The Life and Death of Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer

In the late 1950s, life in the suburban neighborhood of Mission Hills, far from the bustle of Los Angeles, was predictable and quiet. At 7:00 p.m., families living on the 10,000 block of Columbus Avenue were settling in for the evening. With dinner over and the dishes washed and put away, people switched on their television sets to pass the time until bed.

A few of the programs they had to choose from on that Wednesday evening were Edward R. Murrow on KNXT reporting on the integration of schools in the South. There was the short-lived western drama Union Pacific on KRCA. KTLA Channel 5 offered Art Laboe, playing the top music hits of the day.

And KHJ Channel 9 was airing the old Our Gang comedies that had been repackaged and renamed for television as The Little Rascals. As viewers chuckled at the off-key warbling of Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer, they were interrupted by the wail of police sirens racing up their street.

Residents living on Columbus Avenue would later note that while the freckle-faced little boy sang on their television sets, his adult self was being shot to death in their neighbor’s house. It was a single violent act that closed the book on his short life.

But the circumstances left behind many questions that still haunt his memory. Come walk with me to that night over sixty years ago and separate fact from myth surrounding the life and death of child star Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer.

Carl Dean Switzer was born in Paris, Illinois, on August 7, 1927. He and his older brother Harold were hometown entertainers. They were known for singing and playing music at community functions.

When Carl was six, the Switzers went to California to visit family. While there, he and Harold made an impromptu audition at Hal Roach Studios in Culver City. Their timing couldn’t have been better because the studio was searching for fresh faces to fill the lineup of its popular, long-running Our Gang comedy series.

The story goes that Hal Roach was so impressed by the boys that he signed them to seven-year contracts on the spot. Carl was given the name Alfalfa, and Harold was called Slim or Deadpan. They joined the 1935 mix of Our Gang mainstays that included George “Spanky” McFarland, Darla Hood, William “Buckwheat” Thomas, and Pete the Pup.

The first Our Gang film to feature the brothers was Beginner’s Luck. Harold strums a mandolin while Alfalfa gives a squeaky rendition of “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain.” With his signature cowlick and off-key singing voice, Alfalfa stood out among the other kids and became an instant favorite with moviegoers.

Co-star Darla Hood observed that when they appeared at the studio gates each day, Alfalfa got a more enthusiastic welcome from fans than Clark Gable. However, Alfalfa’s sudden popularity had the disagreeable side effect of inflating an already swollen ego.

In the series’ run, Carl’s main rival was played by Tommy “Butch” Bond. Although their characters were constantly in conflict, behind the scenes, the boys were best friends and remained so for the rest of Carl’s life.

In Tommy’s 1994 autobiography, Darn Right, It’s Butch, he said that the same was not true of many of his other co-stars. Of his Rascal buddy Spanky McFarland, Carl merely tolerated him, and he viewed Darla Hood, his on-screen sweetheart, as a spoiled princess.

Darla was far more diplomatic in her opinion, saying that working with Carl was always exciting because no one knew what he was going to do. She also admitted to being a little afraid of her leading man.

According to Tommy, Carl either loved you or hated you and would never forget a grudge. If provoked, he would come at you with his fists. Then there was his devilish sense of humor.

He delighted in playing practical jokes on the cast and crew. Tommy recalled a time Carl urinated on the floor lights, and later, when they were turned on, the stench became so strong that production was halted until the sound stage could be aired out.

His prepubescent antics enraged director George Sidney so much that he once threatened that he was going to look him up when he turned twenty-one and kick the living daylights out of him.

In 1938, Hal Roach sold the Our Gang franchise, including the entire cast and crew, to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Alfalfa continued with the gang for another two years before finally outgrowing the role at age thirteen.

His contract with MGM expired in 1942, and Carl was on his own, trying to reinvent himself in a thankless industry. Breaking free of Alfalfa’s ghost was not easy for the boy who had once been more popular than Gable.

In order to distance himself from the character, he began referring to his more than sixty Our Gang appearances as “MGM short product.” After leaving the gang, Carl worked tirelessly to remain in the limelight.

He visited every producer in Hollywood trying to win any role available, no matter how small. There would be many lean years ahead, but he fared better than most of his Our Gang alumni.

In 1946 and 1947, he adapted the Alfalfa character for the Gas House Kids, a short-lived comedy series inspired by the Bowery Boys. The series also reunited him with his Our Gang nemesis and best friend, Tommy “Butch” Bond.

Most of his output at this time was in B-movies produced by so-called Poverty Row studios. However, he still landed bit parts in major studio releases and worked with some of the biggest names of the day.

Six films in which Carl appeared were nominated for Best Picture Oscars. Among them were It’s a Wonderful Life in 1946 and The Ten Commandments in 1956.

Director William Wellman cast him in three pictures, the last of which was Track of the Cat with Robert Mitchum, where he played a 100-year-old Native American.

In the early 1950s, Carl was seen on television in programs such as Science Fiction Theatre and The Burns and Allen Show. However, his most steady work on TV was with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans on The Roy Rogers Show.

Over six seasons, Carl made as many appearances. More importantly, he became close personal friends with Roy and Dale. It was a relationship that put the struggling actor on a fateful trajectory.

Through a business associate of Roy Rogers, Carl was set up on a blind date with Diane Collingwood. She was a 23-year-old heiress to the Collingwood Grain Elevator Company in Kansas.

The couple hit it off immediately, and in May 1953, they were married in Las Vegas. But the honeymoon had barely ended when problems began to emerge.

Diane was a balanced, college-educated young woman hailing from a prominent Midwest family. Carl, on the other hand, was capricious and had shunned formal education his whole life. By some accounts, he was functionally illiterate.

Moreover, it was obvious that the big Hollywood career he imagined was never going to happen. Their different backgrounds played on Carl’s feelings of failure and inadequacy.

His young wife was unable to quell his inner demons that had once brought havoc to the Our Gang sets. Now, instead of childish pranks, Carl sank into alcohol-fueled rages that were too much for Diane.

The couple separated after little more than three months of marriage. However, they made several attempts to reconcile, during which time Diane became pregnant. But when she lost the baby through a miscarriage, it was the final straw.

Diane filed for divorce in October 1954 on grounds of cruelty. She later withdrew the divorce suit, and for the next three years, the Switzers tried in vain to piece together their marriage.

While all this was going on, Carl was balancing his acting with a second career as a dog breeder and hunting guide in Northern California. Roy Rogers staked him seed money to get his business off the ground.

Some of his first clients were Hollywood heavy hitters like William Wellman and actor Henry Fonda. It was then that a new character entered Carl Switzer’s story.

The rocky foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains in Simi Valley were once the home of Corriganville Movie Ranch. It was owned by former actor and stuntman Ray “Crash” Corrigan.

From the 1940s until the 1960s, the 2,000-acre ranch served as a western tourist attraction and filming location. While shooting a guest appearance on The Roy Rogers Show, Carl Switzer became acquainted with ranch foreman Bud Stiltz.

Stiltz was a larger-than-life character who was perfectly suited to the rugged terrain where he worked. He was a Navy veteran of World War II and had a reputation for being a tough guy who got things done.

Stiltz was exactly the kind of man that Carl wished he could be. When Carl learned that Stiltz bred hunting dogs, he worked out an arrangement where he would rent animals from him to take on his hunting parties.

The meeting couldn’t have come at a better time for Stiltz, whose tenure at Corriganville was about to end. He had been carrying on an affair with Crash’s wife, Rita, and it would become the focal point in Corrigan’s messy divorce.

Sparks flew on June 2, 1954, when Crash, along with three hired thugs, raided his wife’s motel room and found her in the company of his ex-foreman. A brawl ensued that resulted in Stiltz pressing assault and battery charges against Crash.

Three days later, Stiltz caught Corrigan spying on his house. When confronted, Corrigan waved a gun before fleeing in his car. Stiltz chased after him through the streets of the San Fernando Valley, ending with both men placing one another under citizen’s arrest.

The legal mess that followed kept lawyers and tabloid journalists busy for months. Both sides filed lawsuits and counter-lawsuits, and a heated custody battle ensued over the Corrigans’ three children.

Later, Stiltz and Rita were charged with perjury for lying about their affair during the divorce trial. They pleaded guilty and were sentenced to three years of probation.

After the dust settled, Stiltz moved into the cozy house on Columbus Avenue in Mission Hills that Rita was awarded in the divorce. The state of California later granted Rita custody of her three children.

With a ready-made family and a quiet suburban home, any man would be content to settle into a peaceful life. But where Bud Stiltz was concerned, things didn’t stay quiet for long.

In 1955, the editors of TV Guide brought together seven members of the Our Gang cast for a photo shoot. Among them were Tommy “Butch” Bond, Darla Hood, and the best-known of the group, Alfalfa Switzer.

The photos accompanied an article that filled in readers on what the gang was up to now. The writer was careful to put the best possible spin on the stories of those who had fallen on hard times.

By then, their old films were airing on television as The Little Rascals and were hugely popular. Producer Hal Roach had negotiated with MGM to buy back the rights to the sound films his studio made from 1928 to 1938 and was netting big profits.

However, not one of his former child stars was paid a cent in residuals. In 1955, money was at the top of Carl’s growing list of concerns.

At the time, he was back together with his wife Diane, who was expecting a child. Meanwhile, his film and television work had fallen off sharply, and the income he got from hunting expeditions was not enough to support them.

For this reason, the couple relocated to Pretty Prairie, Kansas, where Carl went to work on Diane’s family farm. As the couple celebrated the birth of their only child, Diane allowed herself to imagine a hopeful future.

After three rocky years together, Carl finally seemed to embrace his role as a husband and new father. Then, one day in the summer of 1957, he opened the newspaper and saw a face from his past.

George “Spanky” McFarland, the darling of the Our Gang series, was on a personal appearance tour of the Midwest. Out of a sense of nostalgia or an attempt to show off, Carl reached out to his old co-star and set up a meeting.

Years later, in an interview with film historian Leonard Maltin, Spanky recalled the short reunion. They hadn’t seen each other since leaving the gang, so they had lunch and talked about old times.

Spanky noted that Carl looked pretty much the same: cocky, a little antsy, and still talking big. He told Spanky he was working on a farm, but had to put a radio on the tractor while out there plowing.

Knowing Carl, Spanky knew it wasn’t going to last. Carl may have come from Paris, Illinois, but he was no farmer. That was the last time Spanky ever saw him.

George McFarland was right; it didn’t last. Carl had grown weary of farming and began to see his life in Kansas as a form of exile. When an offer came his way to appear in a movie, he jumped at it.

Leaving his family behind, he went back to Los Angeles and made a low-budget teenage melodrama called Motorcycle Gang. Diane realized that the future she had hoped for was never going to happen.

After Carl’s work on the movie wrapped, she filed for divorce for the second time, and there would be no reconciliation. Now, there was nothing standing in the way of Carl Switzer’s slow descent turning into a total freefall.

On January 26, 1958, Carl was getting into his car on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City when a bullet crashed through the window and grazed his arm. The injury was superficial, and he was treated and released from the hospital within a few hours.

When asked if he knew anyone who might wish him harm, he said that he didn’t. The next day, police arrested a 30-year-old real estate agent as a suspect in the shooting.

He denied any involvement, but it so happened that Carl had been dating the man’s ex-wife. It was a dramatic beginning to what turned out to be the last twelve months of Carl’s life.

A month later, Carl began work on Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones starring Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis. He played a member of a search party tracking down two escaped convicts.

Although he only had one line of dialogue, his part was memorable for the portable radio he carried that blared loud music throughout his scenes. It was well known that Carl had a history of alcohol abuse, but speculation mounted that by 1958 he was dabbling in stronger drugs.

Whether or not those rumors were true, there is no doubt that during his last few months on Earth, his behavior became increasingly erratic. Filming wrapped in March, marking Carl’s final appearance in a movie.

Afterward, he returned to Los Angeles where he tended bar while focusing on his hunting business. In April, he borrowed $7,000 from a Hermosa Beach woman, claiming it was to buy and train hunting dogs.

Then in late November, Carl was arrested by park rangers in the Sequoia National Forest for cutting down fifteen pine trees without a permit, planning to sell them as Christmas trees.

He pleaded guilty and was given a suspended 30-day jail sentence, put on one year of probation, and fined $225. It was money that Carl could ill afford.

By then, it had been months since he had any real acting work. Plus, he had defaulted on the loan from the Hermosa Beach woman and was being sued for breach of contract.

While this was happening, Carl’s old friend and sometime business partner, Bud Stiltz, came back into the picture. While Carl was sorting out his legal mess with the Forestry Service, he managed to step into another sticky situation involving a dog.

Late in 1958, he agreed to train one of Bud Stiltz’s new dogs for bear hunting. But before he reached the mountains, the pup ran away. Stiltz gave him two options: return his property or pay for it.

Already in a deep financial hole, Carl saw no choice but to try and locate the animal. He posted notices and took out ads in the paper offering a reward for the dog’s safe return.

Luck seemed to be on his side when a man called saying he had found the dog. The man arranged to bring it to the bar where Carl worked, where he collected a $35 reward plus $15 in free drinks.

Most people in Carl’s situation would drink a toast to their good fortune, but Carl Switzer had a talent for turning a blessing into a curse. Embittered by divorce and trapped by impending lawsuits and fines, the $50 he shelled out began to fester like an open wound.

In his mind, he believed that Stiltz should have paid the reward, and he made repeated requests to get his money back. Stiltz, however, did not see it that way. Unaccustomed to taking no for an answer, Carl set the stage for a confrontation.

On the afternoon of January 21, 1959, Carl met up with a new friend named Jack Pott. Pott was a 37-year-old part-time bartender and freelance photographer who had dreams of breaking into the movies.

The pair spent most of the day bar-hopping and getting drunk. Brimming with resentment, Carl told his new pal all about how he felt cheated by his former business partner.

As evening arrived, he convinced Jack to go with him to Stiltz’s house, posing as a cop. Carl happened to have a prop badge handy for the occasion, reckoning that if he could convince Stiltz the law was on his side, he would hand over the money without an argument.

At a few minutes before 7:00 p.m., Carl and Jack arrived at Stiltz’s home on Columbus Avenue. In his intoxicated state of mind, the plan seemed foolproof to Carl.

At approximately 7:30 p.m., the first police sirens were heard racing up Columbus Avenue. Residents peered through front windows and gathered on the sidewalk to find out what had happened in their ordinarily quiet neighborhood.

Inside the Stiltz home, Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer lay mortally wounded after having been shot by Bud Stiltz. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital, but the former child star was dead on arrival at age thirty-two.

Meanwhile, a sobbing and battered Bud Stiltz was arrested for the shooting. By morning, the story was front-page news across the country.

It was initially reported that shortly after Switzer and Pott arrived, an argument over the $50 debt erupted into a brawl. Stiltz was hit over the head with a clock or lamp, injuring his right eye.

Reports varied as to who struck him, but immediately following the blow, Stiltz retrieved his .38 revolver. Switzer tried to wrestle the gun out of Stiltz’s hand, at which point a shot was fired that narrowly missed Tommy Corrigan, Stiltz’s 14-year-old stepson.

It was alleged that Switzer then pulled a knife on his former partner and threatened to kill him. This forced Stiltz to fire a second shot that struck Switzer in the groin, severing an artery and causing massive internal bleeding.

When Switzer was taken away by ambulance, police found a closed three-inch pocketknife on the floor where he had been lying. The evidence conflicted with Stiltz’s claim that the blade was out when he fired. When asked, Stiltz suggested that Alfalfa must have closed the knife as he fell.

Following an investigation, the Los Angeles District Attorney filed a murder complaint against Stiltz, with formal charges pending the coroner’s inquest. The inquest was held at the Van Nuys courthouse on Monday, January 26.

Testimony was heard from investigating officers, Jack Pott, and Bud Stiltz himself. Stiltz broke down twice as he recalled the struggle, stating he had no choice because he believed Switzer would kill him.

One of the spectators in the courtroom was Alfalfa’s father, Fred Switzer. On that same day, the coroner ruled that Moses Samuel “Bud” Stiltz had acted in self-defense.

The DA dropped the murder complaint, and Stiltz was set free. However, Jack Pott had testified that Switzer never pulled a knife and that they were about to leave when the fatal shot was fired. While police initially weighed this account, investigators ultimately closed the case.

Carl Switzer’s funeral took place the day after his killer was set free. A small gathering of mourners attended the memorial service at Pierce Brothers Chapel before his body was taken to Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

He was laid to rest among celebrated names, including director Cecil B. DeMille, who died on the same day. Sensational headlines covered Alfalfa’s demise for over a week, framing it as a cautionary tale about the dark side of child stardom.

Alfalfa’s grave can be found in Section 6. His headstone features the compass and square symbol of the Freemasons—introduced to him by Roy Rogers—as well as the image of a hunting dog.

Carl Switzer rests beside his father, Fred, who died of a sudden heart attack fifteen months later, deeply affected by the loss of his son. Tragedy struck the family again on April 14, 1967, when Carl’s older brother Harold shot his business partner during a dispute before taking his own life at age forty-two.

For decades, the official record of Carl’s death stood unchallenged. Then, on the 42nd anniversary of Switzer’s death, reporter Colleen Cason published an interview with Tom Corrigan, the stepson who was in the room that night.

By then a 56-year-old restaurateur, Tom vividly remembered the night Switzer arrived with Jack Pott. He recalled that Bud Stiltz greeted them at the door with a gun in hand.

According to Tom, once Switzer saw the gun, a struggle ensued. Pott smashed a glass clock over Stiltz’s head, causing the gun to discharge into the wall. A piece of plaster struck young Tom’s leg.

The room went quiet, and Switzer said, “We shot Tommy. Enough of this,” turning to leave. Tom, facing the front door, heard another shot behind him and turned to see Switzer sliding down the wall.

Stiltz then backed Jack Pott into the kitchen at gunpoint, only sparing his life after Rita Corrigan pleaded with him. Tom stated that Switzer never pulled a knife and that Stiltz did not need to shoot him. Though Tom had offered his statement to police at the time, he was never called to testify at the inquest.

Bud Stiltz continued his life with Rita on Columbus Avenue, staying out of further legal trouble until his death years later. According to Tom Corrigan, every December for the rest of his life, Stiltz received an anonymous Christmas card in the mail signed simply: “Merry Christmas from Alfie.”