Commotion on the Ocean

Commotion on the Ocean is the 174th 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.

Commotion on the Ocean is a remake of 1949s Dunked in the Deep, using ample stock footage. In addition, the newspaper room scenes were borrowed from 1948s Crime on Their Hands. Commotion on the Ocean was the last of four shorts filmed in the wake of Shemp Howards death using earlier footage and a standin.The films plot device of hiding microfilm in watermelons is an allusion to an actual event that occurred in 1948. Time Magazines managing editor Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist spyturned government informer, accused Alger Hiss of being a member of the Communist Party and a spy for the Soviet Union. In presenting evidence against Hiss, Chambers produced the Pumpkin Papers four rolls of microfilm of State Department documents, which Chambers had concealed in a hollowedout pumpkin on his Maryland farm. ........

Source: Wikipedia