Sketch o’the Week: George “Spanky” McFarland!

The sketch I did of Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer a few weeks ago got a lot of love when I shared it on my blog and socials last week, so I decided to draw another of the “Little Rascals” stars this week… George “Spanky” McFarland!

Spanky was another of the superstars of the Hal Roach “Our Gang” series, maybe the biggest of them even counting Switzer. Both were adept at stealing scenes and had a lot of onscreen charisma. In fact legend has it their fathers were constantly at odds over the star billing and screen time of the two actors.

McFarland was from Texas, but there is a local connection with him here in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area… albeit a bit of a notorious one.

Back in the early 1990’s McFarland sued a St. Paul area bar called “Spanky’s Saloon” for using his name and likeness. The place had been around for over a decade and was even featured in a scene in the 1984 film “That was Then, This is Now” (although it was renamed “Charlie’s” for that) with Morgan Freeman tending bar! Anyway a judge ruled that the bar had to cease and desist using the name and images of “Spanky”, and they changed the name to “Checker’s Nightclub”. However McFarland was not satisfied by that, and sued for $100,000 for compensation for them having used his name and likeness for 13 years. The owners claimed that “Spanky” had little to do with their business and that any connection with McFarland was “unintentional”. They might have had some trouble explaining why, in addition to the name, there was an 8 foot high painting of McFarland as “Spanky” on the exterior wall of the bar, that similar portraits were all over the inside, and also happened to be on t-shirts, jackets, and other merchandise they’d been selling for over a dozen years. McFarland legitimately licensed out the “Spanky” name and his likeness to other clients, something he was able to do thanks to an agreement in one of his contracts with Roach. The bar owners and Spanky settled out of court. That bar is now an empty lot in St. Paul on 7th and Earl.

McFarland died from a sudden heart attack in 1993 at age 64.