Any given day after sunset in the Martin-Lewis trailer.

Comics and comicbooks, cultures and vultures.

Colors scream louder than Jerry Lewis dreaming about Vincent the Vulture, catchy songs and willing dames, snappy writing and vivid characters careen at us in this 14^th Martin and Lewis musical-comedy farce, ARTISTS AND MODELS.

Out-of-work cartoonist Rick Todd (Dean Martin) and unemployed writer Eugene Fullstack (Jerry Lewis) moved to New York City to follow their artistic dreams; now broke and desperate, doing odd jobs, their fortunes change for the better when they meet two new neighbor gals, cartoonist Abby (Dorothy Malone), who draws the Bat Lady comicbook, and Bat Lady model Bessie (Shirley MacLaine).

Rock-chinned Eddie Mayehoff (THAT’S MY BOY), in another flamboyant performance, is publisher Murdock, who wants his Bat Lady comics filled with gore – something that Abby refuses to do for ethical reasons. However, Rick, for monetary reasons, secretly accepts a job for Murdock drawing a new comicbook – a torrid, gory space adventure cribbed from Eugene’s sleep-talking rants about Vincent the Vulture and Zooba the Magnificent…

There are three plot anomalies in ARTISTS AND MODELS:

ANOMALY ONE: Abby is shown refusing to insert gore into her Bat Lady comicbook – yet Eugene’s screaming nightmares are supposedly precisely because of the violent nature of his regular reading material, Bat Lady comics! (Also, does this mean she is out of a job, and that Bat Lady comics cease production? We are never told.)

ANOMALY TWO: Rick keeps his cartooning gig a secret from Eugene and Abby, or he would face their contempt for perpetuating violence in comics. (Abby and Eugene would even appear on a TV show deriding the bad influence of comics on kids. A hot button topic of the ‘50s, I remember the same illegitimate charges leveled against comics during my upbringing in the 70s.) After the Vincent The Vulture comicbook is a success, Rick can take the guilt no longer and quits Murdock’s company – but it is a shallow, wasted moment, because he gives no reasons for turning down barrels of money, and Eugene is never told that Rick quit OR that he even took the job in the first place. It is merely to appease the kid viewers whom Rick might be alienating with his duplicity. The anomaly comes when Rick’s betrayal is discovered (during ANOMALY THREE) – and nothing happens! So what was the point in quitting?!

ANOMALY THREE: The movie’s tone suddenly shifts from farcical to political in the last act, as the American military are introduced – and wherever the American military are, there follow Russian spies. And a Hungarian undercover femme fatale – wait! Have we landed in a James Bond movie?… It seems that Eugene’s fever dreams (which Rick tabulated verbatim) coincidentally contain a secret rocket formula, which the American Military discovers, to its chagrin, in Vincent comics (“General, my son purchased that comic at the corner store!”), and which the Russians desire. So begins the final chase, while the “Artists and Models Ball” is in progress, starring Rick and Eugene. (Wait! A cartoonist and writer are also singers and performers? Who woulda thunk?! And how broke can they possibly be if involved in such a large scale production? – ANOMALY FOUR?) Now keep in mind that this chase only exists because Rick stole Eugene’s ideas and published them in comics! No one stops to ponder this causation – they just exist in the moment, fleeing and punching and yelling. But after the fracas has quieted, Rick is going to be in bigger trouble with his pals, for:

1) taking the violent comics job that
2) Abby turned down, and
3) stealing Eugene’s ideas without crediting him!

Anita Ekberg’s stage direction: Shut up and be pretty.

Rick’s reconciliation pertains only to his “cheating.” But the cheating issue with the femme fatale (Eva Gabor, Zsa Zsa’s sister) is a sophomoric misunderstanding. What might have happened if Abby discovered the real ethical betrayal of Rick’s cartooning job?

Shouldn’t the compelling arcs have been Eugene and Abby falling out with Rick (as best friend and girlfriend), and then reconciling with him when Rick tells Murdock to shove it? Wouldn’t the denouement work better if both cartoonists, Rick and Abby, start their own comicbook with original ideas rather than stolen ones, and that comic was a success?

But no. Those three anomalies are just ignored out of existence as the film wraps with Rick’s and Eugene’s double wedding.

It may seem like I’ve gone a long way to deconstruct what is in essence another Martin-Lewis kiddie comedy with emphasis on laffs rather than plot, but these anomalies are glaring, and may have contributed to the critics lambasting ARTISTS AND MODELS upon its release.

As a Martin-Lewis vehicle, ARTISTS AND MODELS is one of their better offerings, for its many hilarious moments (the “fat lady and the Bat Lady” bit; Eugene on TV admitting he’s “a little retarded”; the contortionist massage parlor; Eugene in his Freddie Fieldmouse costume), and for the fact that Martin and Lewis seem on great terms during the production.

Adapted from a play by Michael Davidson and Norman Lessing, screenplayed by Herbert Baker (JUMPING JACKS, SCARED STIFF), Hal Kanter (MONEY FROM HOME) and Frank Tashlin (also director), ARTISTS AND MODELS boasts three pretty catchy songs: the title track (first sung by Dean during opening credits, then by Dean and Jerry during the ball), Jerry’s When You Pretend (which also closes the film), and Dean’s Innamorata (reprised by MacLaine). God knows why I find some of the Martin-Lewis song catalogue catchy and some insufferable; maybe the reprises sealed these songs’ catchiness?

After the mature love interest granted Jerry in MONEY FROM HOME, four films later he has another (MacLaine), but she has reverted to an infantile type again, because he is playing his “nine-year-old” character. MacLaine (one of few women who can look cute and sexy in short hair) reflects the tenor of the times with her spiels on astrology and numerology (although she is probably bringing her own delusions into that character as well!).

Of the many connections and references in the film:

• Kathleen Freeman is the landlady;
• The glorious Anita Ekberg in a cameo (Miss Sweden 1950; her breakthrough role coming soon in LA DOLCE VITA, 1960);
• A timely reference to 1954’s REAR WINDOW, complete with Jimmy Stewart voice impersonator;
• A reference to Dean’s huge 1953 hit from THE CADDY, That’s Amore, with Dean’s character Rick confessing, “I don’t sing as good as he does, but I try”;
• At one point, Jerry unknowingly premieres the voice that he would use for his most famous character, Julius Kelp in THE NUTTY PROFESSOR (1965).

There is one touching moment where Jerry can be seen channeling his greatest influence, Chaplin: When Rick threatens to leave their apartment and packs his bag, Eugene comes to stand at the doorway, his back to camera. No shouting, no big gestures, no comedy; over Eugene’s shoulder, we see Rick look up at Eugene, then bow his head in sadness and slowly, wordlessly, start unpacking his hastily-packed bag. We cut to Eugene, smiling, with trails of tears running down his face. It’s a moment which threatens to elevate the film into real emotion, but the next scene is Jerry shouting about Vincent the Vulture again…

Behind the scenes, Jerry was feeling his power grow, and feuding with producer Hal Wallis more openly, yet working with director Tashlin more collaboratively (a precursor to his coming ascendance to auteur). Dean was, as usual, Dean, staying in the background letting “the kid” run things.

One of their songs describes everything about this movie’s omission of emotional plot points, the real life tangles that Jerry and Dean got into with their producers and staff, and the treacly ending of the movie itself:

“Life is full of happy endings / When you pretend.”

END

Sham – Wow!

Homer Flagg is dying of radiation poisoning. His last wish is to visit New York. An avaricious New York editor, hoping to boost sales of his newspaper, brings Homer and his exclusive doctor on an all-expenses-paid final fling to New York. But Homer’s not really dying. His doctor made up the disease by mistake – and continues the ruse to keep LIVING IT UP on the newspaper’s dime. So what happens when Homer continues to not die?…

Jerry Lewis is Homer (of course his name is Homer), who desperately tries to leave his native dustbowl of Desert Hole, New Mexico, by stealing a car from an atomic test site. When it is discovered the car may be radioactive, he is diagnosed with radiation poisoning. Dean Martin is Dr. Steve Harris (of course his name is Steve), the local singing quack who realizes his mistaken diagnosis only after the news has been published in national papers.

Dean and Jerry race to make the last booty call at the Playboy mansion.

In the offices of The New York Chronicle, reporter Wally Cook (Janet Leigh and her pointy bra) pitches a story to her exasperated editor, Oliver Stone (Fred Clark, who was “Old Skinhead” in THE CADDY), of a dying boy with a rare disease whose last wish is to see New York, and how it would boost The Chronicle’s sales if it was to fund that wish, also nabbing the exclusive day-to-day story of Homer until his death.

Dr. Harris meets firecracker Wally, is immediately smitten by her pointy bra, and his intent to tell the truth goes out the door with his Hippocratic Oath (the plaque of which cracks open on his skull).

(And no, Steve Harris was not yet Iron Maiden’s galloping bassist, and Oliver Stone was not yet the insurrectionist filmmaker…)

So New York welcomes Homer and Steve unto its bosom, with Steve trying to make Wally at every opportunity, and Homer exploiting the generosity of The Chronicle (ordering tailor-made suits, manicures, and 3000 shrimp cocktails for his hordes of admirers keeping vigil outside the hotel), while Oliver Stone grimaces and prays for Homer’s quick demise…

1954’s LIVING IT UP is a lively remake of 1937’s NOTHING SACRED (starring Carole Lombard and Fredric March), with screenwriter Melville Shavelson and director Norman Taurog (on his fourth Martin and Lewis feature) reworking the tale around Martin and Lewis’s screwball antics; borrowing songs from HAZEL FLAGG, the successful 1953 Broadway musical inspired by the original movie (music, Jule Styne; lyrics, Bob Hilliard). Thus, every time Wally wants to bring in specialist doctors to examine Homer, Steve keeps croon-blocking her, sneaking in How Do You Speak To An Angel? and Money Burns A Hole In My Pocket. Homer duets with Steve on the catchy Every Street’s A Boulevard In Old New York, where they don top-and-tails and tap their way across the city, Jerry’s caterwauling somehow gelling with Dean’s velvet fog.

Sheree North – would have been the next Marilyn Monroe,
if she wasn’t so talented.

And as they sing about New York, we have to remember: these guys were the kings of that town, packing the seats and the streets during their appearances; no strangers to the song’s sentiments: “All the folks who live on a street like 11 / Are as fine as the family on a hundred and seven…” “It’s a thrill to shop on 34^th Street / Or down in Union Square…” “Just remember there’s the East Side / And the West Side / And Uptown and Down / That’s why we’re proud to be a part of New York town!” I can imagine this song alone, even without the context of the movie, endearing them to their rabid fans.

And the dancing! These guys were not just pratfallers and jokesters – they could really hoof it! Adept at all the current styles of vaudeville and tap-dancing, when they floated in sync it was a thing of beauty! Jerry even showcases his ferocious jitterbugging (in a scene featuring actress/dancer Sheree North, who was touted as “the girl who would take over from Marilyn Monroe”). It’s these scenes that remind us of the amount of work that went into the upkeep of the Martin-Lewis comedy team, and how they sweated blood to stay miles ahead of anything else that was out there.

An actual plot and predicament, a remake of a well-loved farce, hit songs from the popular stage play, their second feature film in color, and grand farce performances from the highest paid comedy team in the world – all contribute to LIVING IT UP becoming one of the top-grossing Martin and Lewis movies, and ultimately one of their true “classics.”

It is when three international doctors actually get a chance to examine Homer’s x-rays that Homer’s and Steve’s jig is up. Setting the stage for the funniest scene in the movie: Jerry showcasing his extraordinary mimicry when he plays all three doctors (from Vienna, Hong Kong and Paris) to distract them from his/Homer’s condition. Watch for the fastidious Sig Ruman, reprising his role from the 1937 film as Dr. Egelhofer from Vienna.

The scene before the doctors’ visit shows Steve trying to send Homer into a coma by sparring with him and punching him on the chin. Strangely enough, this scene is almost a replica of the scene in NOTHING SACRED – but we wonder how that can be, as that previous radiation patient was a woman. Well, that’s how weird that woman-bashing scene feels (even though it’s funny), as Carole Lombard is knocked out by Fredric March through a sock on the jaw.

3rd Base – 1950’s style!

The only time a gleeful look would cross editor Oliver’s face is when Homer faints or seems close to the end. When the international doctors report Homer’s clean bill of health to Oliver, he becomes as murderous as the “sluggers” he calls in, to ensure Homer’s death, and to staunch the newspaper hemorrhaging money. He repeats the same dialogue from the original, to Wally (who still thinks Homer is sick), “I am sitting here, toying with the idea of removing your heart and stuffing it like an olive.”

Sexy Wally, with a waist the size of a wrist, promises herself to Steve, although this is a contrivance just to follow Romantic Movie Protocol. Steve might want to go straight, being in love with Wally (“the works: marriage, white picket fence”), but he neglects to take her workaholic characteristics into account. She’s an ink-blooded newspaper hound through and through, “married to the front page of The Chronicle.” Why should her career be stultified or her character become subservient just because Steve proclaims his love for her? Just another sign of how women were treated in those times – taking it for granted Wally is working hard merely until she finds a man, and then she’ll settle with the barefoot-in-kitchen-three-kids routine!

By the time Homer is faking his suicide, the farce has escalated out of control. Whereas he and Steve were lodged in the upscale Park Ritz, the movie concludes with them as street-sweepers in front of it. In the simplistic “up” ending, that doesn’t delve into the darker areas of attempted murder, fraud, and perjury, Homer and Steve are still in love with the town, as they reprise Every Street’s A Boulevard from street level…

END

Bill and Ted’s Formative Adventure.

Well, Dean played Dean, and I played Jerry; we were two different characters, but it was us all the time, including the almost-breakup scene, which was tough for us to do.
— Jerry Lewis, INSIDE THE ACTORS’ STUDIO, 1999.

THE STOOGE is the Martin and Lewis roman à clef of their rise to glory.

Egotistic nightclub entertainer Bill Miller (Dean Martin), leaves his successful duo act (with Richard Erdman, aka Dogface Dolan in JUMPING JACKS) to marry Mary (ever-present Polly Bergen), and goes out as a solo act – and bombs!

Bill’s agent Leo (Eddie Mayehoff from THAT’S MY BOY) advises him to plant an unknown guy in the audience to spice up Bill’s act with interplay. Ted Rogers (Jerry Lewis) is that stooge, whose impromptu antics make the act a roaring success. Bill refuses to give Ted any billing, maintaining that Ted’s anonymity is what makes the act so successful. He could be right… but when he starts treating Ted like his personal slave, we realize Bill’s runaway ego is to blame for Ted’s omission.

Going to bed with myself…

(One wonders why Bill wasn’t forced to just reunite with his former partner, but I guess it’s ‘Martin and Lewis,’ not ‘Dean and Dogface’…)

THE STOOGE is probably the hardest Martin and Lewis movie to watch, because it cuts so close to the bone. In fact, the release date was pushed back until a few more Martin and Lewis films had hit theaters. Filmed in February 1951, THE STOOGE was only seen after THAT’S MY BOY (May 1951), SAILOR BEWARE (Feb 1952) and JUMPING JACKS (June 1952), because the studio felt its tragicomic fiction was too depressing, and Martin’s meanness to Lewis was too jarring.

In real life, Jerry’s self-admitted love for Dean was well-documented, yet it seemed Dean could take or leave Jerry. By the time of their breakup, one of the reasons given was that Dean felt Jerry was holding him back from a dramatic film career; another reason, that Dean felt his roles were becoming ever more shallow while Jerry became the focal point of the team. All of it was only part of a complexity we would never untangle. These issues are alluded to in THE STOOGE, where the dynamic is slightly different to real life: here, Bill (Dean) is the performer and Ted (Jerry) is ad-libbing his bits. In reality, Jerry was the writer of all the Martin and Lewis gags, Dean’s role simply suave straight-guy. That’s the way Jerry wanted it; his business model of “sex and slapstick” was a winning combination. Dean was content to sunbathe all day, or drink or womanize, while Jerry wrote. Still, there must have been some kind of work ethic, as their lightning-fast delivery attests. Although, that could be due to – in Jerry’s words – Dean’s “innate sense of comic timing.”

Men laughed, women swooned.

There are songs aplenty in THE STOOGE, some unbearable romantic treacle (like Dean’s opening croon to Bergen) and some quite catchy (Who’s Your Little Whoo-zis?, A Girl Named Mary and a Boy Named Bill); and Dean even sings Jerry to sleep on the train (–any excuse!).

As well as Polly Bergen again (AT WAR WITH THE ARMY, THAT’S MY BOY), there’s Marion Marshall again (from THAT’S MY BOY), as “Frecklehead,” Ted’s love interest. Note how the filmmakers (director Norman Taurog and writer Fred Finklehoffe) infantilize Frecklehead to make her compatible with Ted’s arrested development character.

This was “entertainment” once: a guy in a straw hat and suit, soft-shoeing it and crooning with an accordion, his “backing band” a small orchestra, and telling jokes like “I took my mother-in-law to the beach, and the only thing that got sunburned was her tongue.” Rim-shot. (Back when George Carlin was in tiny counterculture boy-pants.)

One day, Bill is rolling drunk and cannot do the show. Ted steps in for him, solo, and kills. Ted is complimented that HE is the act and Bill is the hanger-on, yet Ted acts as apologist for Bill, reveres him, builds him up. As always, so close to the bone. It’s a testament to Dean’s fine acting that he can play such a downright horrible guy, under the veneer of the suave sex symbol.

By the time Bill fires Ted for stealing his thunder, everyone can see through Bill’s mean streak – Mary his wife, Leo the agent, theater owners, Frecklehead, the crowd, even Dogface Dolan – and only when Bill bombs miserably as a solo does he repent. And it is heart-wrenching. Because – close to bone. And Bill gives a speech to the crowd that no one would ever give in real life, but it is tear-welling nonetheless, because – bone.

“…But I’m only half an act – the fella that made the act work was a little guy by the name of Ted Rogers. I can sing a song and play an accordion, but I need that spark, that “something,” the chemistry that makes two men a successful team…”

Of course, the greatest conceit of the movie is that it would have us believe a random guy pulled from obscurity can be such an improv firecracker. Ted is not an actor-waiting-tables, nor does he dabble in any of the performing arts. Ted is the clumsy errand boy of the agency, foisted onto Bill to get him out of the office where he keeps breaking things. How does he adapt so quickly to the spotlight? It’s hard enough for a civilian to be comfortable in front of an audience, let alone ad-lib… Movie tells us it’s as easy as breaking things.

Both Dean and Jerry were 5’10” yet to further their image of the handsome man and the monkey, Jerry put lifts in Dean’s shoes and shaved his own down, always working in a crouch around Dean.

The final look and feel of the act that Bill and Ted end up performing is a simulacrum of Dean and Jerry’s real life shock-and-awe music-and-comedy club appearances, where audiences didn’t know what was going to happen next.

The very last shot of Dean and Jerry breaking the fourth wall and giving the A-OK sign to each other and we the audience, is touching. It needed this last shot to bring us up from the depths of direness the film had dragged us to.

In real life, ten years to the day that their impromptu act exploded onto the stage at the 500 Club in Atlantic City in July 1946, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis would part ways. Though this film seemed to soothsay their eventual breakup, they were actually on the rise. THE STOOGE would be the last in the “nightclub” era of Martin and Lewis films (where – not counting THAT’S MY BOY – they were always essentially playing entertainers). Now (starting with SCARED STIFF) would start a run of classic Martin and Lewis character-driven comedies that would catapult them into the realm of legend…

END