Hollywood - UP - Gray hair dept.: Darla Hood, the button - nose cutie of the Hal Roach "Our Gang" comedies, is back at work at the Roach studio - as a grown-up, shapely television actress.
Darla, now 25, is launching a new career. And her first film TV job landed her back at the studio where she started to fame at the age of 4. She's working in a screen directors' playhouse drama starring Fred MacMurray that will be shown on NBC-TV next month.
"I want to get more acting roles now," she said, "I love show business and can't stay away from it."
Darla curiously found more fame recently when the "Our Gang" comedies were released on TV as "The Little Rascals." Now, 20 years later, a manufacturer is bringing out a Darla doll. Two fan clubs have been formed for her, in Van Nuys and San Jose, Calif.
Actually there were three sets of "Our Gang" stars. The silent version featured Johnny Downs, and Mary Kornman. Next came the Jackie Cooper - Scotty Beckett - Dickie Moore group. Darla's co-stars were Spanky McFarland (a filling station operator now returning to show business), Alfalfa Switzer (still an actor) and Buckwheat (in the Army).
Darla's childhood followed the pattern of other talented kiddies whose mamas get them careers. When the part-Cherokee Indian child lived in Leedey, Okla., her mother drove her 150 miles to take singing and dancing lessons. Her dancing teacher won her a successful screen test with Roach. Darla's father gave up his bank president's job and the family moved to Hollywood.
In the "Our Gang" pictures Darla dimpled, curtsied and sang "I'll Never Say Never Again, Again" and "Lookie, Lookie, Lookie." After nine years she wore short dresses to disguise her age, but Roach dropped her contract.
"Mother was afraid to break the news to me," smiled Darla. "I couldn't have been happier. I said 'just think, I don't have to be in pictures any more. I can go to public school. I can be normal'."
At a Los Angeles high school she had "a terrible adjustment. The other children thought I was a snob. I just didn't know how to talk to them."
Later she married vocal arranger Bob Decker. She sang in Ken Murray's "Blackouts" on TV and joined composer Jimmy McHugh's night club act.
Darla still looks like she did as a child star.
"It used to bother me, but I've learned to live with my type instead of trying to be what I'm not," she said. "I'm playing a teenager in a U-I movie soon - why fight my young face?"
Special note: U-I would be Universal-International. I have no idea which film Darla is referring to, but it seems she didn't make it into the finished product.