THE SHOOTING OF CARL "ALFALFA" SWITZER
CHILDISH QUARREL: THE SHOOTING OF CARL "ALFALFA" SWITZER (1959)
His baby pictures tickled generations of kids all over America and in half the world. A head taller than the rest of Our Gang, Alfalfa was a skinny kid with a yo-yo for an Adam's apple, a generous assortment of freckles, and irrepressible cowlick and a trained voice that could consistently sing off-key while he crossed his eyes and blew bubbles. Whatever the misadventures of the lovable, ragtag Gang, a banjo-eyed Alfalfa played them around a boyish screen crush on four-year-old Darla. She responded in kind. The series was a colossal hit.
Between 1935, when he was eight years old, and 1942, when the no-longer-concealable end of adolescence ended his participation in the still-popular series, Carl W. Switzer played his Alfalfa role in 60 Our Gang shorts for Hal Roach. In 1955, along with Spanky, Buckwheat, Darla and Porky, he was introduced to a new generation when the Our Gang pictures were turned into a TV series, The Little Rascals.
But television had been an obscure, experimental novelty in 1935. Switzer and the rest had nothing in their contracts about TV residuals. They never got a dime of the millions the series earned from endless syndication.
Darla Hood gracefully retired from movies at at 14. Switzer hung out at the shabby fringes of the industry. He was a has-been who struggled for bit parts, a star who was washed up before he was old enough to drink. But drink he did. And brood. Switzer, known to his friends as "Alfie," refused to accept that there was no place for him in the Hollywood of the '50's.
Alfie had a few famous friends, among them Roy Rogers and Henry Fonda. He knew them, not from the sound stages, but from the backwoods. To eke out a living, Alfie had become a part-time hunting guide and sometime bartender. His friendship with Rogers got him two minor appearances on The Roy Rogers Show in 1956. Fonda helped steer him to obscure bit parts in The Gas House Kids, Going My Way, and Pat and Mike.
He met, courted and married Kansas heiress Dian Collingwood in 1954. The marriage lasted four months. Hedda Hopper wrote its obituary: "Bear hunting and marriage don't mix."
By the end of 1958, things seemed a little brighter. He got a small supporting role in The Defiant Ones. While his paycheck was modest, his performance in the picture, which was scheduled for release in 1959, showed promise as a comeback vehicle.
But in the meantime Alfie had to earn a living. He borrowed a hunting dog from a friend, Moses S. "Bud" Stiltz, for a hunting expedition he was guiding. But the dog ran off and Stiltz, a welder, was upset. Alfie posted a reward for the animal: $35.00
A few days later, a man called Alfie to claim the money. He delivered the dog to the tavern where Alfie tended bar. Much relieved, Alfie bought him a few drinks. The bar tab came to about $15.00.
In the next weeks the frustration that had dogged Alfie seemed to overwhelm him. He was 32 years old, broke or almost broke, and his long-awaited comeback was on hold until The Defiant Ones was released. Somehow he got it in his head that Bud Stiltz owed him the $50 he'd spent recovering the dog.
He called Stiltz and asked for the money. The welder didn't see things the same way. Alfie had borrowed his dog, and Alfie had lost the dog. If he'd had to spend money to recover the animal, that was Alfie's problem, not his.
But Alfie wasn't in the mood for logic. He wanted the money. He spent most of the night drinking January 22, 1959, with a pal, studio still photographer Jack Piott. Drinking and brooding and drinking, he developed a powerful hatred for Stiltz.
Late in the evening Alfie and Piott rang the doorbell of Stiltz's San Fernando Valley home. Piott flashed a studio prop department badge. "Open up, police!" he shouted. The door opened a crack, and the two visitors pushed their way in.
"I want the fifty bucks you owe me and I want it now," shouted Alfie.
“I don't owe you any fifty," screamed Stiltz. "You lost the dog, you pay." Alfie looked around the living room, and his eyes came to rest on a heavy clock under a glass dome. He grabbed the clock, swung it at Stiltz. "I'm gonna take $50 out of your face," he screamed. The clock struck above Stiltz's right eye and blood gushed. The swollen eye began to close.
The welder backed into the bedroom. Alfie followed. Stiltz opened the closet. He reached in and took out a .38 caliber revolver. Alfie grabbed for the gun. It went off, the bullet burying itself harmlessly in the wall.
Alfie shoved Stiltz into the closet and closed the door. He picked up the gun, laid it on the dresser and returned to the living room. "He's trying to kill me," he said to Piott, as he took a switchblade knife out of his pocket. He flicked it open.
He turned his head at the sound of Stiltz returning from the closet. He held the gun in his hand.
Alfie brandished his blade. Stiltz fired a bullet that caught Alfie in the stomach. He died en route to the hospital.
"Alfalfa" died on the evening of January 22, 1959. Ordinarily, his shocking death would have been big news. It might have recovered a measure of the recognition he'd been denied during his adult life.
But the fickle gods of filmdom's fame had made other plans. Hollywood's most famous director, Cecil B. DeMille, died the same day, after a long illness. Prepared obituaries and celebrity tributes to DeMille's genius buried the death of Carl Switzer in relative obscurity.
Bud Stiltz was freed after a coroner's inquest ruled the shooting was justifiable homicide.