Four foreign language versions were also shot: Pardon Us (1931) (French), Hinter Schloss und Riegel (1931) (German), Pardon Us (1931) (Italian) and Los presidiarios (1931) or "De Bote en Bote" (Spanish) . Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy spoke their lines phonetically, and many supporting roles were recast, including Boris Karloff playing "The Tiger" in the French version.
Several scenes were shot, but deleted from the final theatrical print, which ran 56 minutes. The first ending showed the boys in gray-bearded old age reminiscing about their misadventures.
Only the third film ever to use a Thompson submachine gun, after The Big House (1930) and Little Caesar (1931).
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy's first feature-length film. Producer Hal Roach had wanted to use some of the sets left over from MGM's big-budget prison picture The Big House (1930) to do a prison-movie spoof and MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer agreed on the condition that Laurel and Hardy do a picture for MGM in the future. Roach turned down the deal and hired set designer Frank Durlauf to build exact replicas of the necessary prison sets.
According to Stan this was previewed at about 3 and 1/2 reel length with the intention of cutting it down to 2 reels but it was such a success that it was decided to add more footage and release it as a feature. The original short title was The Rap which was changed to Pardon Us. Stan always thought that the extra footage was a mistake and shouldn't have been done.