Watch The Little Rascals: The Essential Collection, Vol.1

The gang's Eagles Club holds auditions for a performer to send to a local amateur radio talent contest with a $50 prize. Despite Alfalfa's repeated attempts to upstage his competition, Darla is elected to represent the club at the talent contest. However, when Darla does not turn up at the radio station, Spanky runs to look for her, while Alfalfa decides to take it upon himself and take Darla's place on the radio program.

Hoping to earn enough money to buy baseball equipment, the Our Gang kids elect to have all their teeth pulled out. Their logic is sublime: If the Good Fairy is willing to slip a dime under the pillow for one tooth, imagine how much the kids will earn if they extract all of their ivories. Upon learning of this scheme, playful dentist Dr. Schwartz (played with unaccustomed sobriety by perennial movie "drunk" Jack Norton) decides to teach the little rascals a lesson -- beginning with a terrified Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer

Though little Bobby "Wheezer" Hutchins loves both his father and mother (Creighton Hale and Ann Christy), he wishes that they would stop quarrelling. Overhearing their plans to split up, Wheezer is at first delighted, assuming that a divorce is some sort of present. Learning the truth, he begs his pal Matthew "Stymie" Beard for advice. Stymie suggests that, if Wheezer were to get a bellyache, his folks would forget their differences. Acting upon this, Wheezer consumes vast quantities of lard and soap, then samples the entire contents of the family's medicine chest!

Last week, fickle Darla Hood declared that she would not go out with neighborhood bully until he started behaving like a gentleman. This week, however, Darla is ga-ga over "muscle men" in general and self-styled wrestler Alfalfa in particular.

Despite his mother's admonitions that he'll "never be President" unless he attends school, little Breezy Brisbane (Kenneth McKenna) contocts a plan that will earn him expulsion from Miss Crabtree's classroom. But though Breezy is able to escape the halls of learning, he is unable to elude his own conscience, in a scene eerily reminiscent of the Eugene O'Neill play {-Strange Interlude}. Along the way, Miss Crabtree tries to conduct another "pop quiz," apple-polisher Sherwood "Spud" Bailey recites a sappy poem, and the classroom is invaded by both a donkey and a skunk.

When open auditions are announced for a radio variety program, the local station is besieged by aggressively over-coached "professional kids." Also auditioning is an impressive-sounding musical aggregation called the International Silver String Submarine Band --- which turns out to be none other than the "Our Gang" kids, equipped (or rather, armed) with home-made instruments.

The owner of a tiny general store, "Grandma" (Mann), loves to have the kids around, even if they pay for their penny candy with expired subway tokens and buttons. Local skinflint Mr. Pennypacker (Oscar Apfel) tries to purchase Grandma's store for a ridiculously low sum, while a pair of representatives from a chain store make a more generous offer. Thanks to the gang's well-meaning "assistance," the chain store men are very nearly scared away.

Lovable old Gus (Gus Leonard) is forced to move his tiny lemonade stand when sidewalk-diner owner William Wagner and his bratty son Leonard Kibrick complain that Gus represents "unfair competition." As Gus relocates near a barber shop at the invitation of friendly boot black Joe Mathey, the Our Gang kids decide to drum up business for their favorite merchant by staging a makeshift parade and musical show. Wagner and his son finally get their comeuppance when a scalp-massaging device becomes lodged in Wagner's trousers, forcing the villain into a brief but colorful "dancing" career.

Originally released on September 9, 1933, "Bedtime Worries" was the first of two "Our Gang" comedies in which the vaudeville team of Emerson Treacy and Gay Seabrook (a second-echelon Burns and Allen) were cast as the parents of little Spanky McFarland. On the day he is promoted to head clerk (or "head cluck," as Spanky puts it), Treacy declares that it is high time Spanky stopped sleeping in his parents' room and go to bed in his own room. During his first night alone, Spanky envisions all sorts of imaginary horrors, from a bat (actually a moth) to "the boogeyman." Thus, when a burglar (Harry Bernard) climbs into Spanky's window, the boy's dozing parents fail to believe his story. Passing himself off as Santa Claus, the burglar steals everything that isn't nailed down until the rest of the Our Gang kids come to the rescue.

The Gang fears their new teacher, Miss Crabtree, will be as ugly and foreboding as her name. When Jackie hitches a ride from a beautiful and charming young lady, he has no idea that it's Miss Crabtree herself.