No Dough Boys

Moe, Larry and Curly don't look like Doughboys (old slang for "American soldiers"), they are dressed as Japanese soldiers for a photo session. Grabbing a quick lunch at a diner, they stuff their mouths with bread, and sound like they are talking gibberish-- the owner mistakes them for Japanese spies. The Stooges run away, and wind up in a house with German spies. They are introduced to 3 beautiful German ladies: Miss Zweiback ("twice-baked bread"), Miss Schwarzbrot ("rye bread") and Miss Pumpernickel ("dark rye bread"). The Three Stooges quip that the ladies are "well bread" (well bred). Trying to convince them they are real Japanese soldiers, the Stooges do some "oriental" balancing acts, and fall down a lot. The real Japanese soldiers show up, and the Three Stooges knock everyone out in a hilarious fight scene. With the Three Stooges around, America is still safe for democracy.

I thought that each stooge did a great job masquarading as the Japanese and Vernon Dent did a good job as the German spy, the highlights were Curly getting his head stuck on the wall and a bird pecking on his head and the fight part when the lights go off and on, one of the stooges gags.

A good WWII short. 8/10 stars.

No Dough Boys (1944)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

The Three Stooges are on a photo shoot, which has then dressed up as Japanese soldiers. During a break they go to eat when they're mistaken as the real thing by the dinner owner. Soon afterwards they end up in the house of a German spy where all sorts of chaos follows.

NO DOUGH BOYS isn't the greatest Stooges short but it's decent enough to where fans should at least get a few laughs out of it. The first two segments dealing with the photo shoot and the restaurant are rather lame without too many laughs but things pick up during the finale where the boys end up running into the real Japanese soldiers who escaped a war ship.

This is a great film to look at for a couple of reasons. One is the the acrobatic act, which the boys used to perform in their vaudeville days. The other is Moe's crazy dialect. This was definitely an underrated talent of Moe's and he really got a chance to showcase it in this short.

Larry, Curly, and Moe dress as Japanese soldiers for a photo shoot. They have fifteen minutes for a quick lunch. News reports that three Japanese soldiers are on the loose. They fall through a trap door and happens upon a secret Nazi hideout.

The guys are doing yellow-face which is perfectly humorous for its time and during wartime against Japan. On top of that, the boys are almost making fun of yellow-face acting. The more disappointing part is the stunt double for Curly. His health issues don't allow him to do the tougher stunts but it's still disappointing. They should rewrite this to let Curly do less strenuous stunts and avoid the body double. This is a wartime Stooges propaganda and I'm sure it was popular with the soldiers.