This Image Made Me Laugh So Much It Turned Up In One Of My Dreams!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                         Does anyone on here remember the 1935 "Little Rascals" short called "Beginner's Luck?" This was the one where Kitty Kelly, as Spanky's mother, goes all stage mother on him, thinking she can turn him into a Shakespearean actor.  Spanky is not too keen on it; he wants to be a regular kid, (The situation is ironic, considering the child actors involved in these films.) and his grandmother, played by May Wallace, concurs.  Mother enters him in a talent contest, billing him as "The Noblest Roman Of Them All." Before the show, he tells the gang to show up, and go after him with all their ammunition, enabling him to lose the contest, which he wants, because should he win, there will be more of this.

                        Things take a turn, when Spanky, backstage, encounters a little girl named Daisy, and her mother.  They are poor, and winning the contest is very important to them.  Spanky asks his mother if he wins the contest, can he do what he wants with the money.  She says yes, and he tells Daisy this famous line--"Girlie, the dress is in the bag."  Spanky then tells his mother to tell the gang that he wants to win, and she does.  But the gang does not understand that Spanky wants them to not go at him; instead, they think he wants them to amp it up further.

                           Which they do, and it turns out to be hilarious, and the audience loves it.  At one point, Daisy asks the announcer if Spanky is going to win the prize.  He tells her he won the prize three minutes ago.  She repeats to her mother, "Mommy, the dress is in the bag!"

                              Poor Spanky's mother is humiliated by all this, crawling around backstage trying to protect her son.  At one point, some curtain gets caught in the fabric of the mother's clothing, and the grandmother, backstage, and fed up with the whole thing, laughingly says, "Here's where we stop the show!"  The announcer says, "Go ahead!"  So Granny rings up the curtain, and the mother's clothes come off, leaving her in her undies, albeit with a slip.  This cannot be fully shown; it was after all, a 1930's children's short, so, while the audience laughs, Spanky grabs a stand-up canvass and places it in front of his mother, giving her this dog-ish, yet, from an adult perspective, rather eroticized look.

                            It also looks like an outtake from Tod Browning's 1932 masterpiece, "Freaks!"

                                 The image of this is hilarious, and I have always remembered it.  Last night, with a lot of worries on my mind, this appeared to me in a dream.   I dreamt the sequence I just described, right down to the photo, above.  A sign from the Divine?  I think so; He knew I needed something to laugh about.

                                    Darlings, you have got to see "Beginner's Luck."  It is one of the best of "The Little Rascals" shorts.

                                       And it marked the debut of Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!