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.

Rock-a-Bye Baby

I mentioned a couple of times how Jerry Lewis got a day in TCM's Summer Under the Stars last August, and how I recorded a ton of movies, because even though I have a box set of some of Lewis' films, a lot of what TCM selected was not on that box set. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to watching all of them before they expired, but one that I did watch is Rock-a-Bye Baby.

Marilyn Maxwell plays Carla Naples, one of those small-town girls like Esther Blodgett who couldn't stand the small town and went to Hollywood to try to make it big. She's done so, but with a squeaky-clean image. Unbeknownst to the studio, she went and blew up that image by getting married to a bullfighter in Mexico and getting pregnant on her wedding night before the bullfighter was killed in the ring the next day. So there's a kid on the way and no husband or marriage license, Carla having ripped that up.

Carla's agent Harold Hermann (Reginald Garidner) suggests that she go off somewhere to have the kid like Bette Davis in The Great Lie and then have someone she can trust take care of the kid until they can figure out what to do that will be all nice and legal and not ruin Carla's image. Unfortunately, Carla's Italian immigrant father has never forgiven her for wanting to do the Hollywood thing, so he's right out.

But Carla does have a one-time boyfriend in her midwestern hometown from back when both were very young, that being Clayton Poole (Jerry Lewis), who is now working as a TV repairman, although this being Jerry Lewis, the word "repair" is doing a lot of work. Clayton loved Carla even more than she liked him, and he's always wanted to be a father although he's never found the right woman. In fact, the right woman is right under his nose in the form of Carla's kid sister Sandra (Connie Stevens). Carla discovers that she's actually pregnant with triplets, and drops the kids off on Clayton's front step.

Clayton tries to raise the kids as a single father with some help from Sandra. A lot of complications ensue because Clayton isn't quite up to raising triplet infants. Not because he's a bad person or negligent, but he does have to work and somebody has to look after the kids. That's going to lead to a climactic courtroom scene since there are understandably people who think there's something better for the kids than this low-earning single father who is not the biological father. Being a Jerry Lewis comedy, however, there's going to be a requisite happy ending.

Rock-a-Bye Baby is a loose remake of The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, reworked for the abilities of Jerry Lewis. Lewis wasn't directing himself yet, here being directed again by Frank Tashlin who was adept at directing boundary-pushing, mildly subversive comedies (his previous film was Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?), and had directed Lewis a couple of times before. So he's able to tone down Lewis, although some of the physical comedy, as in the initial TV repair scene involving Lewis adjusting a rooftop antenna, does veer into over-the-top territory.

Rock-a-Bye Baby is competently made if not great, more the sort of thing that would serve as comfort food to fans of Lewis.

The Paleface

Another of the type of movie that I've said I wound up with a bunch of on my DVR that I need to watch and do posts on before they expire is westerns. One that aired during Summer Under the Stars was The Paleface, so recently I finally got around to watching it.

The star being honored in conjunction with the showing I've got on my DVR is Jane Russell, who plays Calamity Jane. As the movie opens, she's in prison, but is being busted out by people not known to her, and who force her to go with them. (Coincidentally, another western on my DVR that I'm going to be writing a post on before the recording expires has the same theme, Gunfight at Comanche Creek, although the breakouts in that movie are done for a different reason.) The men who break Jane out take her to the territorial governor Johnson, who offers her a bargain. Somebody is smuggling weapons to the Indians, who are obviously using them to attack settlers. If Jane can figure out who, the governor will give her a full pardon. Jane being a woman would be less likely to be suspected of being an agent of the government.

The plan is to have Jane go to a town called Port Deerfield, where she'll meet up with her contact from the feds. She'll pose as the guy's husband and the two will join a wagon train to their ultimate destination, Buffalo Flats. But Jane gets to Port Deerfield and finds that the federal agent she's supposed to work with has been discovered and killed. Worse, she realizes that the men who killed the agent are hot on her trail and coming after her, so she needs to get away, but how?

Also in Port Deerfield, and decidedly not part of the gang of men running guns to the Indians or trying to kill Jane is Painless Pete Potter (Bob Hope). Potter is an itinerant dentist who goes from one town to the next to provide dental work. Except that this being a character played by Bob Hope, Potter isn't the most competent denitst, which I suppose is part of why he has to go from one town to the next. His makeshift office is on the ground floor of a building that houses baths for women on the upper floor, which is how Potter and Jane wind up in the same building together, and then wind up in the same wagon when Jane has to jump from the balcony to escape the gunmen coming after her at the same time Potter is escaping irate patients.

They have a pretend marriage, and join the wagon train, but since Potter isn't good at that either they lead a bunch of wagons off course to spend a night at a cabin in an isolated part of the countryside where a group of Indians can attack. Unbeknownst to Potter, who doesn't know that he's with Calamity Jane or that she's working with the feds to stop gun-running, Jane helps repel an Indian attack while making it look like Potter is responsible for stopping them and thus a hero. It serves Jane's plans, as if the gunmen think Potter is the fed they won't suspect her, although of course this puts Potter into danger which is a bit of a problem from a Production Code point of view.

So eventually Jane has to kinda, sorta let Potter in on what's going on, which is also in part because she needs his help. The two both get captured by the Indians, but you know that this is the sort of movie that's going to have a happy ending.

If you've seen any of Hope's comedies from the 1940s, and I've reviewed several of them here, you'll know what your in for with The Paleface. The surprise here is Jane Russell, early in her career since Howard Hughes didn't use her much in the 1940s. She shows herself to be extremely adept at doing comedy with Bob Hope, and the screenplay, while not particularly realist, is simply a lot of escapist fun. The movie also won an Oscar for introducing the song "Buttons and Bows".

The Geisha Boy

Jerry Lewis was one of the stars honored in Summer Under the Stars back in August, and TCM ran quite a few of his films that I had not seen before and weren't on my Jerry Lewis box set that I've gone through over the past several years. I think I finished up that set when I posted on The Nutty Professor since that one was on the TCM schedule. The upshot is that I've got a fair amount of Lewis' work to get through over the next several months before the stuff expires from the YouTube TV DVR. But even before that, I noticed that I had a different Lewis movie that aired on TCM previously and was not reused for the Summer Under the Stars block: The Geisha Boy, which showed up when Sessue Hayakawa was Star of the Month in May.

Jerry Lewis stars as Gilbert Wooley, a failed musician who hasn't worked in months but has a rabbit, Harry, who's the star of the show. Gilbert and Harry show up at the airport in Los Angeles because they've been booked as part of a USO tour of Japan that's being headlined by actress Lola Livingston (Marie McDonald). Wooley and Lola immediately do the exact opposite of hitting it off, as Harry agitates Lola's dog to the point that the military orders the dog to stay behind as part of its no pets policy. Then, on the flight, Wooley keeps causing trouble as part of his attempts to keep everybody from finding out about the existence of Harry. The only person who seems to have any sympathy for Wooley is stewardess Sgt. Pearson (Suzanne Pleshette in one of her earliest roles).

When the plane lands in Tokyo, Wolley screws up Lola's PR reveal so badly that Lola uses her influence as headliner to get Wooley kicked off the tour. But Wooley also developed an ally as a result of his physical comedy failures. Maj. Ridgely (Barton MacLane), the organizer of the tour, doesn't speak Japnese, and needs an interpreter, which he's given in the form of Kimi Sikita. She's also the guardian of her nephew, Mitsuo, as his parents died tragically some time back and Mitsuo hasn't gotten over it. Until now, as Wooley's antics cause Mitsuo to smile and laugh for the first time in ages.

So Wooley now has a little boy who looks up to him, and a woman who in a normal movie would become a love interest. But this is a Jerry Lewis film, so you know it's going to be more about the sight gags than about a wholly coherent plot. And in any case, Kimi also has a boyfriend, or at least someone she's "supposed" to marry, that being the star pitcher on one of the the local baseball teams. This subplot is never fully realized but is used to set up a scene of an exhibition game between the Japanese team and the Dodgers who had literally just moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

Eventually the time comes for Wooley to return to America, but little Mitsuo doesn't want Wooley to leave. Mitsuo is willing to create an international incident to deal with his plight, although that incident leads to the requisite happy ending for all the right characters.

As I've strongly implied above, The Geisha Boy is another of Jerry Lewis' movies that's much stronger in the sight gag and physical comedy departments than it is in the area of a good story. Indeed, the whole idea of the "clash of cultures" is one where it's easy to see people getting humor from, while at the same time running a serious risk of greatly offending people if it isn't handled well. Thankfully, most of the movie is on the side that doesn't play to the stereotypes, although I found the baseball game scene poorly handled. As for Hayakawa, he plays Kimi's father, and gets a sight gag of his own when he's directing a bunch of men in his backyard garden pond to build a bridge that looks suspiciously like the one on the river Kwai.

The Geisha Boy didn't get the best reception, and watching it, it's easy to see why this of Lewis' films is so little remembered. There are some fun sight gags here, but that's not enough to sustain an entire movie.

The Disorderly Orderly

It's been a couple of months since I opened up my Jerry Lewis box set, so recently, I took out one of the DVDs and watched The Disorderly Orderly.

Jerry Lewis plays Jerome Littlefield, a man who wanted to be a doctor but flunked out of medical school and wound up as an orderly at a private sanitarium instead. Now, there's a reason why he flunked out of medical school, and that does drive the portion of the movie that has a paper-thin plot, but most of the movie is episodic, as with a lot of Lewis' movies from The Bellboy on. Littlefield is, unsurprisingly, not particularly competent at his job, right from the first scene at the sanitarium where he's supposed to strait-jacket a TV celebrity who is a high-paying patient, but who winds up putting the straitjacket on Littlefield instead!

All of this is much to the consternation of Littlefield's nominal supervisor, head of nurses Maggie Higgins (Kathleen Freeman). The thing that drives her absolutely nuts about him is that he doesn't just try without succeeding, he tries too hard because he simply cares too much. Someone who would agree with this statement is the chief of staff at the sanitarium, Dr. Jean Howard (Glenda Farrell). Dr. Howard was in fact in love with Littlefield's father, and sees that Littlefield's problem is that he's got some sort of neurotic empathy. Probably the best example of this is when Jerome is supposed to be pushing the wheelchair in which hypochondriac patient Mrs. Fuzzibee (Alice Pearce) is sitting. She talks cheerfully with all the other patients about the plethora of diseases she's had. But it's Jerome who winds up displaying all the symptoms, a scene which shows Lewis' prowess for physical comedy.

The neurotic empathy plot also involves another nurse, Julie Blair (Karen Sharpe), who is in love with Jerome. Jerome, for his part, keeps screwing up the relationship, but not out of any sort of malice. Things get more complicated when an emergency patient is brought to the sanitarium after a suicide attempt. Nobody knows who she really is, except for Jerome. It's Susan Andrews (Susan Oliver), a woman who went to high school with Jerome. Jerome was in love with her, but she was in love with someone else, and this destroyed Jerome. Now that she's back, he's going to try to make it right. However, this is a private hospital, and if she can't pay for the bed, she's going to be have to be transfered to the public hospital.

It all results in a manic car chase between Jerome in one ambulance, Dr. Howard and Nurse Higgins in another, and the chairman of the sanitarium, Mr. Tuffington (Everett Sloane) on a gurney in the back of Jerome's ambulance. Tuffington has wanted to fire Jerome, and also wants to fire Dr. Howard for not bringing in enough revenue.

As always with Jerry Lewis' solo work, how much you like The Disorderly Orderly is going to depend on how much you like Lewis' brand of comedy. For me, that's a bit of a mixed bag, depending somewhat on how much the movie has a coherent plot. Cinderfella, for example, does have a better plot, while The Bellboy is one of the few movies where the sketches almost entirely work. In The Disorderly Orderly, some of the scenes work better than others, but it's definitely more hit than The Errand Boy or The Ladies' Man. The scene with Mrs. Fizzibee is one of the highlights, as is one where Lewis is asked to play TV repairman because a patient has a snowy picture (remember that from analog TV days?). Lewis opens up the TV -- and a blizzard of real snow comes pouring out, complete with wind that messes up everything in the patient's room!

The Disorderly Orderly is one of those movies that's nice to have on a box set, although I wouldn't pay standalone DVD prices for it. Jerry Lewis fans will probably like it, while others should start with a Lewis movie like The Bellboy.

The Alphabet Murders

My sister was a big fan of Agatha Christie when she was a teenager. I never really got into reading mysteries, but when one or another of the movies based on Christie's stories has shown up, I've always been willing to give them a try. Recently, that meant watching The Alphabet Murders, based on Christie's book The A.B.C. Murders.

Tony Randall shows up, sans make-up, at the beginning of the credits to inform us that he's going to be playing Hercule Poirot, Christie's Belgian private eye who just loves a good mystery. Poirot shows up in London to see his tailor, followed by a man from Scotland Yard, Capt. Hastings (Robert Morley). Scotland Yard ostensibly wants to keep Poirot safe since his being harmed while in England would create an international incident. But the real reason is that Scotland Yard doesn't want Poirot involved in investigating a murder on English soil.

Of course, you just know that there's going to be a murder and that Poirot is going to wind up investigating it. At a public swimming pool, the clown Albert Aachen, who does a high-diving routine, gets killed by a poison dart to the neck, the killer leaving behind a copy of a guidebook called ABC London. Not long after that, a woman with the odd name of Amanda Beatrice Cross (Anita Ekberg) shows up where Poirot is taking a steam bath and gives Poirot a bowling scorecard.

So Poirot goes to the bowling alley, which is where he meets Betty Barnard, an instructor there. Not that Poirot needs a bowling instructor, but that's another story. Anyhow Barnard gets killed, and Poirot puts two and two together. The first victim had the initials AA and the second BB, so the next is going to have the initials CC.

Scotland Yard, meanwhile, knows fully well that Poirot is trying to investigate, and at every turn, Hastings and his boss Inspector Japp (Maurice Denham) try to get Poirot deported and sent back to Belgium. But every time, Poirot is able to outwit them, on his way to ultimately solving the murders. Well, with a little help from the police who keep him from getting bumped off.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Poirot learns that Amanda's psychologist has the initials DD, being a man named Duncan Doncaster (Guy Rolfe). He also learns that the CC who seems to be the next victim is one Carmichael Clarke, who has family set to inherit a large sum of money should he die. But how does it all tie together?

Frankly, I found the mystery in The Alphabet Murders to be rather convoluted and unsatisfying. I think that's in no small part because director Frank Tashlin and the writers seem to have decided to make this a rather more comic mystery, with the casting of Randall. Tony Randall is not a bad actor by any means, and can certainly do comedy. But I get the impression Tashlin wanted Randall to be way over the top here, and a little bit of Randall's Poirot goes a long, long way.

I thought the print TCM ran didn't look so good, and since it was 4:3, I figured it had to have been panned-and-scanned. But a look at IMDb suggests that it was in fact filmed this way.

If I were going to introduce people to Agatha Christie movies, I think I'd start with the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express. I also like the Margaret Rutherford Marples, even though supposedly Rutherford isn't anything like the Marple that Christie wrote. The Alphabet Murders would be far down the list.