Plot
The gang is putting on another big show in Spanky's cellar, complete with an orchestra led by Buckwheat (Billie Thomas), and performances by Darla (Darla Hood) and many of the other neighborhood kids. However, "King of Crooners" Alfalfa (Carl Switzer), the star of the show, crashes the swing music based show with his off-key rendition of "The Barber of Seville", having secretly decided he's going to sing opera from now on. Spanky closes the curtain on Alfalfa and sends out another act to replace him, causing Alfalfa to walk out and take his voice "where it'll be appreciated!"
With Porky (Eugene Lee) accompanying him, Alfalfa turns up at the Cosmopolitan Opera House, wanting to appear in their next opera. Barnaby (Henry Brandon), the Cosmopolitan's impresario, jokingly offers the young boy a contract - provided he come back in twenty years. Elated, Alfalfa returns to Spanky's cellar with Porky, gloating about his presumed good fortune. Spanky tears into him, telling him that "someday I'll be a big producer on Broadway, and you'll be singing your opera in the streets with a tin cup in your hand!"
Alfalfa brushes off Spanky's warnings and falls asleep backstage, dreaming that the twenty years have elapsed and the public is awaiting his debut at Barnaby's opera house. However, Alfalfa is quickly booed by the audience and pelted with rotten vegetables. An angry Barnaby, now a wizened old man, throws Alfalfa out into the New York streets and forces him to sing for pennies in the snow. Hungry and broke, Alfalfa and Porky happen upon "Club Spanky", an ornate nightclub on Broadway, owned by a now-rich Spanky and headlined by the also rich Darla and "Cab Buckwheat".
Inviting them in to see the show, Spanky offers to let Alfalfa and Porky work for him again. Porky immediately accepts, but Alfalfa stubbornly refuses. However, after seeing the floor show starring Darla, Buckwheat, Porky, and a few other performers, Alfalfa is won over and changes his mind. Just as he begins to sing, however, Barnaby appears to drag him back out by the arm to sing in the snow.
At this point, Alfalfa awakens to find himself back in Spanky's cellar. Spanky begs him to join in the last act, and Alfalfa, needing no further convincing, rushes onstage to sing Bing Crosby's "Learn to Croon" for the show's finale.
Read more about this topic: Our Gang Follies Of 1938
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)