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.
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 to do a prison-movie spoof, but discovered that it would be too expensive to make as a short subject.