The Murder of Little Rascal Alfalfa – Carl Switzer
The Death of Alfalfa
Thanks for that
A play by play of the fight is too tedious but important to know people now say he was ready to leave when Bud (Moses) Stiltz shut him. I call him BUD throughout as that was how he was known
I added a bit of Piott’s testimony that they were leaving…
The report that penknife wasn’t tested for ownership…also added nifty details of Alfie’s last meal
The comments that ex-wife let him rot for weeks at morgue is unfounded as I read his funeral was held a week after murder.
I am most proud that I found a realtor photo of the foyer of death where he was shot Alfie and Roy Rogers
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Death house and Foyer of death
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Death notices
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Lonely Suicide street (vacant lot)
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DAD AND SONS graveAlfalfa and Harold pics
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childhood home
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Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer and Harold “Slim” Switzer
The Life and Deaths of 2 Little Rascals
When brothers Carl (age 7) and Harold Switzer (age 10) made their Our Gang debut in 1935’s Beginner’s Luck they were singing “She’ll be coming ‘round the mountain” with Harold on mandoline. The adorable lads seemingly plucked from a farm were a hit with audiences and Carl aka “Alfalfa” with his cowlick and earnest (yet off-key) singing would become synonymous with the franchise. Alfalfa’s Our Gang fame would last 5 years until his contract was dropped in 1940 as he approached puberty. Harold aka “Slim” was shortly regulated to the background in the films, eventually leaving showbiz for his dynamic kid brother to handle.
The Switzer brothers were born in Paris, IL and they along with their sister Janice and parents, Fred and Gladys, left the midwest in 1934 during the Depression with the goal to get the boys into the movies. The plan worked. They immediately went to Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, walked into the studio’s tourist attraction cafe and set the boys loose. Carl and Harold hopped on a table and began to sing and play for the lunch crowd and were spotted by Hal Roach in attendance. Roach signed them both to contracts and gave them their stage names.
Hal Roach started the Our Gang series in 1922 about a group of poor neighborhood kids and their adventures. He purposely created a new genre showcasing young performers being natural and not over-rehearsed. The series also broke new ground by portraying white and black children interacting as equals. From silents to talkies, Our Gang short subjects stayed popular and every few years a new group of unaffected youngsters replaced the older kids. By the time the Switzer brothers joined the troupe in 1935, they were met by regulars George ‘Spanky” McFarland, Billie “Buckwheat” Thomas, Tommy Bond, Stymie Beard and Scotty Beckett. Later that year Darla Hood and Eugene “Porky” Lee were added as Scotty left for a career in feature films. By 1938, Hal Roach could no longer afford making the films and agreed to sell his Our Gang unit, including the rights, and actor’s contracts to MGM Studios, a Culver- City neighbor. Alfalfa had risen to become the most popular character and was often paired with Tommy Bond ( re-cast as bully Butch) and a new pal Mickey ( played by Robert Blake) who had replaced the now-too-tall Porky.
The house that Our Gang bought for the previously broke Switzer family can be found listed on the 1940 census. The modest 2 bedroom/1 bath Spanish revival house at 5410 Westhaven Street still stands today near the intersection of Hauser & Adams in a neighborhood close to Culver City, where Alfie and Harold reported to work – with their Dad alongside as chaperone.
By most accounts, off-screen Alfie was known to his peers (and cousins) as a volatile bully and mean prankster. He would reportedly put lit firecrackers into crew member’s pockets and tacks on people’s chairs and poke his co-stars with a nail. On one occasion, the fishhooks he hid in Spanky’s pants led to him needing stitches. Darla Hood recalled that Alfie once asked her to reach for a Cracker Jack prize ring in his jacket pocket – where he had concealed an open switchblade that almost cut her finger off. Darla said years later that he was fun to be around, but sometimes she was afraid of him, as “you never knew what stunt he might pull…you couldn’t control him.”
Tommy “Butch” Bond later told an interviewer, “He had a violent temper, but if he liked you, he really loved you, and if disliked you, he really hated you.”
Robert Blake had a first-hand theory of the root of Alfie’s rage. He describes in his book that Alfie’s father Fred was an angry, drunk who was filled with hate because he wasn’t an executive, he wasn’t a working man, he wasn’t a crew member, he wasn’t a performer, he wasn’t anything. Blake recalled Fred Switzer being horribly violent with both of his sons. He’d show up to set drunk on scotch and soda, walk in front of the camera and knock Alfie down with his fist. The studio would have to cover Alfie’s bruises with makeup. Alfie hated his father, couldn’t do anything about it, Blake wrote.
Whether or not Fred Switzer was a drunken bully to his sons is left to be proven by more than 1 eye-witness account, but it would make sense that he could harbor resentment and embarrassment at being surrounded by working men and women at MGM while he sat around on set as guardian for his breadwinner sons. It could also explain where Alfie and Harold learned zero anger management skills, and how this trait would eventually lead to both of their demises.
Alfalfa’s reign of terror continued on set where he acted out with the destruction of lights by urinating on them and putting wads of bubble gum into the film camera – but the most outrageous act was when he (according to Robert Blake) drowned a goat in a MGM backlot lake.
Blake recounted in his book that Alfalfa had been butted in the behind again and again as part of a scene involving a goat charging on his character while fishing. Blake watched when all personnel left Lot 2 by shuttle bus to go to the MGM commissary on Lot 1. Blake and his father stayed on the backlot to eat a bagged lunch then his old man would get drunk and nap. Out of nowhere, Blake recalled seeing Alfie running. He’d run back the 10 blocks from Lot 1 to Lot 2. Blake ducked behind bushes and watched Alfalfa untie the goat from where the trainer had left it prior to lunch and proceeded to drag it into the lake. In Blake’s words: All that was out of the water was the goat’s ass and Alfie’s head and he drowned the motherfucker. Alfie runs back to the wardrobe trailer, changes his clothes, throws his wet clothes in the bushes, and hides where the bus is going to let folks off. Bus comes, 50-60 people get off, Alfie blends in, goats dead…I think they always knew…But Alfie was a moneymaker, so the studio put up with a lot of stuff.
In 1940, at age 13 and after 61 films, Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer was dropped by MGM. His brother Harold, having done 29 films, was also dismissed that year. The Our Gang series was on its last legs and would be officially dead by 1944. The quality diminished after the move to MGM and the charms of the scrappy poor kids of the 30s had been replaced by MGM sheen and morality tales which nobody especially kids wanted to watch.
Harold took odd jobs around town, and within a few years, he was enlisted in the military during WW II. Alfie took acting work in B-films but got a few bit parts in major studio fare like Going My Way, It’s a Wonderful Life ( as the creep who opens the gym floor during the dance), A Letter to Three Wives and Pat and Mike. By the early 50s, Alfie worked as a bartender between film jobs and excelled as dog trainer and bear-hunting guide in the high-Sierras. He had become friends with Roy Rogers through his dog training/breeding work, and was invited to live on their ranch to help with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans’ countless dogs. He enjoyed their company and joined Rogers’ Masonic Lodge, and Roy & Dale would eventually become godparents to his child.
As luck would have it, Alfie was fixed up on date in Hollywood with Dian Collingwood, a grain silo heiress from Kansas. She never went to the movies as a kid and didn’t know his work. Dian told an interviewer, “He was very bright but he needed help reading the scripts. The other problem was he loved to hunt, (Casting agents) couldn’t get him out of the mountains.”
The couple eloped at Las Vegas in May 1954 and when it became apparent that Alfie’s film work would not support them, her widowed mother Faye offered them a farm north of Pretty Prairie, Kansas. The Collingwood family owned 700 acres in the area and Alfie fit in well with the starstruck locals. He tried his best at being a farmer, but it was not his passion. A son, Justin Lance was born in 1956, but by September 1957, the couple were divorced. Dian remarried and for many years avoided telling her son that Alfalfa was his father. He heard it from a classmate in 4th grade. Lance Eldridge, the son Alfie never knew, stopped watching the reruns (retitled as The Little Rascals for television) after he found out. He told the press, “It was just weird”. Lance Eldridge also suspected part of the reason his parents divorced was meddling from his grandmother, Faye.
TV reruns of The Little Rascals were a hit and lasted in syndication for decades – of which the former kid actors saw no residual checks. The 1950s brought nostalgia for the Our Gang cast and TV Guide held a reunion for a then/now pictorial. The gang remembered that Alfie took the opportunity to berate their studio schoolteacher Fern Carter who was invited. He screamed at her and accused her of ruining his life. He still fumed over all the days she made him stay alone after class to complete assignments. Alfie had tried to put Our Gang in his past, even referencing it on his resume as “an MGM short project”.
In December 1958, while family man brother Harold was beginning his career installing and servicing washer & driers for a laundry equipment supplier, Alfie was getting arrested for stealing 15 pine trees from Sequoia National Forest. The plan to sell them as Christmas trees ended with a year’s probation and $225 fine ($1953 today). His latest film The Defiant Ones had premiered a few months earlier and Alfie was hopeful good roles and paychecks were coming quick.
Months earlier, Alfie agreed to train a hunting dog for his friend Bud Stiltz. Bud was a St. Louis tough guy hired by cowboy stuntman Crash Corrigan as bodyguard and mechanic/welder at his Corriganvile tourist-attraction western town in Simi Valley. Bud ended up with the boss’s wife Rita and they married. Bud’s stepson Tommy Corrigan was well acquainted with Alfie and looked up to him. When Bud’s borrowed dog ran off into the forest, Alfie posted a $35 reward for its return. A villager found the dog and Alfie paid the reward and treated him to $15 in drinks.
On January 21, 1959, Alfie had been drinking with his buddy Jack Piott, and decided that Bud owed him the $50 expense caused by his dog ( despite the fact that Alfie was the one responsible for losing it). After each had a few beers, a martini and steak, the guys drove to Bud’s house at 10400 Columbus Ave in Mission Hills around 7pm and found him home with his wife and stepkids. A fight broke out, threats were made, Bud grabbed his .38-caliber revolver, a scuffle ensued and a shot went off dislodging plaster that grazed young Tommy Corrigan. That sobered the men for a minute and Bud’s wife sent her 2 daughters out the front door to the neighbors.
Tommy Corrigan told his eye witness account in 2001 that as he was leaving the house he heard a second gunshot in the entry way behind him. He turned to see Switzer sliding down the wall. There was a closed penknife at his side. Tommy said his mother then begged Bud to not kill Jack Piott as they heard approaching sirens. Jack’s life was spared but Alfie lay dying. He had been shot in the lower abdomen and suffered massive internal bleeding.
Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer died en route to Valley Receiving Hospital. He was 33 years old.
His father Fred was informed by police and ex-wife Dian sent word to release the body to the Switzer family. His funeral was held Tuesday January 27, 1959 at the Pierce Brothers Chapel and was buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. His grave was decorated with a hunting dog and masonic symbols.
Bud Stiltz’s testimony at the inquest was that Alfie charged with a knife and he was forced to shoot, also – the victim closed his knife after being shot. Reportedly the penknife hadn’t been tested for fingerprints to prove it even belonged to Alfie. Jack Piott, Alfie’s friend at the scene, told the inquest they were heading out the door trying leave when Bud Stiltz shot Alfie. Stiltz was released on all charges and the coroner’s jury ruled the death a justifiable homicide.
“It was more like murder…he didn’t have to kill him”, Tom Corrigan said years later. Tom had told police then that he was willing to testify against his stepdad but was never called. Tom Corrigan (age 73) died on March 14, 2018, though his Corrigan’s Steakhouse remains open at 556 Thousand Oaks Blvd in the Valley. The place is filled with Tom’s memorabilia including a bear skin rug reportedly gifted by Alfie to Tom at age 11. Corrigan also said that his stepdad Bud Stiltz curiously received an anonymously sent Christmas card signed “Alfie” every year until his death in 1984.
In 1960, a year after Alfie’s death, it was Harold who got “the call” that his father, Fred Switzer (age 55) had died of a heart attack while fishing in Modesto. He is buried next to his son, and his marker is decorated with a photo of an odd device and reads: Switzer Method. Fred had found himself a career working with a manufacturer of bust enlargement devices that were sold/leased to salons for beauty treatments. A typical newspaper advertisement said: ALLURE SALON presents The New Concept of Figure Loveliness. It’s Wonderful! You will enjoy Pleasant, Soothing, Relaxing Stimulation. A Small Bust is a PERSONAL TRAGEDY! Gals, let the famous Switzer Method develop your bust into your most glamorous and alluring asset. Come in for a FREE DEMO and see why – Your Beautiful Bust is Our Only Business.
In 1967, Harold Switzer’s story ended on the night of a dispute with one of his customers from the laundry machinist job. Harold killed the customer then drove to a residential street ( 11227 S. New Hampshire Ave) in the Lennox neighborhood – near LAX , and shot himself in the head. He was found in his car by police at 4:50am on April 14 and he was buried near his brother and father. At the time of his death at age 42, the military veteran was divorced with four children. His grave is just behind his father and brother’s at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Kevin Hassell
