Artists and Models is a 1955 Paramount musical comedy in VistaVision and marked Martin and Lewis's fourteenth feature together as a team. The film co-stars Dorothy Malone, Eva Gabor, Anita Ekberg, and Shirley MacLaine.
Plot
Rick Todd (Dean Martin) is a struggling painter. His roommate, Eugene Fullstack (Jerry Lewis), is an aspiring children's author. Fullstack has a passion for comic books, especially those of the "Bat Lady." However, each night he has nightmares which he describes aloud during his sleep. They are about "Vincent the Vulture," who is half-man, half-bird.
A neighbor in the complex, Abigail Parker (Dorothy Malone) is a professional artist and works for a comic book company, Murdock Publishing. Her roommate is Bessie Sparrowbush (Shirley MacLaine), who is Mr. Murdock's secretary, and the model for "Bat Lady". Sparrowbush develops a crush on Fullstack, who is unaware that she is the "Bat Lady."
Parker becomes frustrated at work and quits at the same time that Todd gets a job with them after pitching the adventures of "Vincent the Vulture" from Fullstacks' dreams. He attains success at his new job, but after falling for Parker he keeps his work a secret from her.
Unbeknownst to all of them, Fullstacks' dreams also contain a top-secret rocket formula that Todd publishes in his stories. With spies all around them, they manage to entertain at the annual "Artists and Models Ball" and capture the enemy, preserving national security.
Production
Martin and Lewis' fourteenth feature, Artists and Models was filmed from February 28 to May 3, 1955 at Paramount Studios[1]. It was released on November 7, 1955 by Paramount. The film was one of the team's highest budgeted pictures, at $1.5 million, and was shot with Paramount's VistaVision cameras in Eastman color, print by Technicolor, and stereophonic sound by Perspecta. Costumes were by Paramount wardrobe designer Edith Head [1].
Artists and Models marked the first time Lewis worked with former Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin, whom he admired greatly [1]. Martin and Lewis would reunite with him on their last film, Hollywood Or Bust, and Lewis would then work with Tashlin on six of his solo films.
Producer Hal B. Wallis chose Tashlin for Artists and Models on the basis of his background as a cartoonist, and the film contains many gags influenced by the director's animation work. When MacLaine kisses Lewis in front of a water cooler, the water steams up; in another scene, a massage therapist bends Lewis's leg all the way towards his head. Artists and Models is considered a milestone in movie satire for its mockery of mid-1950s pop culture. One scene satirizes the Kefauver hearings on violent comic books, and other targets in the film include the Cold War, the space race and the publishing business.
Tashlin brought a lot of sexual innuendo to Artists and Models, making it more adult in content than most of Martin and Lewis's previous movies and indulging his own fetishistic fascination with female characters in revealing costumes. Some of his most suggestive ideas were disallowed by the Production Code; in Tashlin's original script, Lewis's character was named "Fullstick," but the censors ordered the removal of this phallic joke. The censors also asked Paramount to cut a scene where Dorothy Malone is seen wearing only a strategically placed towel, but the studio did not remove it. The finished film contains many jokes that push the boundaries of what was acceptable in the mid-'50s, including many about women's breasts and a number of double entendres.
Long time Martin and Lewis writer Herbert Baker worked on the script which had the original title Rock-A-Bye Baby; the title later being used for Rock-A-Bye Baby a 1958 Jerry Lewis film.[2]
Songs featured were by music legends Harry Warren and Jack Brooks, and included "When You Pretend", "You Look So Familiar", "Innamorata (Sweetheart)", "The Lucky Song", and "Artists and Models." A sixth number, sung by Shirley MacLaine during the party, entitled "The Bat Lady", was cut from the final edit [1].
MacLaine did not make another film with Lewis, but did go on to appear in six other films with Martin, including Some Came Running, Ocean's Eleven, What a Way to Go! and Cannonball Run II. Malone had previously worked with the team in their eighth feature, Scared Stiff.
According to a 1955 column by Sheilah Graham, the part of Abby was originally offered to Lizabeth Scott, who had played opposite the team in Scared Stiff. When she turned the part down, Martin asked for Dorothy Malone, his other love interest from Scared Stiff.
The cast is filled with cameos by many Martin and Lewis regulars. Eddie Mayehoff made his cinematic debut in That's My Boy and also co-starred in The Stooge. Kathleen Freeman also appeared in 3 Ring Circus, along with a number of Lewis' solo films. Jack Elam was in the team's second-to-last picture, Pardners. Anita Ekberg would also appear in Martin and Lewis' final film, Hollywood Or Bust.
The spaceship model seen in the foreign experimental laboratory is actually a leftover miniature from Paramount's 1955 film, Conquest of Space, directed by George Pal.[citation needed]
The "Vincent the Vulture" comic book made as a prop for this picture briefly appears in the unaired pilot for the Get Smart television series.
DVD release
The film was included on a five-film DVD set, the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis Collection: Volume Two, released on June 5, 2007.
References
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