So Long Mr. Chumps

The Stooges are incompetent yet sincere street cleaners. Upon discovering a discarded envelope containing oil bonds, they dutifully return it to its rightful owner, B.O. Davis. Grateful for their integrity, Davis offers them a reward of five thousand dollars on the condition that they locate an honest individual possessing executive capabilities. Guided by an upright canine, the Stooges encounter a distressed young woman who reveals that her beloved has been unjustly imprisoned. To facilitate communication with the incarcerated man, the Stooges devise a plan to intentionally land themselves in jail. Once incarcerated, they successfully locate the individual in question, Percy Pomeroy. Employing resourcefulness, the Stooges modify their prison attire to resemble guard uniforms using black paint, enabling their escape. However, their freedom is short-lived as they inadvertently encounter Davis, who is revealed to be "Lone Wolf" Louie, a notorious bond swindler. Consequently, both Davis and the Stooges find themselves incarcerated once more. ==Cast==

So Long Mr. Chumps was filmed on July 25–30, 1940. The film title is a parody of the film Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The jail sequences were reused in Beer Barrel Polecats. When the Stooges drop their iron balls that are chained to their legs, the sounds that are heard are again the NBC Chimes, a gag recycled from the team's 1937 short Back to the Woods. Bud Jamison appeared in a deleted scene where he was a policeman noticing the Stooges and Pomeroy's girlfriend. In the final scene, where Moe and Larry were breaking rocks over Curly's head, Larry picks up what seems to be a rather heavy rock. Curly notices the rock and replies, "Hey, wait a minute! That's a real one! I'm no fool." Curly then chuckles, while Larry and Moe smile. Often regarded as an unscripted moment, it was later determined that exchange was scripted in advance, as it appeared in director Jules White's final shooting script. The exchange might have started out as improv while the scene was being rehearsed. Bruce Bennett (aka Herman Brix, a former Olympic athlete and Tarzan actor) appears in dual roles as both a truck driver and as one of the guards giving orders to the Stooges. Laurel and Hardy had painted their prison uniforms white in 1927's The Second Hundred Years. They were also trash collectors in 1939's A Chump at Oxford. ==References==