This was Laurel and Hardy's first talkie as well as the first all-talkie short released by the Hal Roach Studios. Three shorts that were already completed were withheld in order to rush this into release. The three completed shorts were then released with music and sound effects added.
The title itself is a joke of sorts, drawn from the then-popular cliché "Unaccustomed as we are to public speaking ..." a wry comment upon on the new talkie technology.
2 versions of this short were produced. Like many producers of the sound transition era, Hal Roach was bewildered as to which of the competing sound technologies would take hold and hedged his bets by producing a sound-on-disk version and a silent version with title cards. The original sound-on-film version is believed to be lost and for 50+ years this short had only been seen in it's silent form until a rare Victor disc soundtrack was discovered in the late 1970's.
Being Laurel and Hardy's first sound film, it introduced two gags which used sound as a major element and became classics which would be re-used. The first involved Officer Kennedy (Edgar Kennedy) getting his comeuppance from his wife in the room across the hall (heard as a collection of off-screen yells and crashes). The second involved Stan Laurel tripping at the top of the stairs followed by the sound of him supposedly tumbling down the entire flight.
Although their voices turned out to be perfect for their characters, Stan Laurel was apprehensive about his dialog because he had a slight lisp, and was afraid it would be exaggerated in films.