Doin' Their Bit

I don't care if you call me patriotic this film is the pits.

Ten minute song and dance film has the kids doing their part by putting on a show for the soldiers.

Time waster of a film is only worth bothering with for anyone who needs to have a musical constantly playing in their life. All other need not bother.

Yea this is another one of those review films that MGM put out on a regular time table. I don't know that anyone really would have liked them since the music and performances aren't that good. I'm guessing the main actors didn't like them since they seem to be walking through this nonsense.

Unless you're a huge fan of forgettable musicals take a pass.

Even taking into account that this "Our Gang" short was meant to be a morale-booster for the home front and nothing more, it's just downright awful. The opening production number, with 15 or so young boys dressed in military uniforms doing a precision tap-dance routine, is not particularly good but turns out to be the best thing in the picture, which rapidly goes downhill from there. Froggy and Spanky do an army-camp "comedy" routine that has nothing whatsoever funny about it--as another reviewer mentioned, Froggy's voice makes it almost impossible to understand the "punchline"--and a young girl who looks to be about five or six years old sings a number in which she keeps repeating dreamily "how I love a man in uniform" that comes perilously close to being creepy. The closing "Miss Liberty" number is so bad, and the kids in it look so bored, that it's downright embarrassing. The "Our Gang" kids have done several cute and interesting little musicals in this series, but this dud is definitely not one of them. Skip it.

MGM put Our Gang into some terrible s***t. They seemed to ignore the humor of the original short in exchange for Samuel Goldwyn's imposed American morality. Even poor Froggy couldn't save this one. It was like watching a John Birch Society recruitment film.

This M-G-M musical short, Doin' Their Bit, is the two hundred eighth entry in the "Our Gang" series and the one hundred twentieth talkie. For the last time, Froggy's Uncle Walter Wills (this turned out to be his last film overall) persuades the gang to put on a show, this time for U.S. service men stationed in Greenpoint. This all-kiddie revue starts out entertainingly enough with boys dressed in military uniform marching in dance step with Janet Burston later doing a cute number called "I Love a Man in a Uniform". Then there's an awful sketch with Spanky as a superior officer bemoaning how dumb Private Froggy is with his replies-even worse when you can't understand half what he's saying with that voice of his! The final number "Allies on Parade" with a young woman singing it while the kids are wearing the flags of the countries united with America in the war effort and walking by her is an okay morale booster for the time period. So on that note, Doin' Their Bit is worth a look for any Our Gang completists out there. P.S. This was the first series entry directed by Herbert Glazer. Unlike the other OG directors, these entries were the only films he'd make as such.

* Many viewers of these MGM-produced "Our Gang" musicals truly fail to understand that they were parodies of the those Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland era "Hey Gang, lets put on a show!" feature length movies. Rather than going for the usual neighborhood kids laugh comedy the MGM era Our Gang films such as this were show-casing the musical talents of the youngsters that MGM had under contract at the time. While it seems to me that many folks fail to appreciate Froggy who replaced Alfalfa (who had outgrown the series) as a kind of "Shemp" to Alfalfa's "Curley" Froggy was indeed a good child actor and an asset to the series. His "frog" voice was his impersonation of the Popeye cartoon character.