HOLLYWOOD - Tradition has it that most child actors are brats - and confirmation of this statement comes from Darla Hood.
If the name does not ring a bell think back a few years to the shenanigans of the Our Gang members and Darla is easily recognizable. She was the only girl in the famed organization of pre-war juvenile delinquents.
"I figure that I was in 150 episodes over a nine-year period from when I was three to when I was twelve," Darla - now a stunning redheaded mother of two - said. "They usually took about five days to shoot and we usually did two a month."
Darla, who makes a guest appearance on the CBS-TV Jack Benny program at 9:30 Tuesday night, was quite frank about her feeling that child stars are less than pleasant individuals.
"The big problem is that they think they are better than anyone else," she stated. "They don't learn to give to others. They are on the receiving end of a lot of adulation that gradually knocks out any humility they had."
A native of the Oklahoma town of Leedey, Darla admits her mother, who is still alive, was "every inch a stage mother." And that she knocked down studio walls in her determination to get the dimpled Darla a screen role back when Hal Roach Sr. was casting for the Our Gang comedies.
"Mom pushed me, sure," the trim redhead said, "but she didn't force me down producers' throats like some of the other mothers. And she always had my best interest at heart."
Darla took her screen test in 1935 and was soon the gang's sweetheart along with the other three "hard core" members of the group - Spanky MacFarland, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer and Bill Thomas, who was "Buckwheat" the little Negro boy whose hair was always flying up in the air in fright.
When the war came, MGM, which was producing the comedies, dropped most of the short subjects and Darla was "washed up" as a child star at 12. "It was just as well," she said, "because it was becoming pretty evident that I wasn't a little girl anymore."
She said the gang members had only one reunion since the comedies ended and that they hardly knew what to say to each other. Trouble, she added, has stalked several members of the group.
"'Alfalfa' was shot in an argument over $50 and died," she sighed. "One kid went on narcotics. Another became an alcoholic. 'Buckwheat' is in the army and I believe Spanky is a bartender in Los Angeles."
Darla married Jose Granson, a music publisher, and has two youngsters, Brett, three, and Darla Jo, 16 months, as well as a 12-year-old stepdaughter from Granson's previous marriage. Her husband assisted her in starting a nightclub act and Darla has been working pretty steady.
"But I don't really have to work," she added. "That's the beauty of being a housewife. I can take time off whenever I want and know that I won't be starving."
She worked with Ken Murray in his show "Blackouts" and has appeared on TV with Groucho Marx and Edgar Bergen.
"But this show with Jack Benny is my big chance to make a comeback," she said. "It's a funny show. We do a take-off of the gang, only we call it 'My Gang' because Hal Roach Jr. now has the rights to the old episodes and the title.
"I also played in 'The Bat' with Vincent Price," she added. "And I've cut a record, 'Only Yours.' If it's a hit I'll be back in business."
She said she had seen one of the "gang" comedies a few months ago and that she watched herself with great interest. "The only thing though is that the little girl up there on the screen - me - was a total stranger. As though I had never seen her before."