Sound Off is a 1952 comedy film

Comedy film

Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 featuring several songs filmed in SuperCinecolor for Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures

Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...

 starring Mickey Rooney

Mickey Rooney

Mickey Rooney is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. He has won multiple awards, including an Honorary Academy Award, a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award...

. The film was shot in August 1951. The film was the first of a three picture contract between Rooney and producer Jonie Taps for Columbia where Rooney was paid $75,000 for each picture. It is also the first collaboration between Richard Quine

Richard Quine

Richard Quine was an American stage, film, and radio actor and film director.Quine was born in Detroit. He made his Broadway debut in the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical Very Warm for May in 1939 and appeared in My Sister Eileen the following year...

, Blake Edwards

Blake Edwards

Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures...

 and Dick Crockett

Dick Crockett

Dick Crockett , born Richard DeHart Crockett, was an American television and film actor, stunt performer, stunt coordinator, producer, and director....

. The same team next collaborated with Rooney in the Navy in All Ashore

All Ashore

All Ashore is a 1953 Technicolor musical comedy film directed by Richard Quine. It is the second of Mickey Rooney's three films for Columbia Pictures that was produced by Jonie Taps, directed by Richard Quine and written by Blake Edwards...

made the following year. The three worked together again on Rooney's television series The Mickey Rooney Show/Hey, Mulligan in 1954-1955. Their final film in the Columbia contract was the black and white crime drama Drive a Crooked Road

Drive a Crooked Road

Drive a Crooked Road is an American crime film noir directed by Richard Quine and featuring Mickey Rooney, Dianne Foster, Kevin McCarthy, and Jack Kelly...

.

The film's title comes from the military cadence by Willie Lee Duckworth that was a major 1951 chart hit for Vaughn Monroe

Vaughn Monroe

Vaughn Wilton Monroe was an American baritone singer, trumpeter and big band leader and actor, most popular in the 1940s and 1950s. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for recording and radio.-Biography:...

.

Plot

An obnoxious nightclub

Nightclub

A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...

 comedian

Comedian

A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...

 at Ciro's

Ciro's

Ciro's was a nightclub in West Hollywood, California, at 8433 Sunset Boulevard, on the Sunset Strip, opened in January 1940, by entrepreneur William Wilkerson. Herman Hover took over management of Ciro's in 1942 until it closed its doors in 1957...

 is drafted

Conscription in the United States

Conscription in the United States has been employed several times, usually during war but also during the nominal peace of the Cold War...

 into the U.S. Army during the Korean War

Korean War

The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

. At his arrival at his basic training

Basic Training

Basic Training may refer to:* Basic Training, a 1971 American documentary directed by Frederick Wiseman* Basic Training , an American sex comedy* Recruit training...

 he meets a WAC

Women's Army Corps

The Women's Army Corps was the women's branch of the US Army. It was created as an auxiliary unit, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps on 15 May 1942 by Public Law 554, and converted to full status as the WAC in 1943...

 Lieutenant and romantically pursues her. His activities irritate his drill sergeant and the entire army when he goes Absent without Official Leave for her. He is imprisoned and sentenced to thirty days hard labour that turns him into a soldier. At the end of the film he is shipped overseas to join the Special Services

Special Services (entertainment)

Special Services are the entertainment branch of the American military. The unit was created on 22 July 1940 by the War Department as part of the Army Service Forces. Special Services would not only use their own specially trained and talented troops but would often engage local performers.Special...

.