Stymie Beard

Beard suffered a stroke on January 3, 1981 (two days after his 56th birthday), sustained head injuries from falling down a flight of stairs, and died of pneumonia on January 8, 1981. He was living in Los Angeles at the time of his death.

In 1978, he appeared in the film The Buddy Holly Story as a member of the backstage crew at the Apollo Theatre, wearing his trademark bowler hat.

In the 1960s, he checked himself into Synanon, a drug rehabilitation facility and cult in Los Angeles and successfully ended his heroin use. After leaving Synanon, he made a small comeback, appearing in small roles in feature films and episodes of television shows such as Sanford and Son, Emergency!, and The Jeffersons as a guest star (including two episodes of Maude as a resident of an apartment complex where the title character's husband temporarily lived) and Good Times where he had a recurring role (1974–1977) as Monty.

Beard's younger brother Renee Beard appeared in Hal Roach's featurettes of the 1940s Curley and Who Killed Doc Robbin.

After Beard left the series in 1935 at the age of 10, he acted in minor roles in feature films, such as Captain Blood (1935) and Jezebel (1938). At the age of 15, he made an appearance as Mose the bellboy in the 1940 The Return of Frank James. By the time he was in high school, he had retired from acting.

In 1934 Beard was loaned out from Hal Roach Studios to Samuel Goldwyn Productions for Eddie Cantor's Kid Millions. He and other Our Gang kids appear in the "ice cream fantasy sequence".

The name Stymie was provided by Our Gang director Robert McGowan, who always was frustrated (stymied) by little Matthew's curious wanderings around the studio; the character originally was to be named Hercules. McGowan later recalled that Stymie was his favorite of all the Our Gang kids. The then five-year-old Beard came to the series a year after the transition from the silent/early sound era. He had the distinction of being with the gang from the sound movies of the early 1930s through the transitional period in the mid-1930s.

Matthew Beard Jr. (January 1, 1925 – January 8, 1981) was an American actor. As a child actor, he was most famous for portraying the character of Stymie in the Our Gang short films from 1930 to 1935. The role was so high-profile that he adopted the name Stymie Beard, being credited as such in some later roles, such as his 1978 appearance in The Buddy Holly Story.