Back from the Front

Infobox Film
name = Back From the Front


caption =
director = Jules White
writer = Ewart Adamson
Jack White
starring = Moe Howard
Larry Fine
Curly Howard
Stanley Blystone
Vernon Dent
Bud Jamison
Heinie Conklin
Lew Davis
George Gray
Jack 'Tiny' Lipson
Harry Semels
Al Thompson
cinematography = John Stumar |
editing = Edwin H. Bryant
producer = Jules White
distributor = Columbia Pictures
released = flagicon|US May 28, 1943
runtime = 17' 41"
country = USA
language = English
amg_id = 1:142706
imdb_id = 0035658
preceded_by = "Spook Louder"
followed_by = "Three Little Twirps"

"Back From the Front" is the 70th 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 Stooges join the war effort by enlisting at Merchant Marines. While aboard, they have a brief run-in with {a secret German Nazi officer} Lt. Dungen (Vernon Dent), and then mistake a torpedo for a beached whale. Moe says they have to kill it, and it promptly explodes. After being lost at sea for several days, they come across the "SS Schicklgruber" and climb aboard. Now with fully grown beards, they come across Lt. Dungen again, who does not recognize them. After realizing they are in with a nest of German sailors, they eventually overtake the crew and toss them overboard.

Notes

Moe reprises his Adolf Hitler role from "You Nazty Spy!" and "I'll Never Heil Again". The end was satire, with Moe telling the Nazis to use their heads and shoot out their brains, to which Stanley Blystone replies, "But mein Führer, we're Nazis. We have no brains."

Schiklgruber is the surname Hitler's father carried for the first forty years of his life, until he took the name Hitler (Hiedler) from his stepfather. While Adolph Hitler himself never carried the surname the British made use of it for propaganda purposes since even to Germans the name is laughable.

Further reading

*"Moe Howard and the Three Stooges"; by Moe Howard ISBN 0806507233, (Citadel Press, 1977).
*"The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion"; by Jon Solomon ISBN 0806509465, (Comedy III Productions, Inc., 2002).
*"The Three Stooges Scrapbook"; by Jeff Lenburg, Joan Howard Maurer, Greg Lenburg ISBN 0806509465(Citadel Press, 1994).
*"The Three Stooges: An Illustrated History, From Amalgamated Morons to American Icons"; by Michael Fleming ISBN 0767905563(Broadway Publishing, 2002).
*"One Fine Stooge: A Frizzy Life in Pictures"; by Steve Cox and Jim Terry ISBN 1581823630, (Cumberland House Publishing, 2006).