Hal Roach Outlived The Kids
Hal Roach lived to be 100 years old. Just days after he turned 100, he appeared on the Johnny Carson Show and told stories about working with Laurel and Hardy, as well as actress Jean Harlowe. The comedy producer was responsible for hundreds of silent and sound films alike. He never believed that Our Gang was cursed. He said, “Naturally, some [of the child actors] got into trouble or had bad luck. They’re the ones who made the headlines. But if you took 176 other kids and followed them through their lives, I believe you would find the same percentage of them having trouble later in life.”
Hal Roach Outlived The Kids
‘Scotty’ Beckett Died
Beckett started his career in the entertainment industry at just three years old. A casting director just happened to hear him sing. He was entertaining his father in a hospital by singing him songs in Pig Latin. The nurses who heard him were so impressed that they took him from room to room for him to sing to the patients. He played Spanky’s best friend in a lot of the Our Gang episodes between 1934 and 1935. After he left the show, he landed a lot of prominent roles in movies like Dante’s Inferno, The Blue, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. When he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and writing a bad check, he was fired from his co-starring role on Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. He went on a downward spiral from that point. Eventually, this led him to check into an L.A. nursing home to get treatment for a vicious beating he suffered in 1968. Two days later, he was found dead in his room. While he had written a suicide note, it wasn’t clear whether he died from the injuries he had from the beating or not.
‘Scotty’ Beckett Died
