Artists and Models
Encyclopedia
Artists and Models is a 1955 Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

 musical comedy in VistaVision
VistaVision
VistaVision is a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35mm motion picture film format which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954....

 and marked Martin and Lewis
Martin and Lewis
Martin and Lewis were an American comedy team, comprising singer Dean Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis as the comedic "foil". The pair first met in 1945; their debut as a duo occurred at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 24/25, 1946....

's fourteenth feature together as a team. The film co-stars Dorothy Malone
Dorothy Malone
Dorothy Malone is an American actress. Her film career began in 1943, and in her early years she played small roles, mainly in B-movies. After a decade in films, she began to acquire a more glamorous image, particularly after her performance in Written on the Wind , for which she won the Academy...

, Eva Gabor
Eva Gabor
Eva Gabor was a Hungarian-born socialite and actress. She was widely known for her role on Green Acres as Lisa Douglas, the wife of Eddie Albert's character, Oliver Wendell Douglas, Duchess in the 1970 Disney film The Aristocats, and Miss Bianca in Disney's The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under...

, Anita Ekberg
Anita Ekberg
Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg is a Swedish model, actress and cult sex symbol. She is best known for her role as Sylvia in the 1960 Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita which features the legendary scene of her cavorting in Trevi Fountain alongside Marcello Mastroianni.-Biography:Ekberg was born in...

, and Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career...

.

Plot

Rick Todd (Dean Martin
Dean Martin
Dean Martin was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?"...

) is a struggling painter and smooth-talking ladies' man
Seduction
In social science, seduction is the process of deliberately enticing a person to engage. The word seduction stems from Latin and means literally "to lead astray". As a result, the term may have a positive or negative connotation...

. His goofy young roommate Eugene Fullstack (Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis...

) is an aspiring children's author who has a passion for comic books, especially those of the mysterious and sexy "Bat Lady".

However, each night Eugene has horrific screaming nightmares inspired by those ultra-violent comics which he describes aloud in his sleep and which are about the bizarre bird-like superhero
Superhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...

 "Vincent the Vulture" who is, according to Eugene's nocturnal babblings, the "defender of truth and liberty and a member of the Audubon Society" and is "half-boy, half-man, half-bird with feathers growing out of every pore" and a "tail full of jet propulsion
Jet propulsion
Jet propulsion is motion produced by passing a jet of fluid in the opposite direction to the direction of motion. By conservation of momentum, the moving body is propelled in the opposite direction to the jet....

". Also known as "Vultureman" or more simply "The Vulture
Vulture
Vulture is the name given to two groups of convergently evolved scavenging birds, the New World Vultures including the well-known Californian and Andean Condors, and the Old World Vultures including the birds which are seen scavenging on carcasses of dead animals on African plains...

", the golden helmet-masked hero with his stubby wing-like arms and talon
Claw
A claw is a curved, pointed appendage, found at the end of a toe or finger in most mammals, birds, and some reptiles. However, the word "claw" is also often used in reference to an invertebrate. Somewhat similar fine hooked structures are found in arthropods such as beetles and spiders, at the end...

-like hands and feet soars through space from his "homogenized space station" orbiting the Milky Way
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that contains the Solar System. This name derives from its appearance as a dim un-resolved "milky" glowing band arching across the night sky...

 to battle his shapely but sadistic purple-eyed archenemy "Zuba the Magnificent" who hates Vincent because "she's allergic to his feathers" and who enjoys blasting big "oooozing" holes into his highly resilient flying form ("It'll take more than that to stop me!") with her "atomic pivot gun
Pivot gun
A pivot gun was a type of cannon mounted on a fixed central emplacement which permitted it to be moved through a wide horizontal arc. They were a common weapon aboard ships and in land fortifications for several centuries but became obsolete after the invention of gun turrets...

".

A neighbor in their apartment building, Abigail Parker (Dorothy Malone
Dorothy Malone
Dorothy Malone is an American actress. Her film career began in 1943, and in her early years she played small roles, mainly in B-movies. After a decade in films, she began to acquire a more glamorous image, particularly after her performance in Written on the Wind , for which she won the Academy...

), is a professional artist who works for a New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 comic book company called Murdock Publishing and is the creator of the "Bat Lady". Her energetic horoscope
Horoscope
In astrology, a horoscope is a chart or diagram representing the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, the astrological aspects, and sensitive angles at the time of an event, such as the moment of a person's birth. The word horoscope is derived from Greek words meaning "a look at the hours" In...

-obsessed roommate is Bessie Sparrowbush (Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career...

) who is secretary to her publisher Mr. Murdock (Eddie Mayehoff
Eddie Mayehoff
Eddie Mayehoff was an American actor.Probably his best known role was as Harold Lampson, the henpecked husband and incompetent lawyer in the 1965 comedy movie How to Murder Your Wife....

) and Abigail's model for the flying bat-masked superheroine. Bessie develops a crush on Eugene who is unaware that she is his beloved "Bat Lady" in the flesh.

Abigail becomes frustrated at work at the increasingly lurid and bloodthirsty stories the money-hungry Murdock demands and quits to become an anti-comics activist, dragging Eugene into her crusade as an example of how trashy comic books can warp impressionable minds at the same time that Rick gets a job with the company after pitching the adventures of "Vincent the Vulture" from Eugene's dreams. He attains success at his new job, but after falling for Abigail he keeps his work a secret from both her and Eugene.

Unbeknownst to all of them, Eugene's dreams also contain the real life top-secret rocket formula "X34 minus 5R1 plus 6-X36" that Rick publishes in his stories. With spies all around them, they manage to entertain at the annual "Artists and Models Ball" and capture the enemy, preserving national security.

Production

Martin and Lewis
Martin and Lewis
Martin and Lewis were an American comedy team, comprising singer Dean Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis as the comedic "foil". The pair first met in 1945; their debut as a duo occurred at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 24/25, 1946....

' fourteenth feature, Artists and Models was filmed from February 28 to May 3, 1955 at Paramount Studios. It was released on November 7, 1955
1955 in film
The year 1955 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* November 3 - The musical Guys and Dolls, starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, debuts.* June 27 - The last ever Republic serial, King of the Carnival, is released....

 by Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

. The film was one of the team's highest budgeted pictures, at $1.5 million, and was shot with Paramount's VistaVision
VistaVision
VistaVision is a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35mm motion picture film format which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954....

 cameras in Eastman color, print by Technicolor, and stereophonic sound by Perspecta
Perspecta
Perspecta was a directional motion picture sound system, invented by the laboratories at Fine Sound Inc. in 1954. As opposed to magnetic stereophonic soundtracks available at the time, its benefits were that it did not require a new sound head for the projector and thus was a cheaper...

. Costumes were by Paramount wardrobe designer Edith Head
Edith Head
Edith Head was an American costume designer who won eight Academy Awards, more than any other woman.-Early life and career:...

.

Artists and Models marked the first time Lewis worked with former Looney Tunes director Frank Tashlin
Frank Tashlin
Frank Tashlin, born Francis Fredrick von Taschlein, also known as Tish Tash or Frank Tash was an American animator, screenwriter, and film director.-Animator:...

, whom he admired greatly. Martin and Lewis would reunite with him on their last film, Hollywood Or Bust
Hollywood Or Bust
Hollywood or Bust is a 1956 film comedy starring the team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. The picture was filmed from April 16 to June 19, 1956 and released on December 6, 1956 by Paramount Pictures, almost five months after the Martin and Lewis partnership split up.-Plot:Malcolm Smith wins a...

, and Lewis would then work with Tashlin on six of his solo films.

Producer Hal B. Wallis
Hal B. Wallis
Hal B. Wallis was an American film producer.-Career:Harold Brent Wallis was born in Chicago in 1898. His family moved in 1922 to Los Angeles, California, where he found work as part of the publicity department at Warner Bros...

 chose Tashlin for Artists and Models on the basis of his background as a cartoonist, and the film contains many gags influenced by the director's animation work. When MacLaine kisses Lewis in front of a water cooler, the water steams up; in another scene, a massage therapist bends Lewis's leg all the way towards his head. Artists and Models is considered a milestone in movie satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 for its mockery of mid-1950s pop culture. One scene satirizes the Kefauver hearings
Kefauver hearings
The United States Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce was a special committee of the United States Senate which existed from 1950 to 1951 and which investigated organized crime which crossed state borders in the United States...

 on violent comic books, and other targets in the film include the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

, the space race
Space Race
The Space Race was a mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for supremacy in space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national...

 and the publishing business.

Tashlin brought a lot of sexual innuendo
Innuendo
An innuendo is a baseless invention of thoughts or ideas. It can also be a remark or question, typically disparaging , that works obliquely by allusion...

 to Artists and Models, making it more adult in content than most of Martin and Lewis's previous movies and indulging his own fetishistic fascination with female characters in revealing costumes. Some of his most suggestive ideas were disallowed by the Production Code
Production Code
The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...

; in Tashlin's original script, Lewis's character was named "Fullstick," but the censors ordered the removal of this phallic joke. The censors also asked Paramount to cut a scene where Dorothy Malone is seen wearing only a strategically placed towel, but the studio did not remove it. The finished film contains many jokes that push the boundaries of what was acceptable in the mid-'50s, including many about women's breasts and a number of double entendres.

Long time Martin and Lewis writer Herbert Baker
Herbert Baker (screenwriter)
Herbert Baker born Herbert Abrahams in New York City 25 December 1920 died 30 June 1983 of cancer in Encino, California was a songwriter and screenwriter for television and films.- Biography :...

 worked on the script which had the original title Rock-A-Bye Baby; the title later being used for Rock-A-Bye Baby
Rock-A-Bye Baby
Rock-A-Bye Baby is a 1958 comedy film with songs, starring Jerry Lewis. A loose remake of Preston Sturges' 1944 film The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, the film was directed and written by Frank Tashlin, and features Marilyn Maxwell, Connie Stevens and Reginald Gardiner.-Plot:Clayton Poole is a...

a 1958 Jerry Lewis film.

Songs featured were by music legends Harry Warren
Harry Warren
Harry Warren was an American composer and lyricist. Warren was the first major American songwriter to write primarily for film. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song eleven times and won three Oscars for composing "Lullaby of Broadway", "You'll Never Know" and "On the Atchison,...

 and Jack Brooks
Jack Brooks (lyricist)
Jack Brooks was an English-American lyricist.Brooks was born in Liverpool, England. He wrote a large number of lyrics of popular songs, including "Ole Buttermilk Sky" "That's Amore" and " Wagon Train" the second theme used on the television program, Wagon...

, and included "When You Pretend", "You Look So Familiar", "Innamorata (Sweetheart)", "The Lucky Song", and "Artists and Models." A sixth number, sung by Shirley MacLaine during the party, entitled "The Bat Lady", was cut from the final edit.

MacLaine did not make another film with Lewis, but did go on to appear in six other films with Martin, including Some Came Running
Some Came Running
Some Came Running is a novel by James Jones, published in 1957. It is the story of a war veteran with literary aspirations who returns in 1948 to his hometown of Parkman, Indiana, after a failed writing career...

, Ocean's Eleven
Ocean's Eleven (1960 film)
Ocean's 11 is a 1960 heist film directed by Lewis Milestone and starring five Rat Packers: Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Joey Bishop....

, What a Way to Go!
What a Way to Go!
What a Way to Go! is a 1964 American comedy film directed by J. Lee Thompson and starring Shirley MacLaine, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Gene Kelly, Margaret Dumont, Bob Cummings and Dick Van Dyke.-Plot:...

and Cannonball Run II
Cannonball Run II
See also Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy DashCannonball Run II comedy film featuring Burt Reynolds and an all-star cast, released by Warner Bros. and Golden Harvest...

. Malone had previously worked with the team in their eighth feature, Scared Stiff.

According to a 1955 column by Sheilah Graham, the part of Abby was originally offered to Lizabeth Scott
Lizabeth Scott
Lizabeth Scott is an American actress and singer widely known for her film noir roles.-Early life:She was born Emma Matzo in the Pine Brook section of Scranton, Pennsylvania, one of six children, to Ruthenian parents who had emigrated from Uzhgorod, in what is now Ukraine...

, who had played opposite the team in Scared Stiff. When she turned the part down, Martin asked for Dorothy Malone
Dorothy Malone
Dorothy Malone is an American actress. Her film career began in 1943, and in her early years she played small roles, mainly in B-movies. After a decade in films, she began to acquire a more glamorous image, particularly after her performance in Written on the Wind , for which she won the Academy...

, his other love interest from Scared Stiff.

The cast is filled with cameos by many Martin and Lewis regulars. Eddie Mayehoff
Eddie Mayehoff
Eddie Mayehoff was an American actor.Probably his best known role was as Harold Lampson, the henpecked husband and incompetent lawyer in the 1965 comedy movie How to Murder Your Wife....

 made his cinematic debut in That's My Boy and also co-starred in The Stooge
The Stooge
The Stooge is a 1952 American comedy film starring the comedy team of Martin and Lewis. The film was released on December 31, 1952 by Paramount.-Plot:...

. Kathleen Freeman
Kathleen Freeman
Kathleen Freeman was an American film, television, and stage actress. In a career that spanned more than 50 years, she portrayed tart maids, secretaries, teachers, busybodies, nurses, and battle-axe neighbors, almost invariably to comic effect.-Early life:Freeman was born in Chicago, Illinois...

 also appeared in 3 Ring Circus
3 Ring Circus
3 Ring Circus is a 1954 film comedy starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. It was shot from February 17 to March 31, 1954 and released on December 25 by Paramount Pictures.The film was the first starring Martin and Lewis to be shot in VistaVision...

, along with a number of Lewis' solo films. Jack Elam
Jack Elam
William Scott "Jack" Elam was an American film actor best known for his numerous roles as villains in Western films and, later in his career, comedies .-Early life:...

 was in the team's second-to-last picture, Pardners
Pardners
Pardners is a movie starring the comedy team of Martin and Lewis and was released on July 25, 1956 by Paramount Pictures.-Plot:The storyline involves two ranch partners who are killed by the 'Masked Raiders' defending their land. Their infant sons are separated, one being raised on the farm and...

. Anita Ekberg
Anita Ekberg
Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg is a Swedish model, actress and cult sex symbol. She is best known for her role as Sylvia in the 1960 Federico Fellini film La Dolce Vita which features the legendary scene of her cavorting in Trevi Fountain alongside Marcello Mastroianni.-Biography:Ekberg was born in...

 would also appear in Martin and Lewis' final film, Hollywood Or Bust
Hollywood Or Bust
Hollywood or Bust is a 1956 film comedy starring the team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. The picture was filmed from April 16 to June 19, 1956 and released on December 6, 1956 by Paramount Pictures, almost five months after the Martin and Lewis partnership split up.-Plot:Malcolm Smith wins a...

.

The spaceship model seen in the foreign experimental laboratory is actually a leftover miniature from Paramount's 1955 film, Conquest of Space
Conquest of Space
Conquest of Space is a 1955 science fiction movie produced by George Pal which depicts a voyage to Mars. The science and technology were intended to be as realistic as possible...

, directed by George Pal
George Pál
George Pal , born György Pál Marczincsak, was a Hungarian-born American animator and film producer, principally associated with the science fiction genre...

.

The "Vincent the Vulture" comic books made as a prop for this picture briefly appear in the unaired pilot
Television pilot
A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...

 for the Get Smart
Get Smart
Get Smart is an American comedy television series that satirizes the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks with Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams , Barbara Feldon , and Edward Platt...

television series.

DVD release

The film was included on a five-film DVD set, the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis Collection: Volume Two, released on June 5, 2007.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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