A special contestant (?):
That was, of course, Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer, the original Alfalfa from The Little Rascals who had such a sad life (he died after being shot in the late 1950s). Here’s a special You Tube tribute to him:
And here’s the same song segment in the original black and white version. It’s a wonderful number — and I always feel so sad when I think of what happened to many of those kids (I met the wonderful Tommy “Butch” Bond several times — once when I performed at a Laurel & Hardy “Way out West” “tent” event near LA and once when he lived in the San Diego area — who had a nice life).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.