Pete the Pup
Encyclopedia
Pete the Pup was a Pit Bull
Pit bull
A Pit bull is any of several breeds of dog in the molosser breed group.Many jurisdictions that restrict pit bulls, including Ontario, Canada,, Miami, Florida, U.S...

 character
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...

 in Hal Roach
Hal Roach
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. was an American film and television producer and director, and from the 1910s to the 1990s.- Early life and career :Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York...

's Our Gang
Our Gang
Our Gang, also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals, was a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and the adventures they had together. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, the series is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively...

comedies (later known as The Little Rascals) during the 1920s and 1930s. Otherwise known as "Pete, the Dog With the Ring Around His Eye", or simply "Petey", he was well-known for having a circled eye that was added on by Hollywood make-up artist Max Factor
Max Factor
Max Factor & Company is a cosmetics company, founded during 1909 by Maksymilian Faktorowicz , Max Factor, a Polish-Jewish cosmetician. Max Factor & Company was a related, two-family, multi-generational international cosmetics company before its sale in 1973 for $500 million dollars...

 and credited as an oddity in Ripley's Believe It or Not. The original Pete (sired by Earl Tudor's "Black Jack") was an American Pit Bull Terrier
American Pit Bull Terrier
The American Pit Bull Terrier is a medium-sized, solidly built, short haired dog whose early ancestors came from England and Ireland...

 named "Pal the Wonder Dog", and had a natural ring almost completely around his eye; dye was used to finish it off.

History

When he was about six months old, Pal the Wonder Dog made a cameo appearance in the Harold Lloyd
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies....

 film The Freshman
The Freshman (1925 film)
The Freshman is a 1925 comedy film that tells the story of a college freshman trying to become popular by joining the school football team. It stars Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Brooks Benedict and James Anderson. It remains one of Lloyd's most successful and enduring films.The movie was written...

, in 1925.

Pal first started out as "Tige" in the Buster Brown
Buster Brown
Buster Brown was a comic strip character created in 1902 by Richard Felton Outcault who was known for his association with the Brown Shoe Company. This mischievous young boy was loosely based on a boy near Outcault's home in Flushing, New York...

series in the 1920s. It was during this time that he obtained the circled eye, and when he was recruited to appear in the Our Gang comedies later that year, Hal Roach
Hal Roach
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. was an American film and television producer and director, and from the 1910s to the 1990s.- Early life and career :Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York...

 simply left it on, creating one of the most recognized dogs in film history. In the 1994 remake of The Little Rascals, the new Pete is an American Bulldog
American Bulldog
The American Bulldog is a breed of working dog that was developed in the United States. There are generally considered to be three types of American bulldog: the Bully or Classic type , the Standard or Performance type , and the Hybrid type...

.

Trainer and owner Lt. Harry Lucenay used one of Pal's offspring as Pete in the series after Pal was poisoned and died in 1930 . This dog, named "Lucenay's Peter", was registered as an AKC
American Kennel Club
The American Kennel Club is a registry of purebred dog pedigrees in the United States. Beyond maintaining its pedigree registry, this kennel club also promotes and sanctions events for purebred dogs, including the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, an annual event which predates the official...

 American Staffordshire Terrier
American Staffordshire Terrier
The American Staffordshire terrier is a medium-sized, short-coated American dog breed. In the early part of the twentieth century the breed gained social stature and was accepted by the American Kennel Club as the American Staffordshire Terrier in 1936...

. Lucenay's Peter was born September 6, 1929 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, bred by A. A. Keller. The dog was also UKC
United Kennel Club
The United Kennel Club is the second oldest all-breed registry of purebred dog pedigrees in the United States and the second largest in the world. According to the website, the club records 250,000 registrations annually. The UKC is not part of the International Canine Organisation, Fédération...

 registered under the name Purple Ribbon Peter (22558). A few other dogs played Petey, but Lucenay's Peter was the best known. After being fired from the Our Gang series in 1932, Harry Lucenay retired Peter to Atlantic City, where he was photographed with children at the Steel Pier
Steel Pier
Steel Pier is a amusement pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey, located opposite The Boardwalk from Trump Taj Mahal.The pier was owned by Trump Entertainment Resorts until 2011, when it was sold to the Catanoso Family under the "Steel Pier Associates, LLC" name. The Catanosos previously leased the...

.

Death

Roach used a number of unrelated Pit Bulls to portray Pete in Our Gang until 1938. Lucenay's Peter continued on and died of old age on January 28, 1946 in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

at age 16, two years after the Our Gang series ended.

External links

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