284. Artists and Models (1955)

Directed By Frank Tashlin

Synopsis

A struggling artist (Dean Martin) and a struggling writer (Jerry Lewis), who is a big comic book fan, get involved in the world of comic books, the Cold War and ladies!

Review

Let's get some things out of the way, firstly Jerry Lewis isn't funny unless you are under 12 or French, secondly the film is nonetheless entertaining with some fun double entendres and some quite dirty moments for the mid-50s,thirdly it's about comic books and originally it is about what was going on in Pop-Culture at the time the film was made.

That out of the way let me say that I am a huge Comic Book geek, and yes I said Comic Book and not Graphic Novel, as Graphic Novels are nothing more than big comics, or several comics bound together. I am particularly a DC Comics fanboy, which makes some of the things that happen in this film particularly interesting to me. Several of the events are based on true things happening in the mid 50s and before in the Comic book world, controlled at the time by DC, when Marvel was still Atlas Comics.

Firstly the main comic book character in the film is Bat Lady, an obvious reference, secondly there is a panel show on TV which is clearly discussing Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, a book that came out in 1954 criticising Comics as all kinds of Evil, as the GTA of their time, the film makes a bit of fun of that idea. Thirdly there is a story concerning National Security and a comic Jerry Lewis dreams up based on a true thing that happened at DC, quoting from Superman Homepage:

“Battle of the Atoms” was originally going to appear in late 1944, but finally appeared in Superman #38 (January-February 1946) and featured a classic battle with Luthor save for the fact that Luthor’s new weapon was an “Atomic Bomb”. Since the Manhattan project, which gave rise to the first two American nuclear weapons, was in full swing in 1944, the Defense Department wanted nothing tipping off the Germans that America was even considering work on an atomic bomb, not even from a comic book. While the weapon used by Luthor looked nothing like the actual weapon, and was not anywhere near as destructive as the real bomb, government agents came to DC’s offices and demanded that the story not be printed until official clearance was given, citing the need for a unified national defense. Obviously, the people at DC were confused, realizing that they must have come up with something more than their normal fantastic story.

Following that, another story, “Crime Paradise”, was also censored and delayed. It ultimately appeared in 1946 in Action Comics #101 and told the story of Superman covering an atom bomb test, actually filming it for the Army. It featured a great cover by Wayne Boring and Stan Kaye showing an explosion with the now familiar “mushroom cloud”.

So yeah I am a geek like that. There are also references to other movies, with a particularly funny one to Rear Window. But then, it is kind of a ephemeral film, it won't stay with me that long, entertaining but not great, and Jerry Lewis is annoying.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Tashlin brought a lot of sexual innuendo 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; 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.

Look at Jerry Lewis being annoying and women in Skimpy clothes: