Boobs in Arms

Infobox Film
name = Boobs in Arms


director = Jules White
writer = Felix Adler
starring = Moe Howard
Larry Fine
Curly Howard
Richard Fiske
Evelyn Young
Johnny Kascier
Cy Schindell
Eddie Laughton
producer = Jules White
distributor = Columbia Pictures
cinematography = John Stumar
editing = Mel Thorsen
released = December 27, 1940
runtime = 17' 55"
country = United States
language = English
preceded_by = "Cookoo Cavaliers"
followed_by = "So Long Mr. Chumps"
amg_id = 1:148830
imdb_id = 0032270

"Boobs in Arms" is the 52nd short subject starring American slapstick comedy team the Three Stooges. The trio made a total of 190 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959.

Plot

The short fits neatly into three parts. In the beginning the Stooges are street peddler greeting card salesmen who are approached by a woman (Evelyn Young) with a request to help her make her husband (Richard Fiske) jealous. The Stooges defend themselves against the irate husband with their usual combatives and flee from the husband shouting his threats. In hiding from him, they line up on a queue that took them to a recruitment office by mistake and end up joining the army.

The second part of the short has them meeting their sergeant — the irate husband. The Stooges do the traditional military drill comic routines with gusto and irritate the sergeant even more, including bayonet practice.

The last part of the short has the Stooges going to war against a fictional country and becoming casualties of a laughing gas shell that exploded on them, rather than the enemy, due to the cannon being aimed upward. They and their sergeant are captured by an anonymous enemy in European type uniforms who seem to speak pig latin. Hopped up by the gas, the Stooges gleefully use their violence in a wild free for all fight against their captors — including an accidental sword thrust to the butt of the sergeant and his retaliatory box to the enemy captain that landed his butt to the pointed end of his pickelhaube helmet. The Stooges knock out everyone, including all enemy solders and their sergeant. After emerging victorious, several guns suddenly fired at them, with shells whizzing at their area. And they are still laughing.

Finally, the last shot's shell passes between their legs that takes them into the clouds like a rocket going to the moon (a gag that would be recreated with Slim Pickens in 1964's "").

Notes

*The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 was passed by the United States Congress on September 16, 1940, becoming the first peacetime conscription in United States history. Hollywood reflected the interest of the American public in Conscription in the United States by having nearly every film studio bring out a military film comedy in 1941 with their resident comedian(s). Universal Pictures' Abbott and Costello came out with the first feature film on the subject "Buck Privates" and followed it with the team "In The Navy" and in the United States Army Air Corps to "Keep 'Em Flying". Paramount Pictures' Bob Hope was "Caught In The Draft", Warner Bros. told Phil Silvers and Jimmy Durante "You're In The Army Now", Columbia Pictures put Fred Astaire in the army declaring "You'll Never Get Rich", Hal Roach gave his new comedy team of William Tracy and Joe Sawyer "Tanks a Million" and 20th Century Fox had the former Hal Roach team of Laurel & Hardy going "Great Guns". The minor studios such as Republic Pictures provided Bob Crosby and Eddie Foy Jr. as "Rookies on Parade" and Monogram Pictures enlisted Nat Pendleton as "Top Sergeant Mulligan". However, the first comedians to hit the screen in an army comedy were The Three Stooges in "Boobs In Arms".
*Columbia Pictures placed the Stooges in an unnamed army with military uniforms consisting of Zorro hats and tan uniforms with sergeant chevrons worn upside down to the American way; they are also armed with Civil War type muskets instead of modern rifles. Perhaps these uniforms deliberately do not resemble those of the U.S. Army because the finale takes place in a war. Richard Fiske, the actor who played the sergeant was drafted into the U.S. Army and killed in France in World War II. [ [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=8537837 Richard Fiske (1915 - 1944) - Find A Grave Memorial ] ]
*The drill sergeant training segment was so good that it was recycled in the 1943 short "Dizzy Pilots". cite book
last = Solomon
first = Jon
authorlink = Jon Solomon
coauthors =
title = "The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion"
publisher = Comedy III Productions, Inc
date = 2002
location =
pages = 183
url = http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Three-Stooges-Filmography-Companion/dp/0971186804/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201570359&sr=1-1
doi =
id =
isbn = 0971186804]
*The title is a parody of the title of the 1939 MGM film "Babes in Arms" based on the Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers musical. The working title was "All This and Bullets Too", a parody in itself of the title of the Warner Bros. film "All This and Heaven Too".
*The gag of dopes who end up accidentally enlisting in the US Army was used in The Flintstones episode.

References

Quotes

**Sergeant: "What do you think you're doing? Playing 'hippity hop at the barber shop'?'"
**Recruiting sign: JOIN THE ARMY AND SEE THE WORLD — OR WHAT'S LEFT OF IT

Further reading

*"Moe Howard and the Three Stooges"; by Moe Howard (Citadel Press, 1977).
*"The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion"; by Jon Solomon (Comedy III Productions, Inc., 2002).
*"The Three Stooges Scrapbook"; by Jeff Lenburg, Joan Howard Maurer, Greg Lenburg (Citadel Press, 1994).
*"The Three Stooges: An Illustrated History, From Amalgamated Morons to American Icons"; by Michael Fleming (Broadway Publishing, 2002).
*"One Fine Stooge: A Frizzy Life in Pictures"; by Steve Cox and Jim Terry (Cumberland House Publishing, 2006).