General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Artists and Models

Artists and Models is a 1955 American musical comedy directed by Frank Tashlin and starring the comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, in which a struggling painter secretly turns his sleep-talking roommate's vivid dreams into a hit horror comic book series, drawing the attention of spies when a dreamed rocket formula proves real.¹ It was produced by Hal B. Wallis for Paramount Pictures, runs 109 minutes, and was shot in color in the VistaVision widescreen process.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	1955; New York opening 21 December 1955; copyrighted 21 December 1955 by Paramount Pictures Corp., Hal B. Wallis, and Joseph H. Hazen³
Director / producer	Frank Tashlin; Hal B. Wallis¹
Source	The unproduced play Rockabye Baby by Michael Davidson and Norman Lessing³
Format	VistaVision, Technicolor, 109 minutes²^•³
Cost	$1,701,083, which was $103,083 over its allotted budget⁴
Songs	"Inamorata," "When You Pretend," "The Lucky Song," "You Look So Familiar," and "Artists and Models," music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Jack Brooks³
Restoration	Restored in 6K in 2024 by Paramount Pictures at ColorTime laboratory, from the original 35mm VistaVision negative²

Spoilers

Plot

Rick Todd (Dean Martin) is a struggling painter and Eugene Fullstack (Jerry Lewis) is his roommate, a comic book-obsessed would-be writer of children's books whose clumsy antics repeatedly cost them their jobs.⁵^•³ Eugene talks in his sleep, narrating adventures about a superhero called Vincent the Vulture, and Rick secretly takes dictation to launch his own comic book series.¹^•⁶

Upstairs live Abigail Parker (Dorothy Malone), a comic book illustrator, and her roommate and model Bessie Sparrowbush (Shirley MacLaine), who poses as the "Bat Lady," the character Abigail draws.³ Eugene is devoted to the Bat Lady comics without knowing their artist lives in his own building; when the two pairs meet, Rick falls for Abigail and Bessie falls for Eugene, who is in love with the Bat Lady herself.² Abigail loathes violent comics and resigns when asked to add more blood and gore, and Rick takes her job using Eugene's dreams as material.⁶^•⁵

The comedy turns into a spy thriller when Eugene dreams up half of a genuine rocket fuel formula; once it is printed in the comic, Rick and Eugene are pursued by enemy agents seeking the missing part of the equation.⁶ Paramount's synopsis describes the dreams as turning telepathic and Russian spies joining the act.¹

Cast and crew

The credited cast includes Dean Martin as Rick Todd, Jerry Lewis as Eugene Fullstack, Shirley MacLaine as Bessie Sparrowbush, Dorothy Malone as Abigail Parker, Eddie Mayehoff as Mr. Murdock, Eva Gabor as Sonia (also known as "Mrs. Curtis"), Anita Ekberg as Anita, and George "Foghorn" Winslow as Richard Stilton.¹^•³ Jack Elam plays Ivan and Herbert Rudley plays Secret Service Chief Samuels.³

Behind the camera, Frank Tashlin directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Hal Kanter and Herbert Baker, with Don McGuire credited for adaptation; Daniel L. Fapp was cinematographer, Warren Low the editor, and Hal Pereira and Tambi Larsen the production designers.³ Walter Scharf scored the film.¹

Production

The film was based on the unproduced play Rockabye Baby by Michael Davidson and Norman Lessing.³ Producer Hal Wallis, who had Martin and Lewis under contract, was impressed with Frank Tashlin's rewrite and handed him the directorial reins; Artists and Models was the first of two Martin and Lewis films directed by Tashlin, who also directed the team's final film, Hollywood or Bust.⁷^•⁴ Tashlin was an animator-turned-director, a former Looney Tunes director whose visual flair and spoofy sensibility made him one of the duo's best collaborators.²^•⁶

Shooting and budget. Principal photography ran from 28 February to 22 April 1955, with retakes on 23 April and additional scenes on 30 April, 3 May, and 6 June 1955.³ According to the file on the film in the Paramount Collection at the AMPAS Library, the picture cost $1,701,083, which was $103,083 over its allotted budget.⁴ Because of the overruns, a planned "The Bat Lady" musical production number was never filmed; while modern sources state the number was filmed on the last day of shooting, the Paramount Collection breakdowns indicate that day was used to shoot the film's main title sequence.⁴

On-set tensions. By the time shooting began, the Martin and Lewis partnership was unraveling. Martin was frustrated as Lewis received bigger roles while he was relegated to supporting parts, and Lewis fought with Wallis throughout the shoot, at times halting production. Wallis blamed Lewis for the cost overruns, claiming the comedian had "an ever-increasing tendency to meddle in other people's departments."⁷^•⁴

Casting notes. Artists and Models was Shirley MacLaine's second film, after her debut in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry, and the first in which she was allowed to display the singing and dancing talents that had brought her to Wallis's attention when he saw her in The Pajama Game on Broadway.⁴ Hollywood Reporter news items reported that Broadway star Gwen Verdon had been sought by Wallis, probably for the role of Bessie Sparrowbush.⁴ Swedish actress Anita Ekberg was loaned to Paramount by Batjac Productions for the film, after which Batjac declined to pick up her option.⁴

Songs and reception

The songs, with music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Jack Brooks, included "Inamorata," "When You Pretend," "The Lucky Song," "You Look So Familiar," and the title song.³ Dean Martin introduced "Inamorata" in the film, and it became one of his signature songs; written for the film, it went on to be a major record hit for Martin and several other singers.⁴^•⁸

Reviewers of the day were harsh, judging the picture inane and Wallis's formula overly well-worn, yet moviegoers turned it into a success, and in the years since it has come to be regarded as among the finest, possibly the finest, screen teamings of the comedy duo.⁷ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 86% Tomatometer from 14 reviews and a 76% audience score from more than 500 ratings.⁹ Later critics have highlighted its visual flair and satirical edge: the movie makes comic material out of practically every pressing issue of the period, including Senate subcommittee hearings, the Cold War, the space race, and the publishing world, and one description compares it to Looney Tunes in masquerade.¹⁰

Context in the Martin and Lewis partnership

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis rose to the top of American show business between their debut as a team in 1946 and their rancorous breakup in 1956, releasing between two and four films a year alongside nightclub, radio, and television work.⁷ Their film partnership lasted seven years and produced 16 films.⁶ Artists and Models was the third-to-last feature starring the pair, released as the partnership was disintegrating; their final film together was Hollywood or Bust (1956).¹¹^•¹²

The film also serves as a record of where comics stood at that time: it drew its inspiration from the fad for comic books and from the dispute over censorship that the growing violence and suggestiveness of 1950s horror and crime comics had provoked, and it mocks the moral panic of the mid-1950s about the harm comic books were believed to do to their readers.⁷^•² It is unrelated to Paramount's 1937 film of the same name, though both featured the annual Artists and Models ball.⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Musical and music films (individual works) › Musical films of the 1930s to 1960s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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