Commotion on the Ocean
| Commotion on the Ocean | |
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| Directed by | Jules White |
| Produced by | Jules White |
| Written by | Felix Adler |
| Starring |
Moe Howard Larry Fine Shemp Howard Gene Roth Harriette Tarler Joe Palma Emil Sitka Charles C. Wilson |
| Cinematography |
Ray Cory Henry Freulich (stock footage) |
| Edited by |
Harold White Henry Demond (stock footage) |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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16:34 |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Commotion on the Ocean is the 174th short film released by Columbia Pictures in 1956 starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Shemp Howard, in his final starring role). The comedians released 190 short films for the studio between 1934 and 1959.
The Stooges play janitors who work at a newspaper office, begging to be given a chance to become reporters. The managing editor (Charles C. Wilson) promises to think about it over dinner. The phone rings while he is out and Moe answers. The person on the other end is one of the boss's reporters, Smitty (Emil Sitka), who relays a scoop to Moe that some important documents have been stolen by foreign spies. Coincidentally, the spy with the microfilmed documents, Mr. Borscht (Gene Roth) lives next door to the Stooges. He and the boys wind up as stowaways on an ocean liner. Stranded on a freighter on the high seas, and sustained by eating salami, the boys eventually overtake Borscht, recover the microfilm, and are thrilled with their newspaper scoop.
Commotion on the Ocean is a remake of 1949's Dunked in the Deep, using ample . In addition, the newspaper room scenes were borrowed from 1948's Crime on Their Hands.Commotion on the Ocean was the last of four shorts filmed in the wake of Shemp Howard's death using earlier footage and a stand-in.
The film's plot device of hiding microfilm in watermelons is an allusion to an actual event that occurred in 1948. Time Magazine's managing editor Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist spy-turned government informer, accused Alger Hiss of being a member of the Communist Party and a spy for the Soviet Union. In presenting evidence against Hiss, Chambers produced the Pumpkin Papers: four rolls of microfilm of State Department documents, which Chambers had concealed in a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm.
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Wikipedia