Friday, February 09, 2007

The Jerry Lewis Age of Comics

This isn't really related to anything, but since I've been talking rather too much about Frank Tashlin lately, I might as well post a couple more Tashlin scenes. These are from Artists and Models, and the topic du film is the '50s obsession with comic books. In the first series of excerpts, Jerry Lewis dreams up a garish '50s comic called "Vincent the Vulture," which Dean Martin turns into a best-selling comic -- only to find that Lewis has somehow been putting atomic secrets into his plot descriptions.



In the second excerpt, which may be the most famous part of the film, Lewis goes on TV to explain why reading comic books has left him "A little retarded."



Not included here is my own favorite comics-related exchange in the movie, a rant by a comic book publisher (Eddie Mayehoff) about the lack of violence in Dorothy Malone's comics: "What do you call this? A Murdock book for kiddies and no blood? Not even an itsy-bitsy nosebleed? No stranglings? No decapitations? Where are they?"

2 comments:

Ivan G Shreve Jr said...

To this day, my sister and I often sneak in Lewis' cry of "Agggggghhhh! Vincent the Vulture" whenever the conversation starts to lean into a lull.

dino martin peters said...

Hey pallie Jaime, like thanks so much for the Dino and Jer clip from "Artists and Models." Never was, never will be anyone as cool as the King of Cool. Oh, to return to the days when Dino walked the earth.