Production Information
Studio: Columbia
Short Number: 52
Release Date: December 27, 1940
Running Time: 17:55
Short Take
In Boobs in Arms, The Boys are greeting card salesmen who try to help a wife by posing as her lovers. When her husband comes home, he sees the Stooges and chases them outside, where they, unfortunately, hide in an Army enlistment line. To make matters worse, their drill sergeant turns out to be none other than the jealous husband. While training, it isn’t long before their bumbling has the Sarge attempting to perform bayonet practice on them. And later on the battlefield, the Stooges accidentally dose themselves with a laughing gas bomb and are captured by the enemy.
Cast & Crew
| Directed by | Jules White |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Jules White |
| Written by | Felix Adler |
| Starring | Moe Howard Larry Fine Curly Howard Richard Fiske Evelyn Young Johnny Kascier Cy Schindell Eddie Laughton John Tyrrell Lynton Brent |
| Cinematography | John Stumar |
| Edited by | Mel Thorsen |
Trivia
- Joe Besser had his own version of the army drill routine, which was used on stage for the first time in April 1941 and titled “You’re in the Army Now”. Jules White adapted the routine for Boobs in Arms and would reuse the footage for the ending of Dizzy Pilots in 1943.
- After joining the army, Curly beings to recite lyrics from the song “You’re in the Army Now”. After Curly says “You’ll never get rich,” Moe stops him before he can utter the next line, sometimes sung as “You son of a bitch”.
- The closing gag of a person riding a bombshell through the air would be re-created by Slim Pickens in 1964’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
- Curly’s print ad for “O’Brien’s Kosher Restaurant” has “dessert” intentionally misspelled as “desert.”
Production Notes
- Filmed on August 15–20, 1940, the title is a parody 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 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).
- The first comedians to appear in an army comedy were the Stooges with 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.