ARTISTS AND MODELS (FRANK TASHLIN, 1955)
Randwick Ritz, Sydney:
4:00 PM
Sunday 03 May
11:00 AM
Wednesday 06 May
Lido Cinemas, Melbourne:
4:00 PM
Sunday 17 May
11:00 AM
Wednesday 20 May
Rating: G
Duration: 109 minutes
Country: USA
Language: English
Cast: Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Shirley MacLaine, Dorothy Malone, Eddie Mayehoff, Eva Gabor, Anita Ekberg
SYDNEY TICKETS ⟶
MELBOURNE TICKETS ⟶
4:00 PM
Sunday 03 May
11:00 AM
Wednesday 06 May
Lido Cinemas, Melbourne:
4:00 PM
Sunday 17 May
11:00 AM
Wednesday 20 May
Rating: G
Duration: 109 minutes
Country: USA
Language: English
Cast: Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Shirley MacLaine, Dorothy Malone, Eddie Mayehoff, Eva Gabor, Anita Ekberg
SYDNEY TICKETS ⟶
MELBOURNE TICKETS ⟶
6K RESTORATION – AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE
‘Provided the Dean Martin–Jerry Lewis duo with its finest screen hour … a dizzily reflexive play on movie illusion.’ – Adrian Martin
Comic book addict Eugene (Jerry Lewis) has lurid dreams about the adventures of avian superhero Vincent the Vulture. In waking hours, his favourite character is sexy crime fighter Bat Lady; unbeknownst to Eugene, however, not only is the comic strip’s creator Abigail (Dorothy Malone) living in the very same apartment block, but Abigail’s flatmate – and model for Bat Lady – Bessie (Shirley MacLaine) has taken a shine to him. Meanwhile, Eugene’s own roommate, self-assured painter and ladies’ man Rick (Dean Martin), has his sights set on Abigail – and, thanks to Eugene’s habit of talking in his sleep, an idea for a sneaky new business opportunity …
Shot in glorious VistaVision and featuring colour schemes that only Hollywood could invent, Frank Tashlin’s musical romantic comedy Artists and Models satirises mid-’50s moral panics over the supposedly corrupting influence of comic books while offering a sublime canvas for Martin and Lewis’s legendary double act.
Introduced by Geoff Gardner at Ritz Cinemas and Paul Harris at Lido Cinemas.
‘Provided the Dean Martin–Jerry Lewis duo with its finest screen hour … a dizzily reflexive play on movie illusion.’ – Adrian Martin
Comic book addict Eugene (Jerry Lewis) has lurid dreams about the adventures of avian superhero Vincent the Vulture. In waking hours, his favourite character is sexy crime fighter Bat Lady; unbeknownst to Eugene, however, not only is the comic strip’s creator Abigail (Dorothy Malone) living in the very same apartment block, but Abigail’s flatmate – and model for Bat Lady – Bessie (Shirley MacLaine) has taken a shine to him. Meanwhile, Eugene’s own roommate, self-assured painter and ladies’ man Rick (Dean Martin), has his sights set on Abigail – and, thanks to Eugene’s habit of talking in his sleep, an idea for a sneaky new business opportunity …
Shot in glorious VistaVision and featuring colour schemes that only Hollywood could invent, Frank Tashlin’s musical romantic comedy Artists and Models satirises mid-’50s moral panics over the supposedly corrupting influence of comic books while offering a sublime canvas for Martin and Lewis’s legendary double act.
Introduced by Geoff Gardner at Ritz Cinemas and Paul Harris at Lido Cinemas.
FILM NOTES
By Eloise Ross
By Eloise Ross
Eloise Ross is a Lecturer in Film and Television at Swinburne University and a co-curator of the Melbourne Cinémathèque. She runs the Theatre Royal Castlemaine.
‘Full custody of the beans and the Bat Lady’ – Rick Todd (Dean Martin) to Eugene Fullstack (Jerry Lewis) in (perhaps) a prescient hint at the pair’s imminent professional split.
This line may best represent the utter absurdity of much of Frank Tashlin’s Artists and Models, communicating its madcap rhythm, dialogic pleasure, and freewheeling (yet artistically controlled) spirit. Written and directed by Tashlin – after getting his start in animation, he was an established screenwriter before becoming a feature director in 1952 – this film signifies the apex of cultural satire, physical performance, and gag sound design in a hyperactive comedy. Tashlin would make a lot of them.
Perhaps attracted by their brilliant colour palettes – and, let’s face it, their silliness – I have always been a fan of Frank Tashlin’s films. While he was not really recognised as an auteur or a great filmmaker in the US during his lifetime, for reasons that included critics’ alternate focus on Lewis’s talent as star and director, Tashlin was highly regarded in France among the nouvelle vague [new wave] intellectuals. Positif published an issue dedicated to the director in 1958, and he was frequently praised as being an innovative creator and a genius of comedy as well as someone with a particular capacity for incisive reflection on American culture. The British magazine Movie also sang his praises. Like many of Tashlin’s films, Artists and Models is a confounding entry to Hays Code-era history [of censorship] because it is, frankly, quite erotic and outright lewd. But, like Lewis in one of the film’s funniest scenes when he needs a massage for a sacroiliac injury, Tashlin was an expert contortionist in twisting his material around until films made their way through the censors.
One further reason that Artists and Models stands out so much in Tashlin’s oeuvre – and as an exceptional VistaVision musical sparkling with pleasures – is due to its superb ensemble cast. Martin and Lewis play off each other – despite the fact that by the time this was in production their generous collaborative partnership had begun to wane – and Dorothy Malone and Shirley MacLaine are perfect as the pair’s creatively balanced love interests, Abby Parker and Bessie Sparrowbush. Eva Gabor puts in a ludicrous performance in the film’s final act. It is now widely recognised that Tashlin’s directorial style and aesthetic approach gave space for Lewis’ persona and physicality to thrive.
When Tashlin was still in school, his illustrations appeared in student publications, and he found work at studios like Fleischer’s Animation and Van Beuren. Still a teenager, he sold cartoons to magazines like Hooey and Slapstick, and later wrote a series of cynical children’s books as he was coming up at various studios as animator, writer, and director of feature films. There’s certainly a connection between Tashlin’s live-action films – bright, colourful, dynamic, almost cartoonish in their aesthetics and impossible physicality – and his earlier work as animator. It’s also important to draw a line between Tashlin’s preoccupation with the tonality of humour, sexual innuendo, and corporate cynicism in his cartoons and later work, for these things are all essential to his place in Hollywood.
Firmly set in the 1950s, Artists and Models blatantly satirises corporate blandness and conservatism while adoring, in story and aesthetics, popular culture. The opening scene sets this up immediately: Rick is painting a colourful billboard advertising the Trim Maid cigarette brand and Eugene is distractedly reading Bat Lady comics behind the billboard frontage and bungles his part of the job. A publisher wants comics to have more blood and gore, but the film also spoofs the idea that ‘horror literature’, as a disgruntled elementary school board member describes it, has a damaging effect on young minds. (And while seemingly unrelated to the 1937 film of the same name, also made at Paramount, both films end at an artists and models ball and share a scepticism towards the exploitation of advertising and culture). It’s one of a collection of films that posits Greenwich Village as a total fantasy space, a vibrant and colourful and enriching landscape where poverty-stricken artists and bohemians thrive: Hollywood’s utopia.
This is also evidenced through Tashlin’s joyful play with contemporary intertextuality and the overlapping of his characters with their star personas. Anita Ekberg appears as ‘Anita’, playing on her own role in the industry that would be followed up with her appearance as ‘Anita Ekberg’ in Hollywood or Bust (Tashlin, 1956). When Rick is pretending to be a voice on the radio to trick Abby into falling for him, Bessie tells her he’s the fellow who made the song, ‘That’s Amore’, a big hit (hint: that fellow was Dean Martin). Someone looking through binoculars mimics James Stewart’s voice in a line referencing Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954), and the final scene features a visual gesture to the body-calligraphy from Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953).
An illustrative sequence occurs when Rick finishes his musical performance of “The Lucky Song”, after he is carried away on the back of a work truck then jumps off for a final flourish, posing at the window of a store selling colour television sets. In frame behind the window display is a wooden television set with a screen broadcasting Abby and Eugene, live from an anti-comic book event, applauding something else at their event. The applause serves as a transition connecting the two spaces. Tashlin often pushed artistic parameters to the limits and he was a very fluid visual storyteller. Here, he is engaging with the context of cinema versus the popularity, and smaller screen, of television, as he would do later with films made at other studios, like Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957).
Moments like this matter because they demonstrate Tashlin’s artistry and thoughtfulness in the comedy mode, as well as his indulgence in ridiculous coincidence. By the time Tashlin made Artists, his first feature with Martin and Lewis, the pair were frequently and openly bickering and would barely last another year together. They would make only two more films, released the following year – Pardners (Norman Taurog) and Hollywood or Bust – and Artists and Models is often recognised as the best of their association.
This line may best represent the utter absurdity of much of Frank Tashlin’s Artists and Models, communicating its madcap rhythm, dialogic pleasure, and freewheeling (yet artistically controlled) spirit. Written and directed by Tashlin – after getting his start in animation, he was an established screenwriter before becoming a feature director in 1952 – this film signifies the apex of cultural satire, physical performance, and gag sound design in a hyperactive comedy. Tashlin would make a lot of them.
Perhaps attracted by their brilliant colour palettes – and, let’s face it, their silliness – I have always been a fan of Frank Tashlin’s films. While he was not really recognised as an auteur or a great filmmaker in the US during his lifetime, for reasons that included critics’ alternate focus on Lewis’s talent as star and director, Tashlin was highly regarded in France among the nouvelle vague [new wave] intellectuals. Positif published an issue dedicated to the director in 1958, and he was frequently praised as being an innovative creator and a genius of comedy as well as someone with a particular capacity for incisive reflection on American culture. The British magazine Movie also sang his praises. Like many of Tashlin’s films, Artists and Models is a confounding entry to Hays Code-era history [of censorship] because it is, frankly, quite erotic and outright lewd. But, like Lewis in one of the film’s funniest scenes when he needs a massage for a sacroiliac injury, Tashlin was an expert contortionist in twisting his material around until films made their way through the censors.
One further reason that Artists and Models stands out so much in Tashlin’s oeuvre – and as an exceptional VistaVision musical sparkling with pleasures – is due to its superb ensemble cast. Martin and Lewis play off each other – despite the fact that by the time this was in production their generous collaborative partnership had begun to wane – and Dorothy Malone and Shirley MacLaine are perfect as the pair’s creatively balanced love interests, Abby Parker and Bessie Sparrowbush. Eva Gabor puts in a ludicrous performance in the film’s final act. It is now widely recognised that Tashlin’s directorial style and aesthetic approach gave space for Lewis’ persona and physicality to thrive.
When Tashlin was still in school, his illustrations appeared in student publications, and he found work at studios like Fleischer’s Animation and Van Beuren. Still a teenager, he sold cartoons to magazines like Hooey and Slapstick, and later wrote a series of cynical children’s books as he was coming up at various studios as animator, writer, and director of feature films. There’s certainly a connection between Tashlin’s live-action films – bright, colourful, dynamic, almost cartoonish in their aesthetics and impossible physicality – and his earlier work as animator. It’s also important to draw a line between Tashlin’s preoccupation with the tonality of humour, sexual innuendo, and corporate cynicism in his cartoons and later work, for these things are all essential to his place in Hollywood.
Firmly set in the 1950s, Artists and Models blatantly satirises corporate blandness and conservatism while adoring, in story and aesthetics, popular culture. The opening scene sets this up immediately: Rick is painting a colourful billboard advertising the Trim Maid cigarette brand and Eugene is distractedly reading Bat Lady comics behind the billboard frontage and bungles his part of the job. A publisher wants comics to have more blood and gore, but the film also spoofs the idea that ‘horror literature’, as a disgruntled elementary school board member describes it, has a damaging effect on young minds. (And while seemingly unrelated to the 1937 film of the same name, also made at Paramount, both films end at an artists and models ball and share a scepticism towards the exploitation of advertising and culture). It’s one of a collection of films that posits Greenwich Village as a total fantasy space, a vibrant and colourful and enriching landscape where poverty-stricken artists and bohemians thrive: Hollywood’s utopia.
This is also evidenced through Tashlin’s joyful play with contemporary intertextuality and the overlapping of his characters with their star personas. Anita Ekberg appears as ‘Anita’, playing on her own role in the industry that would be followed up with her appearance as ‘Anita Ekberg’ in Hollywood or Bust (Tashlin, 1956). When Rick is pretending to be a voice on the radio to trick Abby into falling for him, Bessie tells her he’s the fellow who made the song, ‘That’s Amore’, a big hit (hint: that fellow was Dean Martin). Someone looking through binoculars mimics James Stewart’s voice in a line referencing Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954), and the final scene features a visual gesture to the body-calligraphy from Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953).
An illustrative sequence occurs when Rick finishes his musical performance of “The Lucky Song”, after he is carried away on the back of a work truck then jumps off for a final flourish, posing at the window of a store selling colour television sets. In frame behind the window display is a wooden television set with a screen broadcasting Abby and Eugene, live from an anti-comic book event, applauding something else at their event. The applause serves as a transition connecting the two spaces. Tashlin often pushed artistic parameters to the limits and he was a very fluid visual storyteller. Here, he is engaging with the context of cinema versus the popularity, and smaller screen, of television, as he would do later with films made at other studios, like Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957).
Moments like this matter because they demonstrate Tashlin’s artistry and thoughtfulness in the comedy mode, as well as his indulgence in ridiculous coincidence. By the time Tashlin made Artists, his first feature with Martin and Lewis, the pair were frequently and openly bickering and would barely last another year together. They would make only two more films, released the following year – Pardners (Norman Taurog) and Hollywood or Bust – and Artists and Models is often recognised as the best of their association.
THE RESTORATION
Source: Park Circus
All 22 reels of the original VistaVision negative were scanned in 6K. A Phoenix pass on the opening reels, balanced the image and brought out the rich color. The final restoration preserves the original Perspecta sound mix, delivered alongside a standard mono track.
Director: Frank Tashlin; Production Company: Paramount Pictures; Producer: Hal B. Wallis; Screenplay: Frank Tashlin, Hal Kanter, Herbert Baker; adapted by Don McGuire from Rockabye Baby [unproduced] by Michael Davidson and Norman Lessing; Photography: Daniel L. Fapp; Editor: Warren Low; Production Designer: Hal Pereira, Tambi Larsen; Costume Designer: Edith Head; Music: Jack Brooks, Harry Warren // Cast: Dean Martin (Rick Todd), Jerry Lewis (Eugene Fullstack), Shirley Maclaine (Bessie Sparrowbush), Dorothy Malone (Abby Parker), Eva Gabor (Sonia), Anita Ekberg (Anita), George “Foghorn” Winslow (Richard Stilton).
USA | 1955 | 109 mins | 6K DCP | Colour | English | G
All 22 reels of the original VistaVision negative were scanned in 6K. A Phoenix pass on the opening reels, balanced the image and brought out the rich color. The final restoration preserves the original Perspecta sound mix, delivered alongside a standard mono track.
Director: Frank Tashlin; Production Company: Paramount Pictures; Producer: Hal B. Wallis; Screenplay: Frank Tashlin, Hal Kanter, Herbert Baker; adapted by Don McGuire from Rockabye Baby [unproduced] by Michael Davidson and Norman Lessing; Photography: Daniel L. Fapp; Editor: Warren Low; Production Designer: Hal Pereira, Tambi Larsen; Costume Designer: Edith Head; Music: Jack Brooks, Harry Warren // Cast: Dean Martin (Rick Todd), Jerry Lewis (Eugene Fullstack), Shirley Maclaine (Bessie Sparrowbush), Dorothy Malone (Abby Parker), Eva Gabor (Sonia), Anita Ekberg (Anita), George “Foghorn” Winslow (Richard Stilton).
USA | 1955 | 109 mins | 6K DCP | Colour | English | G