When I saw the Buckwheat doll still sealed in plastic, I was surprised. Not only surprised but amazed that some company had taken the time to make a doll in the image of a little black boy from an early TV show.
I remembered Buckwheat as a little dark-complexioned boy with wild hair. Could he have been so popular that someone thought they could make money off his image?
Buckwheat the character appeared at a time when little black children were not treated kindly in the mainstream media, and the child I remembered from the black and white TV of my youth fit the stereotype. He was the only youngster of color in a mischievous gang of Little Rascals kids, with the pudgy Spanky as the leader.
The black child of my recollections looked nothing like the doll in the package I held in my hand at an auction not too long ago. This doll was a sanitized version – they did want to sell it, of course – with a head of neatly trimmed molded hair and clothes that were made to look homemade but neat.
Even the black child on the package itself was as presentable as the white children. That was one of the things I also recalled about Buckwheat. He seemed to be as poor and disaffected as the white children in the cast – something I didn’t consciously realize then, but I do know.
The Buckwheat doll was not the only replica up for auction. There was also a poster for a 1934 “The Little Rascals’” short film called “Mama’s Little Pirate.” Among the children featured on the poster were Matthew Beard Jr., the kid Stymie with his bowler hat, and William “Billie” Thomas Jr., who portrayed Buckwheat. Both were said to be among the most popular of the black characters.
The doll was made in 1975, 20 years after “The Little Rascals” debuted on TV and about a decade after I’d watched them. Then, I knew very little about the child behind the Buckwheat character. Now, I decided to find out.
The motley group of kids started out as “Our Gang,” the brainchild of Hal Roach who in 1922 produced a series of comedy short films for theaters about a group of poor neighborhood children and their exploits. The productions began as silent films, and in 1929 sound and talkies arrived. Roach sold the “Our Gang” franchise to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/MGM about a decade later, and the shorts were filmed until 1943.
Roach bought the talkies from MGM, and starting in 1955, he syndicated them for TV under “The Little Rascals” title. Those are the ones that I remembered. Roach and his team produced 220 films along with one feature film titled “General Spanky.”
As the films grew in popularity (and became financially successful), so did the children, who had to be replaced. Little boys and girls from all over the country wanted to be a member of the gang, including Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney, who were not chosen, and Jackie Cooper who was. From the beginning, black kids were part of the cast.
Ernest Fredric Morrison was the first African American child on the “Our Gang” team, acting under the name “Sunshine Sammy.” He had been signed to a long-term contract – said to be the first for a black actor – for other Roach films in 1919 when Morrison was about six or seven years old. He was the first child recruited when Roach got the idea for the series.
He left the show in 1924 to do vaudeville, later becoming a regular on the “East Side Kids” show under the name Scruno in the 1940s.
Eugene Jackson, who played “Pineapple,” started with Roach in the early 1920s under a two-year contract when he was six years old. He left in 1926 after filming six shorts.
Allan Clayton Hoskins played Farina from 1922 to 1931 in 105 of the Our Gang shorts. He started out as a 1-year-old and was alternately dressed and characterized as both a boy and girl with pigtails. His character was said to represent the worst of the portrayal of black children, a Topsy character like the little girl in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 book “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” He aged out of the show at 11, and by then he and the character were said to have developed beyond that stereotype. Hoskins was said to be the most popular African American child star and the most popular of the gang itself during the 1920s.
Matthew Beard Jr.’s Stymie character was with the gang at the start of the talkies until 1935 when he was replaced by Buckwheat. I remember that character, the bald child with the bowler hat planted on top of his head. Several of his family members also appeared in some of the films.
And then came William “Billie” Thomas Jr. as Buckwheat. His first “Our Gang” film was in 1934 and he was a lesser character. Then in 1935, he assumed the role of Stymie’s sister Buckwheat, portraying a little girl for which the role had been written. Previous Buckwheat characters were played by girls, including Willie Mae Taylor.
His character fit the negative stereotype of black children as Topsy: a little girl with a head full of pigtail and bows, hand-me-down clothes and oversized shoes. The character migrated from girl to boy after Stymie left the series, a change in characterization that also stuck him with the wild hair. A popular character, he remained with the series until it ended when the last film “Dancing Romeo” was made in 1943.
The series has been condemned as racist in its images of black kids (this clip from the 1932 short “A Lad an’ a Lamp” has all the stereotypes, including a black child eating a watermelon), and applauded for being one of too few that showed black and white boys and girls as chums at a time when that was not happening in society.
Thomas apparently defended the show, countering that he and the other black children were treated as equals to the white kids. Morrison said the show was all work and play, and they got along well. Jackson said in a 1992 interview with the Los Angeles Times that the black kids were paid $20 less than the white kids, and they had “to look the part. They would put stuff on my hair to make it look kinkier.”
In his 1973 book on blacks in American film, Donald Bogle acknowledged the schizophrenic nature of the series, his interpretation quoted in several instances on the web: “Throughout the series the black children spoke in a dialect of the familiar ‘dats’ and ‘deres’ as well as the ‘I is’s,’ ‘you is’s.’ and ‘we was’s.’ On more than one occasion, Farina was seen banqueting on a colored man’s favorite dishes – fried chicken and watermelon. In these respects, the adventures and lifestyles of the black children conformed to the accepted notions and attitudes of the day. But for the most part, the charming sense of ‘Our Gang’ was that all of the children were buffoons, forever in scraps and scrapes, forever plagued by setbacks and sidetracks as they set out to have fun, and everyone had his turn at being outwitted.”
The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia website asserted, though, that the black children were presented as stereotypical buffoons, citing the Farina meals, and the pigtails and old clothes worn by both he and Buckwheat, fogging their sexuality. This androgynous nature seemed to be the case early on for most of the black boys in the series.
Let’s not forget Eddie Murphy’s depiction of the Buckwheat character on “Saturday Night Live.” It was hard to watch but hilarious.
As for the Buckwheat doll, I found several on the web. Most of the ones on eBay were porcelain and made in the 1990s; they weren’t selling very well individually but did better as complete sets of six. A doll similar to the one at auction sold for $21.50, and a set of six “Our Gang” dolls in original packaging sold well. Even the Madame Alexander Doll company made a set of four Little Rascals, including Buckwheat, in 1996.
While the early dolls may not have been so popular, a set of Little Rascals paper dolls sold for the most, $199.99. I wasn’t around when the doll and poster were sold at auction, so I’m not sure how much they went for.
