This was the first of a three-picture contract between Rooney and producer Jonie Taps for Columbia, in which Rooney was paid $75,000 for each picture. It is also the first collaboration between Richard Quine, Blake Edwards and Dick Crockett. The same team next collaborated with Rooney in the Navy in All Ashore made the following year. The three worked together again on Rooney's television series The Mickey Rooney Show/Hey, Mulligan in 1954–55.[2] Their final film in the Columbia contract was the black and white crime drama Drive a Crooked Road.
An obnoxious nightclubcomedian at Ciro's is drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War. At his arrival at his basic training he meets a WAC Lieutenant and romantically pursues her. His activities irritate his drill sergeant and the entire army when he goes AWOL (Absent Without Official Leave) for her. He is imprisoned and sentenced to thirty days hard labour that turns him into a soldier. Then he is shipped overseas to join the Special Services.
