Maurice Chevalier under contract with Paramount, his name was so recognized that his passport was featured in the Marx Brothers film "Monkey Business" (1931). In this sequence, each brother uses Chevalier's passport, and tries to sneak off the ocean liner where they were stowaways by claiming to be the singer—with unique renditions of "You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me" with its line "If the nightingales could sing like you". In 1931, Chevalier starred in a musical called "The Smiling Lieutenant" with Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins. Despite the disdain audiences held for musicals in 1931, it proved a successful
Commotion on the Ocean microfilm of State Department documents, which Chambers had concealed in a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm. As Shemp Howard had already died, for his last four films ("Rumpus in the Harem", "Hot Stuff", "Scheming Schemers" and "Commotion on the Ocean"), Columbia utilized supporting actor Joe Palma to be Shemp's double. Even though the last four shorts were remakes of earlier Shemp efforts, Palma's services were needed to link what few new scenes were filmed to the older stock footage.It is also the final film to feature Shemp as a stooge. He would be replaced with Joe Besser in the