Burbank Graphic Artist Looks Back on Life as a Little Rascal

Surrounded by rambunctious children at their neighborhood triplex, Ernest Weckbaugh recently watched the Universal Pictures release of “The Little Rascals.”

None of the kids enjoyed the film more than Weckbaugh.

Back in the Depression years, when his mother was struggling to feed her two sons on seamstress wages, their Beverly Hills neighbor, director William McGann, decided the angelic-looking boy should be in the movies.

And so he was.

Ernie played the character Stinky between 1937 and 1940 in a half-dozen “Our Gang” comedies featuring the original Little Rascals.

There were 221 episodes of the “Our Gang” series produced between 1922 and 1940 by Hal Roach at Warner Bros., immortalizing such characters as Alfalfa, Buckwheat, Spanky, Farina and Butch.

“I was one of hundreds of kids chosen to interact with the main characters,” recalls Weckbaugh.

“Although I occasionally had speaking parts, I was usually the little, curly-haired blond kid on the tricycle crying, ‘Hey, wait for me.’ ”

The part called for curly hair, but Weckbaugh’s was straight, so his mother sent him off to Horace Mann Elementary School with his hair in curlers. He’d have to wear them until the studio called him to the set.

He remembers episodes shot at what was then Warner Bros. Ranch and is now Warner Center. It was there he got his lessons in the wonders of movie magic, Weckbaugh recalls.

Weckbaugh recalls enduring blasts of water used to suggest a rainstorm, and being told to pretend that uncooked oatmeal was really snow.

He also remembers Alfalfa being told to jump into a small lake, the problem being the actor couldn’t swim. So a man hid underwater carrying Alfalfa on his back while he pretended to swim his little heart out.

After the “Our Gang” series, Weckbaugh appeared as a Boy Scout who came to the rescue of William Powell in “The Thin Man,” and as the son of Claude Rains and Gail Sondegaard in “Sons of Liberty,” about the life of Hyam Solomon, who kept the colonial army supplied with money during the Revolutionary War.

But as he grew older, parts grew scarcer. By the time he graduated from Santa Monica High School, he was out of show business.

He served in the Air Force, got married and graduated from Cal State Los Angeles with a fine arts degree. Weckbaugh went to work as a graphic artist, a skill he still practices through his Burbank company, Casa Graphics.

While teaching a Sunday-school class, he came up with a way to help the youngsters in memory retention. It worked so well with the kids that he wrote a quartet of books on how to acquire the skill.

In the process, he created a program to self-promote his books. He says the program worked so well that he and a co-author, publicist Barbara Gaughen, self-published a book called “Blitz: Getting Your Book in the News.”

For those needing more hands-on help, Weckbaugh is also playing Svengali. He’s become a ghostwriter for people with a story to tell who lack the skills to tell it.

His graphics company can print the finished works, and his marketing techniques, he says, will get it sold.

Chaminade School Honors 5 Little Leaguers, Moms

Jodi Sisson, the community relations manager at Chaminade Intermediate School in Chatsworth, watched with pride this summer as the Northridge Little Leaguers won a national baseball championship.

She had a special interest because five of the team members attend Chaminade.

Sisson wondered what they would be like when they returned home after being given a parade at Disneyland, having met Mayor Richard Riordan at City Hall and fooled around with Orel Hershiser on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

Sisson and Principal Christine Hunter decided to schedule an assembly in honor of the boys and their parents before the guys got back to hitting the books instead of baseballs.

Medals were struck for the boys and roses were to be given to the moms, whose efforts Sisson also wanted to honor.

Sisson says that any fears about the kids getting big heads and swollen egos were soon dispelled.

“All five of our boys and their parents attended the assembly,” says Sisson. Everything went well, and afterward the Chaminade boys--Spenser Gordon, Nathan Dunlap, Justin Gentile, Jonathan Kigashi and Michael Nesbitt--all appeared to be slipping back into normal school life.

Overheard

“My wife is having our living room redone in the colors of her many medications.”

Morose man to companion at Cheesecake Factory in Woodland Hills.