Remember back a couple years when "Our Gang" of the movies had Jean Darling as the cunning feminine lead of those pranks you loved to see? Then Jean and the rest of the gang outgrew their roles, and spent their time in schooling and ambitions for other things. Well, Jean, but a lovely grown-up or almost grown-up Jean, is in Hazleton this week, billed as the top feature of the Feeley Theatre vaudeville.
Jean, typically American, was interested in the election yesterday, when she granted an interview to the Standard-Sentinel, and was hoping California, her native state, would vote for Roosevelt, Jean's candidate. She was very proud of her choice too, and told of the fun she had at a Democratic rally last week, when she sang a number of songs. She even wore a Roosevelt button on her charming light blue woolen dress.
"Please don't talk about the war," she said, but she very readily admitted to an enthusiasm for roller skating - the kind where you dance on skates, you know, and only recently she learned to do a skating tango. She even demonstrated a couple of the steps, without skates, and said she spent a lot of her spare time at this sport.
A singer of those popular numbers from operettas, mostly, Jean said she preferred the more sentimental type of modern dance band music to the jitterbug. This winter, the former queen of Our Gang expects to continue her studies for a possible operatic career in New York City.
Miss Darling received much of her education in a convent, where she said she lost many of those "tomboy traits" she had when she played with Our Gang.
Wearing a leopard trimmed black coat and hat over her light blue dress, Jean gave black as one of her favorite colors, and said she wore blue, and blue and white a great deal, a compliment to her curly blonde hair and blue eyes. She didn't wear much make-up either, when we saw her off-stage, and really had that lovely complexion you don't always believe in when you read about it.
Of course she likes New York City, where she has spent a great deal of time, but Jean expressed a preference for towns the size of Hazleton, rather than to larger-populated cities, and said she would like to come back here some future time.
Miss Darling, who is now 18 years old, was one of Our Gang for five years, from 4 to 9 years old, and as the regular American girl, likes to have fun with her crowd. Her mother is her companion on her present tour.