Artists and Models

Lets face it, attempts to make a slapstick comedy, done after the '40's, can hardly be called good or successful ones. This movie however does work out surprisingly and it's one that is hard not to enjoy and will make you laugh, guaranteed. In all honesty, it's one of the most amusing comedies I have ever seen.

It's a movie filled with lots of physical humor, mostly coming from Jerry Lewis of course. This at the same time of course means that there is not much to the story but still the movie has a good script, which story provides the movie with plenty of fun and good characters and some nice comical situations. Still the movie at times feels as if it's trying to have too much story in it, which makes the movie drag a bit at times, certainly toward the end. It also makes the movie a bit overlong and it also easily could had been a shorter one had it cut out some of its lesser story lines. The movie should had focused more only on its comedy.

It's definitely not a too impressive looking movie. The movie didn't cost a lot of money to make. Not that it matters too much for the movie but its quality will probably still put off some people.

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were a screen-duo that appeared in quite a few comedies together. Lewis was there for playing the goofy characters and for adding most of the slapstick comedy of the movie, while Dean Martin was mostly there to play the pretty guy and to provide the movie with his singing skills. Kind of a strange and also unlikely duo but it worked out very well within their films. For this movie a whole bunch of other well known actors showed up. Cameos was a thing that became big and mostly popular in the '50's and lost of well known persons show up in this movie, though most of them just aren't that well known and recognizable this present day. The movie further more also features Shirley MacLaine and Eva Gabor among others in some big roles.

All in all a movie that I enjoyed watching and made me really laugh more than once.

7/10

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I've never seen a Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis movie. This was my first and I hope it is not my last! With a wacky story line (Crazy-for-comic boy Eugene dreams up comic book stories with Vincent Vulture and Freddie Fieldmouse and his friend writes them down) and a ton of laughs ("Not only will I watch your switchboard but I'll buzz your lights and tangle your wires. Come 'ere baby." "Not while your friend's watching." "Oh, he left." "Wow! Then what are we waiting for? My saggitarius was right. Come on, boy. Don't fight.") And the cutest actors (Shirley MacLaine, Dorothy Malone). How can you not love the songs? And then there's the entire Eva Gabor thing going on. This movie is hilarious, too bad it's not popular NOW. I highly recommend it. I love it.

One of the best of the Martin&Lewis films is Artists And Models where Dean and Jerry play a pair of roommates. Dino is a struggling artist and Jerry just struggles.

Jerry also dreams out loud and his wild imaginings in the arms of Morbeus give Dean an idea for comic strip characters which he draws. It makes them both quite successful. When they accidentally print the part of a secret rocket formula that is destined to launch a proposed space station into orbit, he arouses both the interest of our Secret Service and the Russians. They send a beautiful spy in the person of Eva Gabor and her scenes trying to vamp Jerry are a scream.

Two things struck me about Artists And Models. One was that Dino seemed less abusive of Jerry in the relationship. It was something different coming out of the pair. Secondly Paramount hired songwriters Harry Warren and Jack Brooks to write a really outstanding score for Dean to sing, one of the best in a Martin&Lewis film. In fact I'm surprised that such songs like Innamorata, When You Pretend, You Look So Familiar, and The Lucky Song, that not one of them merited an Oscar nomination. All are very big favorites with Dean Martin's legion of fans. The team of Warren and Brooks was responsible for Dino's biggest hit from a motion picture, That's Amore.

Jerry occasionally gets a girl as well in some of their films and in this one he got Shirley MacLaine who was doing just her second film, having made her debut in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry also done at Paramount. She also gets to vamp Jerry with a hysterical obbligato of Innamorata. She proves his equal in the mugging department, no mean feat.

In fact the film is populated with beautiful women besides MacLaine and Gabor, Anita Ekberg is also a model and Dorothy Malone is an artist who rooms with MacLaine and has a relationship roughly parallel. Malone looks a whole lot like Jeanne Martin in my humble opinion and in the Nick Tosches biography of Dean Martin, she speaks warmly about working with him in a couple of films, saying he was one of the easiest going people to work with and in fact on another film, helped her over a rough patch because Malone had just lost a brother.

Artists And Models shows Dean and Jerry at their best and musically it might just be the best of the scores Dean Martin ever got in any of his films.

A crazy film for devotees of the super-hero comic book. Shirley MacLaine was both wacky and alluring as Bessie, who is the inspiration of the Bat-Lady, a character of the comic book which Dorothy Malone draws(?) Jerry is his usual self, while Dean Martin turns up a one-note performance as the typecast Lothario who tries to romance Dorothy who at first would have nothing to do with him. Eva Gabor(before Green Acres), cast as the seductress who tries to worm spy secrets out of Jerry is excellent.

I remember seeing the movie years ago and there was a scene where Jerry paints faces and puts little dresses on the knees of a young blonde actress in one scene. The actress bared a slight resemblance to Anne Bancroft. Is this correct?

Brian T

This is probably the best of the films featuring Martin and Lewis. This film is also a fine parody due to the fact that this film was shot during the period when there it was being debated over how the comic books that were out during that time were affecting children (those arguments would lead to the "comics code"). The other highlight of this film was looking at Shirley MacLaine was chasing after Jerry (the girl must have needed glasses). These scenes provide much of the humor as Jerry's character Eugene is scared to death of the aggressive Betsy. Its also interesting to note that MacLaine's character Betsy is interested in astrology and MacLaine would later become known for her new age interests, including astrology.