Sock-a-Bye Baby
1942 short film by The Three Stooges directed by Jules White
Sock-a-Bye Baby is a 1942 short subject directed by Jules White starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard). It is the 66th entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the comedians, who released 190 shorts for the studio between 1934 and 1959.
Plot
The Stooges are awakened in the middle of the night by the crying of an abandoned infant left on their doorstep. They bring the baby indoors and discover a poignant letter from the distressed mother, asking the trio to provide a good home for the child, identified as baby Jimmy.
The Stooges undertake the task of nurturing the infant, providing sustenance and tender care in their makeshift role as surrogate fathers. Realizing that they do not know what babies eat, they offer him a radish, an olive, an artichoke, spaghetti, and herring. However, they become alarmed when Larry discovers a newspaper article detailing a recent child kidnapping, prompting speculation that Jimmy may indeed be the abducted child and the letter merely a ruse.
They panic when two police officers arrive at their door with the mother to reclaim the infant. Fearing arrest for kidnapping, the Stooges hide the baby and try to elude the police. Ultimately, they jump out of a window and drive away, unaware that Jimmy has stealthily accompanied them.
“Sock-a-Bye Baby” enters the record as 1942 short film by The Three Stooges directed by Jules White. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sock-a-Bye, Baby and short can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7552973. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 1934 and 1959.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sock-a-Bye Baby” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.