El rey del circo

There are some strange echoes of the real life bust up between Martin and Lewis in the script. It's saddled with Jerry's sincere but misguided belief that he is a natural clown and screen heir to Emmett Kelly, who's makeup he closely resembles in some scenes, imitation being flattery I guess. The buddies, newly discharged from the army and penniless head for the circus where Jerry, longing to become a clown instead has to apply to be a trainee lion tamer (as if..) the usual water squirting elephants and disgruntled, drunken clown lead us to the quease-inducing finale when Jerry as the clown succeeds in making a sad little girl (in leg irons, yet)smile at his tears. For 1954 audiences I'm sure it was a pleasure break from post war blues but it's well past it's sell by date. TRIVIA: Unless I'm much mistaken the sequence where Dean Martin does acrobatics on some low bars is doubled by Nick Cravat who appears elsewhere in the film and was an acrobatic partner of Burt Lancaster.

3 Ring Circus was not a film Dean Martin cared to remember. Apparently this was a film that Jerry Lewis wanted to make because he got to play a circus clown. Dean had very little to do here, he only got one solo song though it's a good one.

Nick Tosches fine biography of Dean Martin says that Jerry ran the film, including picking the director Joseph Pevney. It was the first time that real tension was rather public between the team.

Dino and Jerry play a pair of newly discharged veterans who pick up jobs in a circus. Jerry is placed as a lion tamer's assistant and he has a marvelous scene with Sig Ruman as a rather inpatient lion tamer. Trying to teach Jerry the trade would be enough to drive anyone crazy. But Jerry is actually correct in his reasoning that if he just hires on with the circus, sooner or later his talents as a clown will shine through. Though he drives owners Wallace Ford and Joanne Dru wacky with his antics, he becomes a marvelous clown. That's a profession you are born to, either your funny or you're not. My favorite scene with him is Jerry trying to hand the aerial cyclist his unicycle and then getting caught on the high wire with it.

On the other hand Dino is caught between Joanne Dru and the star attraction of the show, trapeze artist Zsa Zsa Gabor. Gabor is also jealous when Lewis gets to be the real star of the show. I think you can figure out how all this ends.

Dean and Jerry do a song written for the film Hey Punchinello by Paramount contract songwriters Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. But Dean's one and only solo was the interpolated classic, It's A Big Wide Wonderful World. For reasons I don't understand he made no record of this so the only place you'll hear him is in 3 Ring Circus. The song was introduced by Buddy Clark in the Forties and it fits Dean's style perfectly.

Other than that song, this film was strictly Jerry's show with Dean only in support. No wonder tension flared.

Dean and Jerry are more relaxed in this film than in previous efforts. The comedy is also milder. It is also the first time Jerry indulges in his sentimental clown shtick. Hello, telethon Jerry! Dean has absolutely nothing to do in the film. He plays his usual heel character, but there is absolutely no depth to it. And where are the musical numbers? Only the woefully unfunny "That's My Boy" has less in the way of music! Dean and Jerry get to do one new number, "Puncinello", and Dean sings the standard "It's a Big, Wide Wonderful World" to a bunch of animals! (Hugh Shannon, the wonderful jazz singer-pianist who is most identified with this song, must have had a good laugh from Dean's version.) Dean has no ballads and hardly any screen time with his leading lady, Joanne Dru. It's all about Jerry, not silly, lovable Jerry, but a telethon Jerry, trying to become a clown. Actually, the film is quite amusing and heartwarming, but it's not Martin and Lewis. I do not know if Twenty-first Century youngsters would find this amusing, but I did when I was a kid. It is more endearing than "That's My Boy" and most of the solo Lewis films. It may be a bit slow for today's kids.

Reports I've read state that "3 Ring Circus" was a very troubled production, ranging from stars Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis demanding a lot of script changes through filming to the fact that their partnership was at this stage becoming very strained. All of this turmoil may explain why the end results do not manage to be all that humorous. Much of the movie is surprisingly played in a lower key than usual; even Lewis doesn't go all out like he did in other movies. I will say that Lewis all the same is pretty good, especially when he's in clown makeup and performing in front of an audience. Martin does try, but the script for the most part makes him a kind of a heel instead of a humorous straight man, and often doesn't seem to know what to do with his character. There also isn't a heck of a lot of plot on display as well. The movie had potential, but this is definitely one case where everyone involved should have come to some sort of agreement first about how to do the movie - or simply not have done the movie at all.

"3 Ring Circus is probably the least funny of the films that Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis made together. As a comedy team, these two were hit and miss in films. This one has so little comedy that it's only real attribute is the animals and the portrayal of the once great circuses for entertainment. Even then, there are few real circus feats here. The trapeze work of Zsa Zsa Gabor's Saadia (or her stunt woman double) is almost amateurish compared to the real thing. A number of other movies have some genuine circus performers in them for aerial feats and working with animals from dogs and horses to the big cats and elephants.

Aside from the animals, there's not much to this film. The plot is thin and the antics of Jerry Lewis hardly get a couple of chuckles. The funniest thing in this film is seeing Elsa Lanchester as The Bearded Lady. When Jerry plans to shave her he runs into trouble with the circus manager.

The plot for this film is thin, and the except for the mostly not funny antics of Lewis, it's otherwise quite dull - even boring. The closest thing to humor in the dialog is in these two exchanges.

Jill Brent, "What do you do, Mr. Nelson?" Pete Nelson, "Uh, I'm ma pretty good machine-gunner and I sing a little." Jill Brent, "Mmhmm. Then you must've seen my ad for a singing machine-gunner." Jerry Hotchkiss, "Huh, huh, huh, huh."

Pete Nelson, "How come you never married?" Jill Brent, "Isn't that a rather personal question?" Pete Nelson, "I'm sorry. How come you never married, ma'am?"