Pups Is Pups is a 1930 short film (18 minutes), one of many instalments in the long-running Our Gang series of comedy shorts.
In this one Farina sees a Help Wanted ad for a hotel that's looking for young "Negro" boys to be pages. The hotel is hosting a dog show, and Farina, who gets the job as an usher, has an idea for all his friends to bring all their pets to the dog show and win prizes. The kids do so, only for their menagerie—a rather exotic collection that includes a goose, a pig, turtles, mice, frogs, and more—to cause chaos in the hotel ballroom.
Meanwhile, little Wheezer has a group of puppies that always come when they hear his bell, as that's the signal for dinner. A long comic sequence has the puppies getting loose from the neighborhood, and then chasing after every bell they hear, like fire alarms, train station crossing signals, and more.
The debut of Dorothy DeBorba who would play in the Our Gang comedies for three more years. Featured Jackie Cooper right before he broke out as a major child star with parts in Skippy and The Champ.
Tropes:
- Broken Glass Penalty: One scene has Wheezer, without his bell and desperate to retrieve his dogs, chucking a rock at a fire alarm bell outside an apartment building. He misses the bell and the rock goes through a window. Wheezer has to run for it when the angry tenant sticks his head out.
- Eek, a Mouse!!: Lots of examples of this when the kids' pets get loose in the hotel. One woman rather overreacts to the sight of a mouse riding a turtle as they both pass through her feet. The woman freaking out because a goose is on her head has a better reason to be upset.
- Fat Comic Relief: Chubby, the fat kid. His pet? A pig.note
- Free-Range Children: As usual, the Our Gang kids are roaming around town (apparently New York) at will, taking their pets to a fancy hotel.
- Running Gag: Dorothy continually leaving her home carefully groomed by her mother, and in a spotless white dress, and jumping into a watery mud hole. Chubby's running count indicates she's been doing this a lot.
- Jackie (grumpily): All you think of is jumping in the mud!
- Uncle Tomfoolery: Some of the racist humor in this short, like the bit where Farina's buddies are dancing in the street, got Bowdlerized when this short ran in TV syndication in later years.
