Seeing the end of the road…

Partners, Buddies, Pals… at least, onscreen.

Jerry and Dean in the Wild West!

PARDNERS, the penultimate musical comedy from Martin and Lewis opens with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis as two aged cowboys named Slim Mosely and Wade Kingsley, in a shootout to retain their property against the marauding Dan Hollis gang, who want to take it by force. Their wives escape with their baby sons, their namesakes. Slim and Wade are killed in the shootout, and as they lie dying they vow that their sons will avenge them…

(Since there was no one around to witness their deaths or their vows, we can’t quite figure how their sons would get the message to avenge them, especially since their wives were against the cowboy life, and would have raised Slim Jr. and Wade Jr. as city folk with no inkling of their fathers’ wishes…)

Years Pass… We meet Wade Jr. (now young Lewis, 30 at the time), a coddled rich mama’s boy in a mansion, who dresses in splashy cowboy duds and rides a mechanical horse, fantasizing about riding high in a saddle that would probably give him vertigo, while his butler looks on; who accedes wimpishly to the wishes of his overbearing mother (Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Kingsley) to marry a wealthy girl that terrifies him.

Enter Slim Jr. (young Martin, 39), a strapping cowpuncher with Lori Nelson as his token girlfriend (equals masculinity), beseeching Mrs. Kingsley for a loan to save a ranch out west – the very ranch that Slim (his father) and Wade (Mrs. Kingsley’s dead husband) defended years ago. Mrs. Kingsley now owns shipyards and steel companies – how she made her fortune is not shown – yet turns Slim down, not wanting any connection to her western past.

However, Wade, enamored with Slim’s rugged cowboy ethos, secretly withdraws his savings and runs away to help Slim, partnering with him to save the ranch of their fathers. And who is trying to run them out? The son of the original raider – Sam Hollis (John Baragrey, who also played his father Dan in the opening scene), but – much like the writers of Superman discovered that Lex Luthor could do more damage as a CEO than a generic crook – Sam is not a bandit, he is the town’s bank manager!

To disguise the fact that Wade is the heir of the Kingsley ranch, Slim dubs him “Killer Jones” (which also disguises the fact Wade is a city slicker with no horse, rope or gun skills). Through Hollis’s machinations, the town makes Wade the sheriff, so that Hollis and his gang (featuring Jeff Morrow as Rio, and Lee Van Cleef and Lon Chaney Jr. in the deep background!) can run roughshod through the county without being bothered by anyone competent.

Based loosely on Bing Crosby’s 1936 RHYTHM ON THE RANGE, PARDNERS is Norman Taurog’s 6th and last directorial effort for Martin and Lewis, Sidney Sheldon’s 2nd and last screenplay for the team.

We gotta admit that though Jerry was the better gun handler, Dean looked mighty comfortable in that cowboy getup. That western swagger would serve him well in his upcoming solo career (RIO BRAVO, 4 FOR TEXAS, et al). In a blue outfit that almost looked like a onesie, Jerry was looking kinda portly – not fat, but definitely eating well, compared to his boney carriage from the early films. Dean’s girl, fragile-petite Lori Nelson, was not helping, standing next to Jerry with her frame so slight you could wrap your palms around her waist.

Jerry is paired up with a smashing pumpkin himself – the new woman in town whom he rescues when her horses run wild (Jackie Loughery, also stunningly slight) – credited as a “showgirl,” looking suspiciously like a “hooker.” As always, Jerry is only allowed access to the girl at the culmination of his ascension to manhood, making this yet another film where his character arcs from child to man, and Dean’s character once again only arcs from intolerance to acceptance of a little buddy. Did we care? Nope. As long as Jerry made those faces and yawped, we were happy…

Dean and Jerry kidding around on set. Uh, you ARE kidding, right, Dean?… Dean?… Dean?…

In the film, their camaraderie seems as strong as ever (which once again proves incontrovertibly what good actors both were), yet the production was plagued by rumors of the breakup of “Martin and Lewis,” an entity which had become more than just a comedy team – they were an entertainment monolith, from stage to radio, from TV to magazines and motion pictures. Thus Dean and Jerry include a lively disclaimer in the film’s coda: As they sing the final chorus of the title song, “You an’ me / Will be the greatest / Partners, buddies and pals!” (looking for all the world like they mean it) THE END title fades onscreen. They break the fourth wall to first shoot down the title, then speak to us, the audience, “We’re not ready for the end yet!… We want you folks to know we sure enjoyed workin’ for you and we hope you enjoyed the picture… and we hope you’ll keep coming to see US because we like seeing YOU.”

Maybe it quelled the breakup rumors for the innocent, breezy public of the era (who did not yet have access to that virulent, seething wreckage of society called social media), but looking back on that message now, we have to wonder what was in both their heads at the time. Surely at this point there was some inkling of their termination date, or at the very least, Dean planning his exit strategy? These guys were THE kings of the entertainment circuit, and an army of personnel were about to be either out of work or transferring their energies to other clients.

Or maybe the message WAS a harbinger of their dissolution, if you read between the lines: “We hope you’ll keep coming to see us,” could very well mean “Even though we’re gone, keep patronizing our films and other products.”

There would come one last film, HOLLYWOOD OR BUST (wrapping in June 1956, released in December 1956), but by that time, the world would be a sadder place… In a cruel irony, on the very day that PARDNERS was released – July 25, 1956 – and the public was hearing “We’re not ready for the end yet!” Martin and Lewis would perform for the very last time as a team at the Copacabana in New York…

And we thought they’d always be our partners, buddies and pals…

END

It would have been a very different series if they cast LOST IN SPACE with Dean Martin as Professor Robinson and Jerry Lewis as Don.

It Never Gets Old…

Jerry Lewis, whose whole shtick is “an adult playing a kid,” gets to play an adult playing a kid, in YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG. And Dean Martin, as usual, can’t tell the difference.

Jerry is Wilbur Hoolick (of COURSE that’s his name), an aspiring barber, planted with a stolen diamond and then pursued by the diamond thief, Noonan (Raymond Burr). Dean is Bob Miles (of COURSE that’s his name), who crosses paths with Wilbur because – Martin and Lewis movie.

Opening scenes set up quickly that Noonan has to offload a stolen diamond to avoid cops on his tail. At first, he plants it on Bob. (And we see Dean has learned well from Jerry how to take pratfalls when he bashes into Raymond Burr’s bulk and goes crashing to the floor in one smooth slap.) Then Bob walks into a barber’s shop, where Wilbur is pretending to be a French barber. Cue barber-chair and egg-catching gags. Here, Noonan re-plants the diamond from Bob to Wilbur, then hires Wilbur to visit his wife’s apartment for a scalp treatment, to allow his wife the opportunity to snatch the diamond out of Wilbur’s pocket.

YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG is the remake of Billy Wilder’s first directorial effort in 1942, THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (starring Ginger Rogers in the Jerry role. Many would speculate that there is something to the fact that Jerry is once again in a female role, like his previous remake, 1954’s LIVING IT UP). The scalp treatment scene is where the original film picks up, and where that film starts to go off the rails almost immediately with its ingrained sexism and idiotic writing.

This remake has sensibly added the more compelling diamond plot, and Wilbur finds himself fleeing to the station with Noonan on his tail. Short on money for train fare home, Wilbur gets the idea from a decidedly old-looking kid to disguise himself as a 12-year-old, so he can pay half-fare. On the train, to avoid Noonan, Wilbur takes refuge in the cabin of Nancy (Diana Lynn), who, thinking he’s a kid, lets him spend the night in the lower berth.

The train gets bogged down, and who drives to pick up Nancy? – but Bob, her boyfriend. (What are the odds?!) Accompanying Bob is Gretchen (Nina Foch), who has the hots for Bob, but looks like his mother. She’s the governess at the school for girls where Bob teaches. (We presume he’s the Phys Ed teacher, as we see three seconds of him heading a calisthenics class where the students think he’s a dreamboat.) In the car, Bob croons a love song, envisioning Nancy, while Gretchen thinks it’s for her and snuggles. It’s gross, firstly because Dean’s insufferable songs are all placed so close together, and secondly, because she looks like his mother!

What it looks like when 100 women want your baby.

At the school for girls, Noonan is still poking around trying to get his hands around Wilbur’s throat, which necessitates Wilbur choosing to lodge in the safety of the school, rooming with Gretchen’s odd brother, Mike – an uncredited Whitey Haupt, who would steal his scenes from Jerry with his lemon-sucking face and his nerviness. (This roommate character in the original 1942 film was played by none other than Diana Lynn, who stars here as Dean’s love interest. Lynn’s first brush with Martin and Lewis was star billing above them in their first ever feature, MY FRIEND IRMA.)

Wilbur takes to calling his benefactors “Aunt Nancy” and “Uncle Bob” and we have to believe that they believe he’s a kid or the film fails. And everybody on the school board thinks he’s a kid. And all the girls at the school think he’s a kid as well. Dean and Jerry were both the same height (depending on reports, anywhere from 5’10” to 6’0”), but Jerry always stooped so that “the handsome one” could look taller. Here, he is constantly stooping.

Even for an absurdist comedy, there are distractions, time-warps and plot anomalies:

• Bob is in Los Angeles when we first meet him. Wilbur runs into him at the station, which means Bob is taking a train out of LA at the same time as Wilbur. When Wilbur’s train bogs down, Bob is driving to the train to pick up Nancy – that means he was already settled at his destination further down the line than Wilbur. How?
• When Wilbur takes that kid’s clothes at the station, does that mean there is a mugged naked kid left in that baggage room, with his mother (Ms. Hathaway herself – Nancy Kulp) frantically looking for him?
• Gretchen instructs Bob, “Take Wilbur to my place. I’ll join you later,” and she stays behind to finish the board meeting, yet when Bob and Wilbur get to Gretchen’s place, it is she who answers the door! Did she teleport?
• When Wilbur falls through a doorway during his dance, the damage is massive (to both doors, the jambs, the windows, etc.) yet there is no liability – it’s just the punchline to a joke. He just leaves it and walks off!
• It seems too coincidental that the night Wilbur tries to sneak out over the school gate, Noonan is outside waiting to grab him – but Noonan was already sneaking around inside the grounds that morning. How did he end up locked outside? Seconds later, Noonan is over the wall easily, chasing Wilbur. (Why couldn’t he do that earlier, or better still, why did he leave the grounds in the first place?)
• When Wilbur is hiding in Nancy’s shower, she puts her arm in without noticing him, turns on the cold water fully, then walks away! As if she’s waiting on the hot water to warm up. Then she walks into the shower in her robe (which is still spraying only cold water, mind you!), removes the robe inside the shower and throws it out. Who showers like this – aliens?
• The time-warping is also used as obvious gag, when Bob sees Wilbur crawling into Nancy’s window, and then runs all the way back to Wilbur’s room to check if Wilbur is actually in bed – and he is!

Though Dean is notably hilarious in this straight role, his songs are pretty unmemorable; there’s a big song and dance number with 100 girls plus Jerry and Dean, which is pretty good for its hard work and choreography. Jerry conducts a choir with Dean as lead vocalist, an inexplicable bit that emulates their unique club routine. And Jerry does a solo soft-shoe every bit as dynamic and sexy as Ginger Rogers in the original.

Thankfully, this remake quickly moves away from the romantic plot of the original – the pedophilic romantic plot, where everyone wanted to make the underage girl, including the star. Though they try to establish Wilbur in forbidden love with Nancy, the premise won’t hold, not with the diamond plot ever-present. And crooning Bob.

At one point, Wilbur falls into a pond with his schoolgirl escort Skeets (Mitzi McCall) and a couple of big swans flap around disturbingly trying to escape. Jerry stays in character by a thread as he shouts at one bird that gets too close, “Get away, you!” Later, when Skeets asks him to come to the office, he warns her, “Okay, but no swans!” So funny! Was that in the original script? Because who knew those swans would affect him so badly during the shoot?

There’s a pointless military subplot: Bob wants to be back in active duty (because wanting war was the manly thing in 1955!) but Gretchen uses her influence to keep him at school. This subplot has only one up-side – it spawns the best gag in the film: Wilbur impersonating old bat Gretchen on the phone (“We must get together again real soon for a rousing game of mahjong!”), to get Bob back in service. But why would Bob want to leave when Nancy is here?!

Director Norman Taurog’s fifth Martin and Lewis film, YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG is screenplayed by a young Sidney Sheldon, and even that great novelist can’t write what Jerry Lewis can do. Only Jerry could understand how to construct the actual Martin and Lewis physical and verbal gags, which separated these comedy megastars from others of their ilk, and it was he who wrote those parts for all their films, which he was never credited for. Here, we have the barbershop scene, the wife-and-barber scene, the ticket-buying scene, the instructional-kissing scene, the cigar-eating scene, the conducting-the-choir scene, a talking-over-each-other scene, to name a few.

For our reassurance (or maybe denial), there is no evidence in this film of the recent falling out of Dean and Jerry during 3 RING CIRCUS. Though there are reports of a palpable iciness between them, onscreen they are most definitely a team. Dean was of the mind that “the kid” was good for business, so performed his job judiciously, while Jerry, the more emotional of the two, felt insincere to be playing opposite a partner who didn’t care on an emotional level. After their suffering through 3 RING CIRCUS, life seemed back to normal, as the team were booked on gigs ranging from TV specials to club dates, and then the filming of YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG. The only wrench thrown into what might have seemed a leveling out of animosities was Dean missing the premiere of this film – a lavish affair in the Catskills; his absence was pointedly an insult to Jerry, who never did fully recover.

As their partnership was winding towards an inevitable conclusion (Dean was now 38, Jerry, 29), YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG gave us hope that there was a renewed life in the old codgers yet.

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

“At first I thought I was the handsome one – then I saw how much I was carrying.”

The Gulf between Golf and Guff.

A talented golfer and his equally-talented yet disruptive caddy enter golfing tournaments and end up in comedy. Kinda like Tiger Woods.

THE CADDY opens with massive crowds jamming the streets of New York. They’re all cheering at something high in one of the hotels lining the street. Flyers are seen fluttering down onto the throng. It looks like stock footage of Beatlemania. But it’s real footage – of the hysteria caused by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis when they were the kings of the comedy nightclub circuit in America.

We cut away to a closeup of Joe Anthony (Dean Martin) and Harvey Miller (Jerry Lewis) hanging out a hotel window, greeting the masses and throwing out headshots of themselves. This is filmed footage for this movie; these guys are THE in-demand nightclub team, just before another sold-out show. Joe’s mama and papa are backstage, and as the dynamic duo head onstage and perform a simulacrum of their real-life song-and-dance-and-madness act, dueting and soft-shoeing What Wouldcha Do Without Me?, Joe’s papa (Joseph Calleia) tells a reporter the tale of how the two became such superstars…

Crosby and Hope:
The road started here…

Before we proceed with THE CADDY, it must be noted that Dean and Jerry were not the first to promote that raucous nightclub act of songs-sprinkled-with-comedy. In 1932 Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were accidentally paired onstage and started doing a form of Vaudevillian singing-and-ad-libbing; Crosby the crooner and Hope the ad-libbing animal. It was a hit, but it was just a lark that was never pursued. In 1940, their chemistry was captured in the first of seven ROAD films, ROAD TO SINGAPORE.

Yes, Hope and Crosby pioneered the form (and it was slightly more cerebral than Martin and Lewis’s version, which was more dependent on Lewis’s slapstick), but Martin and Lewis made that singing-and-gagging format theirs, in their irrepressible live shows, bringing an unbridled fury and physicality to the stage, never before seen by audiences used to crowding around the radio for their entertainment. They were The Rolling Stones to Hope-and-Crosby’s Beatles.

Also, I don’t say “slapstick” in a derogatory sense. Martin and Lewis were a fine-tuned machine: each gesture, each pratfall, each hand-into-the-mouth, each grope-across-the-chest, each jump-into-the-arms is a practiced art. When their act made the leap to movies, Jerry himself professes they would rehearse so solidly that their lightning-strike timing usually necessitated just one take. Rather than let cinematographers bully them into second or more takes due to missing lines in a boom mic, or because the lighting wasn’t good upstage, etc., they argued that the energy and urgency of each take could not be replicated, so we are usually seeing the first takes of their routines!

… THE CADDY jogs into flashback, showing Harvey (Lewis) as a prodigy golfer, yet unable to play in tournaments due to stagefright. His fiancé Lisa (beautiful Barbara Bates, who resembles Paulette Goddard in a pointy bra) suggests he become a golf instructor instead. Lisa’s prodigal brother Joe (Martin) returns home from wandering the country. Upon realizing Joe is a gifted golfer, Harvey suggests Joe enters tournaments, with Harvey as caddy.

For playing hooky to go watch a golf tournament, Harvey and Lisa are fired from their department store job, in a slapstick sequence that features intrepid character actor Fred Clark as their boss. (Clark would soon play the newspaper editor in Martin and Lewis’s classic, LIVING IT UP.) And Joe doesn’t want to return to work on his father’s fishing boat. So golf it is.

Kissing without hands: hard, but not impossible.

This would be the first Martin & Lewis film where Dean embraces his Italian heritage with such verve. Up to this point in film, his Italian background is merely referred to, but here, his parents are Old Country and (with the help of Jerry and his family) he croons his most memorable, most Mediterranean song, which cites the Italian word for love – That’s Amore. (Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1953, it would peak on the Billboard charts at #2.)

We sense a real camaraderie between Dean and Jerry in this film. They seem to be getting closer. So we are stunned when their “breakup” also seems so real. After hitting it big, Joe starts treating Harvey like the help, ignoring his advice, running off with a girl (Donna Reed as Kathy), giving up practicing, and giving up golf; almost like he wants to return to his wasteful life on the road. Not since their fifth film, THE STOOGE, has Dean’s venom seemed so biting. Now we realize why director Norman Taurog started the movie as he did: If we had not seen Joe’s and Harvey’s success, this breakup might have left a bad taste in our mouths. But it’s simply a testament to how convincing Martin and Lewis are as dramatic actors; they know when and how to make it hurtful. They are never given enough credit for this side of their talents. (As it is, the REAL breakup is a mere three years away; it just seems longer, because they cranked out 16 films in a 7 year period.)

Harvey does a solo song, The Gay Continental, while he dons his sophisticate demeanor to infiltrate the yuppie country club where Kathy has taken Joe for a forbidden week of pointy-bra undoing.

Golfing is a hobby that is obviously dear to our stars’ hearts, and I can see how scoring cameos from famous golfers of the day (like Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Byron Nelson) might gladden some fans’ hearts. But I don’t care.

Due to Harvey’s constant haranguing, Joe is disqualified from the tournament circuit, but all through their golfing stint a rotund agent has been witnessing and guffawing at Joe and Harvey’s comedic interactions and advises them to go into nightclub entertainment. Which they do, because apparently nothing clears up stagefright better than being a caddy.

In the final scene, when our heroes Joe and Harvey are coming offstage to raucous applause, after reprising an energetic What Wouldcha Do Without Me? (but now, poignantly, reworded to, What Would I Do Without You?), they run into – Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis – in a split-screen cameo that is awesome for its day.

And in their real guises, it’s nice to see Dean and Jerry exchange some real friendly repartee, as they see their stage personas walk off with their dolled-up dames (Dean: “How lucky can two guys get?” Jerry: “Yeah, we got it real bad, ain’t we, Dean?”); real respect, real love. If only…

END