Darla Hood Animation Pictures

Although Patty Maloney is best known for her work with the Krofft brothers (Far Out Space Nuts, Bay City Rollers and others), her first animation role was Darla Hood in the 1982-84 Little Rascals series, produced jointly by Hanna-Barbera and King World for ABC-TV. The Little Rascals cartoon was never part of USA Network’s Cartoon Express, and to my knowledge it has not been shown on Cartoon Network, despite the fact that TBS and TNT have for years shown Our Gang shorts from the 1930s and 1940s.

While Patty was working on the animated Little Rascals, her Far Out Space Nuts co-star Chuck McCann portrayed both Blinky and Pinky to Marty Ingels’ Pac-Man. Also in 1982, Patty’s other FOSN co-star, Bob Denver, worked with newcomer Alexa Hamilton on The Invisible Woman, a pilot for NBC-TV that combined elements of science fiction, comedy and action-adventure.

The pictures here were provided by a Canadian man named Ashley Remedio (I was fooled by the gender of the name) and taken from a videocassette sold by the Cartoon Closet (no current link available). I have no sound files, but Mr. Remedio hopes to provide a movie file, which I shall try to convert from AVI to QuickTime.

Hanna-Barbera historian Earl Kress told me in early May 2008 that he never liked the 1980s Little Rascals character designs, which he attributed to Iwao Takamoto. According to Kress, the animators found them too complex and difficult to draw. I asked him whether he could provide me any Little Rascals cels or model sheets, but he could not.

Pictures

Is that really Pete whom Darla is feeding?	“How dare Cartoon Network turn me away!”	“Please let me join your club!”
“Next on our stage ....”	“Does anyone have any requests?”	“Double my shoe size and add five ... I see where this is leading!”
“Dinner is served!”	“Has anyone seen Porky?”	“We found Porky, but lost Alfalfa!”

<2003 June 01: Ron Kurer has added seven more pictures and an 11-minute Little Rascals cartoon, titled “Pete’s Big Break”, to his site. With his permission, I have placed a copy of the RealVideo cartoon here at MidcoNet. You need the RealPlayer to watch the cartoon.

At least two of Patty’s Little Rascals co-stars have their own presence on the Web. If these links are inaccurate or broken, feel free to send me corrections:

Peter Cullen (Pete the Staffordshire terrier, Officer Ed)
Julie Dees (Alfalfa, Porky, Woim)
Scott Menville (Spanky; also Tug in Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School)
Shavar Ross (Buckwheat)
B.J. Ward (Butch, Waldo)