Betsy Gay, a former child star who starred in the Little Rascals franchise, has died at age 96.
A friend of Gay’s said she died on Friday, June 13, according to Variety.
Gay starred in the Our Gang Comedies series of comedy films, a series later dubbed Little Rascals. She made appearances in 1936’s The Pinch Singer and Arbor Day and 1938’s Our Gang Follies of 1938 (pictured below) before playing Effie, girlfriend of Alfalfa (Carl Switzer), in that year’s Came the Brawn.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
In a 2019 interview on SCV in the Movies, Gay said she was 6 years old when she stared in the Our Gang films. Years later, she reunited with Switzer on country singer Stuart Hamblen’s radio show. “I was 16, he was 19,” she recalled. “And Stuart would pretend we were boyfriend/girlfriend, which we really weren’t. But one time, we were sitting there, and Alfalfa came over to me and gave me a kiss — you know, Stuart sent him over — and I thought, ‘Oh boy!’ It was my first kiss.”
In other film roles of the 1930s, Gay appeared in 1937’s When You’re in Love with Cary Grant, 1937’s It Happened in Hollywood with Richard Dix, and 1939’s The Zero Hour with Otto Kruger. She also had parts in 1938’s David O. Selznick-produced The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, 1939’s comic adaptation Mystery Plane, and the same year’s Marx Brothers comedy At the Circus.
Gay’s screen career carried her into the 1940s, during which she appeared in the romantic comedies Bachelor Daddy (1941) and What’s Buzzin’, Cousin? (1943), showing off her yodeling skills in the latter. She yodeled again in the 1942 short How Spry I Am, starring Andy Clyde. Gay’s IMDB filmography shows 13 acting roles, but Variety reports she appeared in more than 40 feature films.
With parents who taught singing, piano, banjo, violin, guitar, and accordion, Gay won the California State Yodeling Championship in both 1945 and 1946, per Variety. She sang regularly with country star Tex Williams and with Hamblen’s Lucky Stars group. And she performed on Hank Penny, Jimmy Wakely, and Don Ameche’s radio shows, singing songs like “Belle of the Old Barn Dance” and “I Want to be a Cowboy’s Dream Girl.”
Gay married Thomas Cashen in 1954, per Variety, and she had five children: Mimi, Gigi, Tommy, Suzy, and Cathy.