Artists and Models *** (1955, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Shirley MacLaine, Dorothy Malone, Eddie Mayehoff, Eva Gabor, Anita Ekberg) – Classic Movie Review 6621

Co-writer director Frank Tashlin’s 1955 comedy vehicle for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis is co-written by actor Don McGuire, Lewis’s friend, who also co-wrote the weak Martin and Lewis film Three Ring Circus (1954). The comedy is fleshed out with several enjoyable song and dance numbers.

Artists and Models was a very big hit. Costing $1,500,000, it grossed $9,350,000 in the US.

Martin plays Rick Todd, an aspiring artist who employs his loopy flatmate Eugene Fullstack (Lewis)’s espionage-story nightmares to make his comic strips, and spies from both sides get on the case. Rick gets his chance when Abby Parker (Dorothy Malone) is fired as the artist for The Bat Lady comic books series and Eugene meets Bessie Sparrowbrush (Shirley MacLaine), who turns out to be the artist’s model for the Bat Lady.

The fun goes on too long at 108 minutes in writer-director Tashlin’s zippy, crazy farce, but the movie is above average for the comedy duo – in fact it amounts to one of their best vehicles.

The assets include Shirley MacLaine (aged only 21, in her second movie) as model girl Bessie Sparrowbrush and Dorothy Malone as luscious neighbour Abby Parker, funny Eddie Mayehoff as Mr Murdock, Eva Gabor as Sonia / Mrs Curtis, and statuesque Anita Ekberg as Anita, as well as a parade of funny Fifties fashions.

Also in the cast are Nick Castle, Carleton Young, Emory Parnell, Art Baker, Kathleen Freeman, Alan Lee, Richard Webb, Richard Shannon, Herbert Rudley, Jack Elam and George ‘Foghorn’ Winslow.

Artists and Models is a Paramount film, running 109 minutes, shot in Technicolor and VistaVision by Daniel L Fapp, produced by Hal B Wallis and scored by Walter Scharf. The screenplay by Frank Tashlin, Hal Kantner, Herbert Baker and Don McGuire is based on a play by Michael Davidson and Norman Lessing.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6621

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