The costume that made Farina famous erased Allen Hoskins's future
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The costume that made Farina famous erased Allen Hoskins's future
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The costume that made Farina famous erased Allen Hoskins's future
This episode explores the life of Allen Hoskins, known as Farina, a child actor whose fame and fortune in early Hollywood were immense, but whose later life saw him forgotten and uncompensated. It raises the question of how the entertainment industry can build someone so high, only to lose them so completely.
Person: Allen Hoskins Hoskins (Farina)
Born: August 9, 1920
Films: 105
Peak Weekly Earnings: $350 (later cited as $500)
Series: Our Gang
- Allen Hoskins was discovered by Hal Roach's Our Gang comedy series at roughly two years old, with his character named Farina.
- The studio dressed Farina in ambiguous costumes, including pigtails and rags, to create a recurring joke about indeterminate identity.
- By age five, Hoskins's image appeared on the song cover "Lil' Farina (Ev'rybody Loves You)," endorsed by Harold Lloyd.
- Hoskins's weekly contract eventually reached $350, a significant sum compared to the average American worker's $25 weekly earnings at the time.
- After nine years and 105 films, Allen Hoskins departed the Our Gang series in July 1931 at age eleven, with no mechanism in place for future earnings from his work.
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