tavm Review of Aladdin's Lantern

Aladdin's Lantern (1938)

Aladdin's Lantern was the final Our Gang short directed by Gordon Douglas

[7/10 · 8 January 2015]

This M-G-M musical comedy short, Aladdin's Lantern, is the one hundred seventy-second entry in the "Our Gang" series and the eighty-fourth talkie. Spanky and Alfalfa put on a show based on Aladdin's Lamp but they keep on being interrupted by Porky and Buckwheat singing "Strolling Through the Park One Day". When they do it again after Darla finished her number, she quits. Spanky takes her place, in drag, during the second act. I'll stop there and just say this was a bit derivative of earlier entries involving this particular gang, most notably Pay As You Exit. Still, there was enough funny stuff and musical numbers to make Aladdin's Lantern quite an entertaining M-G-M entry in the OG series. It bears noting that not only was this Spanky's first ep for his new home studio, it was Gordon Douglas' last for them as he'd return to Hal Roach Studios right after helming this. It would be there he'd team Oliver Hardy with Harry Langdon in Zenobia before then guiding Ollie and Stan Laurel in their final HR film, Saps at Sea. When Hal's studio became swarmed with military personnel during World War II, Douglas moved to RKO where he guided The Great Gildersleeve (Hal Peary) in a series. After a brief foray at Columbia, he then moved to Warner Bros. during the '50s where he made the classic sci-fi movie Them!, guided James Cagney in Come Fill the Cup, and teamed Doris Day with Frank Sinatra in Young at Heart. Gordon would direct Sinatra during the '60s in Robin and the 7 Hoods with his Rat Pack gang, as well as in Tony Rome, The Detective, and Lady in Cement. His career wound down in the '70s with Viva Knievel! When Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann published their second edition of their book, "The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang", at the end of their review of this film, they mentioned a reunion of this director with Spanky McFarland in 1987. Spanky hadn't seen Mr. Douglas since visiting the set of Sincerely Yours-a 1955 picture starring Liberace. Gordon was in failing health by this time but when Spanky told what happened between them, he recalled how Mr. Douglas-or "Gordie Doug"-would still stand up and act out his stories with every gesture accounted for...just like he'd do for the gang when he wanted them to understand what he wanted concerning a piece of action in the most gentlest way possible. He died on September 29, 1993.