Artists and Models (1955)

Jerry Lewis was honored in TCM's Summer Under the Stars in 2024. I recorded several of the movies, but since YouTube TV's cloud DVR only keeps stuff for nine months, there was a fair bit that I didn't get to before it expired. In the intervening period, TCM ran one of Lewis' films with Dean Martin that wasn't part of the Summer Under the Stars programming and that I hadn't seen before. So I recorded that as well, and recently finally got around to watching that movie: Artists and Models.

Dean Martin is one of the artists. He plays Rick Todd, who is a comic book artist, except that he's not having much success getting jobs. He shares an apartment with best friend Eugene Fullstack (Jerry Lewis). Eugene would like to write children's books, and has a couple of characters, a goose and a field mouse. But he has a thing for comic books, specifically reading The Bat Lady, which I'm surprised passed trademark muster since it's clearly a riff on Batman. The comic books give him nightmares however, and his loud screaming during the nightmares causes everybody in the apartment building except Eugene to have a problem with it.

One night something happens that causes Eugene to go upstairs to the apartment immediately above his, and when he knocks on the door he finds two women. One is another artist, Abby Parker (Dorothy Malone), while the other is a model, Bessie Sparrowbush (Shirley MacLaine). The important thing, however, is that Bessie is modeling for Abby, dressed as... The Bat Lady! Meanwhile, Bessie is into astrology, and has some idea in her head that her horoscope is going to have her falling in love with someone whose description Eugene just happens to fit to a T, even though he has no clue that Bessie out of the Bat Lady getup is the same person he met that night. Abby and Bessie both work for the Murdock publishing company, which isn't too happy with Abby's stories since they're not shocking enough. She quits, and Rick tries to get an in with Murdock since the company needs a new comic book artist.

Meanwhile, Rick tries to get ideas for his comics by listening to Eugene's nightmares, taking down what he says, and then incorporating those ideas into his new comic book series, Vincent the Vulture. Along the way, he and Abby start a relationship of their own although it gets complicated by other women always being around. The comic book sells well, although there's an issue with the violence in it, since there's a growing chorus of parents not wanting their children to be influenced by comic violence. (In real life the Comics Code had been instituted a year before the release of Artists and Models, rendering this a timely issue.)

The bigger problem is that Eugene dreams up a sequence of letters and numbers that just happens to coincide with half of a formula that the US military is using in its attempts to get into outer space and set up space stations (this was two years before Sputnik). How does a comic book artist know this formula, and is the artist releasing it to the Soviets? The bad guys somehow know this is a formula, and send sexy spy Sonia (Eva Gabor) to try to get the other half of the formula, leading to a madcap finale.

There's a fair bit in Artists and Models to like, although it's certainly not a perfect movie. The idea is certainly a good one, but having to fit it into the Martin and Lewis formula certainly presents problems. There are any number of spots where it feels like the movie is stopping for some of Jerry's physical humor that doesn't really advance the plot (the chiropractor scene being an obvious example). There are also musical numbers for Dean's singing, some of which work well although again they don't quite advance the plot. Director Frank Tashlin, who got his start in cartoons, uses visuals effectively. Shirley MacLaine was only in her second movie, and is quite appealing here.

So despite its flaws, Artists and Models is definitely worth watching.