Living It Up *** (1954, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Janet Leigh, Edward Arnold, Fred Clark, Sheree North, Sig Ruman) – Classic Movie Review 7267

Director Norman Taurog’s free-wheeling 1954 Technicolor carefree screwball comedy Living It Up stars Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Janet Leigh, Edward Arnold as The Mayor, Fred Clark, Sheree North and Sig Ruman.

Lewis plays Homer Flagg, a New Mexico railway attendant with sinus trouble, who is mistaken as a radiation victim and taken an all-expenses paid trip to New York by newspaper reporter Wally Cook (Leigh), who wants to do a series of articles on him and soon builds him up into a coast-to coast celebrity.

Lewis’s regular screen partner Martin plays his doctor, Steve Harris, who originally misdiagnoses him, in this sparky, cheery musical comedy reworking of 1937’s Nothing Sacred, with Lewis coping admirably with Carole Lombard’s part, renamed Homer Flagg. Martin has the Fredric March role from Nothing Sacred.

Homer learns that the diagnosis was wrong and that he is not dying of radioactive poisoning after all, but he intends to go to New York anyway and his doctor helps him to keep up his pretence, while the New Yorkers feel sorry for him and pamper him.

This interesting, well-done movie also incorporates elements from Ben Hecht’s early Fifties Broadway stage musical version of Nothing Sacred, Hazel Flagg, with music by the legendary Jule Styne and lyrics by Bob Hilliard.

Also in the cast are Sammy White, Sid Tomack, Richard Loo, Raymond Greenleaf, Walter Baldwin, Fay Roope, Stanley Blystone, Lane Chandler, Gino Corrado, Frankie Darro, Jean Del Val, Marla English, Franklyn Farnum, Fritz Feld, Bess Flowers, Kathryn Grant, Dabbs Greer, Sam Harris, Al Hill, Gretchen Houser, Donald Kerr, Norman Leavitt, Emmett Lynn, Hank Mann, Torben Meyer, Frank Mills and Grady Sutton.

Living It Up is directed by Norman Taurog, is produced by Paul Jones, is written by Jack Rose and Melville Shavelson, is based on the 1953 musical Hazel Flagg by Ben Hecht, which was based on the story Letter to the Editor by James H Street and the earlier film Nothing Sacred.

Living It Up has original music by Walter Scharf, cinematography by Daniel L Fapp, art direction by Albert Nozaki and Hal Pereira, and costume design by Edith Head.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7267

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