Jules White

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.

The Stooges reminisce about the girls they met overseas while in the military. As they wait for the girls' ship to arrive, they get drunk and Shemp winds up asleep with his feet in a tub of cement. After sobering up, they free Shemp with a dynamite blast that lands them at the dock where their sweethearts are waiting.

The Stooges join the war effort by enlisting at Merchant Marines. While aboard, they have a brief run-in with (a secret German Nazi officer) Lt. Dungen (Vernon Dent), and then mistake a torpedo for a beached whale. Moe says they have to kill it, and it promptly explodes. After being lost at sea for several days, they come across the SS Schicklgruber and climb aboard. Now with fully grown beards, they come across Lt. Dungen again, who does not recognize them. After realizing they are on a German war ship they eventually overtake the crew and toss them overboard.

The stooges are pharmacists who invent a fountain of youth formula that can turn old people young. They turn an old lady into a beautiful young woman, but when her husband takes the formula it turns him into a gorilla.

The stooge's friend Jerry convinces them to take out on insurance on Curly and then have him act insane to collect. Moe and Larry put Curly on a leash and take him to the insurance doctor and have him act like a dog. Unfortunately, the insurance doctor wants to perform a brain operation (Cerebrum decapitation). The boys try to escape by hiding in the dog catchers wagon, but are caught and taken to the hospital. They escape again, this time by rigging a sheet to a gurney and sailing down the street, where they run into Jerry and knock him into wet cement.

The Stooges are convicts about to be executed for some murders they didn't commit.

The stooges are private detectives hired to find a missing girl. The boys disguise as pie salesmen and end up wandering around a mad scientist's mansion, trying to find the girl. The boys confront a gorilla and various other bad guys, before rescuing the girl.

In this through-the-years saga about a show business family, the fame of husband and wife vaudeville headliners of the 1880s is eclipsed by their son.