Charles Judels

Two goofball sailors spend their shore leave outwitting one another in their attempts to win the heart of the first mate’s gold-digging girlfriend.

After mistakenly walking into a recruitment office, Elmer and Wilbur end up in the Navy, where their laziness sets off their superior officer.

An aspiring songwriter plagiarizes the name of another tunesmith to ensure that her songs will receive radio airplay.

A little wooden puppet yearns to become a real boy.

An American heiress flees from her planned wedding to a Prince with a man whom she doesn't know is a reporter.

Mousetrap salesmen visit Switzerland where they run into difficulties with a disagreeable gorilla and a tyrannical chef at a Tyrolean hotel. The film features a romantic subplot with opera singers Walter Woolf King from Broadway (and the Marx Brothers’ A NIGHT AT THE OPERA) and Della Lind from Vienna (later a neighbor of Laurel’s at his Oceana Hotel residence in Santa Monica during the 1960s). Eric Blore from the Astaire-Rogers pictures adds just the right note. Many individual scenes are notable, including where Stan feigns illness and creates a “snowstorm” to trick a St. Bernard dog into giving up his keg of brandy. Expensive production values (as demanded by Laurel in his new contract) befitting a picturesque spectacle, including location shooting at Stone Canyon and Lake Arrowhead, contributed to a huge financial loss, the worst in the studio’s history to date. Laurel’s private life was in shambles at the time, and in a key disagreement with Roach, he failed to see the wisdom in some editing The Boss ordered. It was during a swaying trestle bridge scene involving a piano and that certain gorilla, a sequence made famous by noted critic James Agee’s celebration of it. Directed by John G. Blystone. With Anita Garvin, persuaded by Laurel to return to the company.

When a stunt double is asked to impersonate a western film star for an event, he finds himself caught in a game of romance, lies, blackmail, and debt.