[5] Roach had planned to make four four-reel streamliners with Laurel and Hardy to introduce the featurettes, beginning with A Chump at Oxford, filmed in 1939.
United Artists felt that this picture would be more marketable as a full-length feature film, especially since Laurel and Hardy were an important attraction internationally.
The fourth series burlesqued the Axis powers, with comedian Bobby Watson impersonating Adolf Hitler and Joe Devlin imitating Benito Mussolini.
World War II interrupted Roach's Hollywood film production, and he was commissioned as a major in the Army Signal Corps.
Hal Roach rebuilt and updated his studio facilities in 1946, and resolved to make his new films entirely in color, using the Cinecolor process.
He resumed production with slightly longer films, still running under an hour each: United Artists packaged these as ready-made double features.
The Tracy and Sawyer team would reappear in two films produced by Hal Roach, Jr. in a Korean War setting: As You Were (1951) and Mr. Walkie Talkie (1952), both directed by Fred Guiol and released by Lippert Pictures.