Legendary director Leo McCarey (THE AWFUL TRUTH, GOING MY WAY and the Marx Brothers' DUCK SOUP) is the man most often credited with the inspired notion of making Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy a permanent team. Throughout the twenties, he worked his way up through the ranks of the Hal Roach Studios so that, by 1926, he was Vice-President in charge of comedy production. Enthusiastic about the possibilities of the L&H team, he began supervising the production of their films starting with The Second Hundred Years. Until he left the Roach Studios in December of 1928, he directed four of their comedies, contributed to the scripts of several more, and personally supervised the production of all of them. It is no exaggeration to say that Leo McCarey, next to Stan Laurel and possibly Hal Roach, was the man most responsible for teaming Laurel and Hardy and developing their brand of comedy. One Laurel trademark inadvertently stemmed from this film. As his hair grew back during the weeks following filming (The Boys had shaved their heads for their roles as convicts), Stan had a difficult time getting his sprouting locks to behave. Others found his unruly hair so funny, he decided to keep it as a permanent trademark of his screen character.

JB: A fun, silly little film with great sight gags, including one that ranks among their best. Sometimes in these silent films, they come up with gags that are so perfect for their characters, and yet, they never go back to them. The prison escape sequence contains such a gag. Laurel and Hardy are tunneling their way out of their cell, and, when they reach the point where they think they will be beyond the prison walls, they tunnel up. However, they miscalculate just a bit and pop up right into the last place they want to be --- the Warden's office! There is a famous still of this sequence that shows Stan with a blank look on his face and Ollie sensing that something is *definitely* wrong. It's one of my favorite publicity shots.      This film could be the inspiration for the slim plotlines to so many Three Stooges shorts - in the first reel they are society's rejects, in the second they are mistaken guests at a high society party.