William "Billie" Thomas

 William "Billie" Thomas, Jr. (March 12, 1931 – October 10, 1980)

Thomas is best remembered for portraying the character of Buckwheat in the Our Gang (Little Rascals) short films from 1934 until the series' end in 1944. He was a native of Los Angeles, California. Conceived as a replacement for Matthew "Stymie" Beard, Buckwheat was originally an androgynous character with a tangle of braids, but with time he assumed his true gender and standard costume of floppy hat, striped shirt, and tattered pants precariously held up by one suspender. His garbled English---punctuated by his signature exclamation, "Otay!"---belied a craftiness that put him one step ahead of the bigger kids, and he was often paired with the inscrutable Porky as a sort of Greek chorus to the Gang's antics. Buckwheat stayed with "Our Gang" until the series' demise in 1944. Thomas had seemingly little difficulty adjusting to life outside of show business. After serving in the Army during the Korean War (not World War II, as noted on his grave marker), he worked for many years as a lab technician at Technicolor and made few attempts to cash in on his fame. Thomas died of a Heart attack at age 49 in 1980, and is buried at Inglewood Memorial Park in Inglewood, CA.