogs
You have a dime and a dollar; you buy a dog and a collar. The dog is a dollar more than the collar. How much is the collar?

6
.
Pressing Riddle
I have keys without locks. I have space without rooms. I can be entered, but you can’t come in, even though I am your type.

What am I?

Meteorologists’ definition for drizzle: “No more than 14 drops per square foot per second.”

FABULOUS FLOP: THE DELOREAN, PART I

Stainless steel. Gull-wing doors
. Back to the Future.
A big-time drug bust and $250 million in investment capital down the tubes. Here’s the story behind one of the most spectacular flops of the 20th century
.

T
HE TURNAROUND KID
In 1956 a 31-year-old engineer named John Z. DeLorean quit the Packard Motor Car Company and went to work for the troubled Pontiac division of General Motors. In those days Pontiac had a reputation for selling stodgy mid-market cars that didn’t appeal to young people. Sales were down and getting worse.

DeLorean was instrumental in changing Pontiac’s image with the introduction of the first muscle car, the GTO. Sales soared and so did DeLorean’s career. In 1961 he was promoted to chief engineer; four years later he was named Pontiac’s general manager. At just 40 years old, he was GM’s youngest division head ever.

Pontiac’s sales continued to rise, and in 1969 DeLorean was promoted to general manager of GM’s largest division, Chevrolet. By 1972, Chevy’s market share was on its way to record earnings when DeLorean was promoted to GM’s corporate headquarters.

Only 47 years old, DeLorean was the hottest executive in Detroit—thought to be one of the only members of GM’s senior management who understood what the public wanted and how to give it to them. He seemed a shoo-in for the presidency of GM.

Six months later, he was out of a job.

MAKING CHANGES

According to DeLorean, he quit GM. But his detractors at GM say he was shown the door, reportedly because he was steering contracts to suppliers in which he had a financial interest. DeLorean had also begun to clash with GM’s conservative corporate culture: In recent years he’d gotten a facelift and started dyeing his hair black. He grew long sideburns and took to wearing bell bottoms to the office in a company where everyone else wore business suits. In an even bigger shock to GM’s culture, in 1969 DeLorean dumped his wife of 15 years and married 19-year-old Kelly Harmon just six months later.

25% of Americans will catch more than four colds this year.

DREAM CAR

Whatever it was that caused the falling-out between DeLorean and GM, once he was on his own it wasn’t long before he started contacting the company’s auto dealers around the country to see if they’d be interested in carrying a new car—one completely different from anything GM had to offer. For some time DeLorean had wanted to start his own company and build his dream car: a two-seat luxury sports car that would be light years ahead of its time. It was just the kind of car that GM
wasn’t
interested in producing—the market was too small to be worth the investment.

Building an auto company from scratch wasn’t going to be easy. The last person to pull it off was Walter P. Chrysler, formerly the president of Buick, who founded his namesake company in the 1920s. Other companies had tried and failed: the Tucker Automobile Company folded in 1948 after producing only 51 cars, Kaiser-Frazer failed in 1956 after losing $100 million, Packard went under in 1958, and Studebaker followed in 1966. But inspired by Walter Chrysler’s example, DeLorean was determined to try and immediately set about raising money for his corporation.

He got his first infusion of cash from a handful of wealthy investors, and then raised more money from auto dealers, who paid $25,000 each for the right to sell DeLoreans when the car went into production. This early money was used to design and build three prototypes. Raising money for manufacturing would come later.

CAR OF THE FUTURE

In addition to its famous gull-wing doors (which open up, not out), the DeLorean as it was originally conceived would have two other features to set it apart from other American cars: