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Jerry Lewis Films, The (An Analytical Filmography of the Innovative Comic)
THE YOKE'S ON ME (1944)
Film Pick of the Day
Sunday, November 1, 2026
The Stooges fail their military entrance exams and decide to help the country by becoming farmers. Word is received that some men have escaped from a Relocation camp. The escapees hide on the Stooges' farm, and with help from an explosive ostrich egg, they're defeated.
In the late 1970s, some television stations stopped airing this film, due to its depiction of American citizens of Japanese descent as war enemies. The characters in this film are NOT Japanese POWs. They are American-Japanese escapees from a relocation center...
In 1942 the United States began relocating 120,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry, wrongfully labeled them as imbedded enemy agents and security risks, and moved them to "safety (aka prison) centers." The camps were disbanded in late 1944, and many of these American citizens returned to find they no longer had homes, in spite of government assurances that personal property would be held in protective trust... landlords evicted them for non-payment of rent, banks foreclosed for non-payment of mortgage, and many found their homes vandalized and destroyed by paranoid neighbors. Many American families of Japanese descent, although naturalized and/or natural-borne citizens for decades, found their established lives and livelihoods destroyed.
Government pressure effectively kept the aftermath (and guilt) of this homeland wartime "crime" from the history books for almost 30 years. By the late 1960s, many affected Japanese-American families had built new lives, and gained political and social influence. Federal lawsuits were filed in the early 1970s. Congressional hearings on the imprisonment, with testimonies from high-profile personalities like George Takei (STAR TREK) and Jack Soo (BARNEY MILLER), who both were children imprisoned with their families in 1942, made headlines. After several years of Congressional delays, the Reagan administration reached a nominal $20,000 financial settlement with each surviving interee in 1988.
Some television programmers came to realize the underlying plot premise of THE YOKE'S ON ME. Not all markets, local or national, omit it from rotation... but some do. THE YOKE'S ON ME is on home video.
Details
Average Rating:   [ 6.95/10 ] 41 votes |
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| Featuring | Moe, Larry and Curly |
|---|---|
| Release Date | Friday, May 26, 1944 |
| Studio | Columbia |
| Production Type | Short Subject |
| Duration | 16.2 min. |
