The film co-star's French singer/actress Suzy Delair and was directed by Léo Joannon, with uncredited co-direction by blacklisted American director John Berry.

Stan claims an inheritance left by his affluent uncle, significantly diminished by taxes and legal fees, leaving him cash-poor but with a dilapidated yacht and a private island in the South Seas.

Stan and Ollie sail for the island alongside Antoine, a stateless refugee, and Giovanni Copini, an Italian stone mason hiding aboard the boat.

An indefinite time passes, and nightclub singer Chérie Lamour is fleeing her possessive fiancé, navy lieutenant Jack Frazer.

A sympathetic sailor offers to escort her ashore, but his suspicious wife casts her adrift at gunpoint, and Cherie heads for land -- Laurel & Hardy's island.

This leaves Stan and Ollie alone at last, enjoying the peace and quiet -- until a government official and his crew confiscate our heroes' goods and provisions, citing non-payment of taxes.

Earlier in the decade, they ended their long association with producer Hal Roach and signed to make a series of films at both 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

As a result of this, the pair received an offer from a French-Italian cinematic consortium to star in a film to be produced in France for $1.5 million, a large budget for the era.

[1] The production of Atoll K was plagued with many problems that caused the making of the film to run nine months beyond its projected schedule of twelve weeks.

He eventually required hospitalization,[3] and his widow would later fault the quality of the French medical care, claiming that at one point, she had to substitute for an absent nurse by changing her husband's bandages.

[4] While in France, Hardy saw his already hefty frame expand to 330 pounds and he required medical care for an irregular heartbeat and a severe case of the flu.

Adding to the medical problems was Italian actor Adriano Rimoldi, who played the stowaway, when he fell from a docked yacht and required a month to recuperate away from the production.

[5] While Berry never publicly acknowledged his work on Atoll K, the film's leading lady Suzy Delair confirmed his participation during an interview with historian Norbert Aping.

Italian critic Paolo Locori, writing for the magazine Hollywood, stated: "Stan and Ollie's presence is not enough to lift the movie from its mediocrity."