Portrait of Spanky McFarland

Birthday profile

Spanky McFarland

George McFarland, American actor (died 1993)

Born
October 2, 1928
Died
June 30, 1993
Zodiac sign
Libra
Birth year
1928

About Spanky McFarland

George Robert Phillips McFarland (October 2, 1928 – June 30, 1993) was an American actor most famous for starring as a child as Spanky in Hal Roach's Our Gang series of short-subject comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. The Our Gang shorts were later syndicated to television as The Little Rascals. In addition to his work in Our Gang and its feature-film spin-off General Spanky (1936), McFarland regularly appeared in co-starring or supporting juvenile roles in feature films produced by other studios throughout the 1930s. These included Kentucky Kernels (1934) with Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936) with Sylvia Sidney and Fred MacMurray, and Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus (1938). Leaving acting as a teenager, McFarland had several varying careers as an adult before finding success as a sales executive. He spent the final decades of his life as a public speaker reflecting on his child-acting career.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Spanky McFarland was born

Spanky McFarland was born in 1928. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1928

  • #1 song"Makin' Whoopee" – Eddie Cantor
  • Top movieSteamboat Willie (first Mickey Mouse)
  • Best-selling bookLady Chatterley's Lover – D.H. Lawrence

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentKnute Rockne's "Win one for the Gipper" speech
  • Top headlineHerbert Hoover elected president
  • Technology milestonePenicillin discovered by Alexander Fleming
  • Defining fadMickey Mouse mania
  • Notable inventionSliced bread
  • World population2.07 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderCalvin Coolidge
  • Sports championNew York Yankees (World Series)
  • U.S. population120.5M

1928 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Spanky McFarland's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19282026
Gas$0.21$3.45/gal
Average home$6,200$435,000
Average income$3,800$67,500
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.02$0.73
Population120.5M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, IMDb, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.