ARTISTS AND MODELS, for our two cents worth, is the best outing from the daffy duo of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis. For their 14th frontal assault, Frank Tashlin directed, and co-wrote the screenplay with Hal Kanter (Casanova’s Big Night, Pocketful Of Miracles) and Herbert Baker (King Creole, The Girl Can’t Help It), while producer Hal B. Wallis mounted the hijinks for a fairly lavish $1,701,000 and gave the guys first-rate backup in their spirited leading ladies and supporting players. Tashlin ensures that it all looks fab in 1955.

Roommates and eternal pals ‘Rick Todd’ (Martin) and ‘Eugene Fullstack’ (Lewis) each have artistic bents. Smooth cat Rick is a struggling painter (favoring, uh, form), while perpetual adolescent Eugene dreams up children’s stories and is crazoid for wacky comic books. Their apartment neighbors include professional artist ‘Abigail Parker’ (Dorothy Malone, major sigh…) and ‘Bessie Sparrowbush’ (Shirley MacLaine, kicking out the gams), her roomie, model for Abigail’s cartoon heroine ‘Bat Lady’ and also her co-worker for ‘Mr. Murdock’ (Eddie Mayehoff), the head of ‘Murdock Publishing’, specializing in the sort of lurid, violent comix that thrill America’s kids and outrage parents, preachers and politicians. The pheromonal guys & gals pursue one another (cheesy chasing cheesecake)—and then those cursed Commie’s horn in. They sic seductress spy ‘Sonia’ (Eva Gabor) on the boys after one of Eugene’s fever-baked ideas includes a rocket formula that accidentally duplicates our Air Force’s actual top secret gizmo. Add songs, dances and Anita Ekberg—in case there wasn’t enough sexual innuendo from Dorothy, Shirley and Zsa Zsa’s sister.

Even if you’re not a fan of Martin & Lewis, or of Jerry in general, this installment works like a Swiss cuckoo clock thanks to the fusion of elements. The brouhaha over comic book grisliness had reached a crescendo in 1954 with the publication of Dr. Fredric Wertham’s 397-page “Seduction Of The Innocent” and the hearings from morality minders in the US Senate (don’t laugh; look where we are now–and headed): the script makes hay with the uproar, chides the Cold War hysteria, kids the Space Race, gooses ‘art’ v. commercialism and infiltrates as much suggestive teasing as 1955 would allow (finding cheerful leer company with The Seven Year Itch) in costuming and posing the sexy (unless you’re blind or stupid) women in the cast. Dean and Jerry do their thing: though their personal relationship was nearing a cold finish, their interplay is precision cut. Lewis’s furious bodily contortions and split-second timing are among his wildest and most inventive; he may as well be made of rubber. Martin has a clever song & dance number, “The Lucky Song”, with a bunch of superbly choreographed little kids, in particular dynamic Sharon Baird, 11: she was one of the first ‘Mouseketeers’ on TVs The Mickey Mouse Show, which debuted that year.

The great Eddie Mayehoff could draw as much sly mileage out of a simple sentence as Richard Burton could from a page of Shakespeare; 46 here, he’d previously done M&L duty in That’s My Boy and The Stooge. Exotic foreign imports (and notable offscreen scamps) Ekberg, 23, and Gabor, 36, are okay. It was Malone’s second time around with the team, having survived Scared Stiff; she gets the role of straight-woman—who melts, natch: it’s the 50’s. At 31, she was working like mad in 1955, heating up seven movies including the year’s #2 smash Battle Cry. Effortlessly alluring as she is, the real ‘find’ in the freewheeling is pixie-with-sizzle MacLaine, 21, in her second part, after debuting in the same year’s The Trouble With Harry. She’s a natural, cute (the brassy shrieking Shirley was down the road, as was the star voyager/past lives sermonetteress), quick, facile and with dancer’s limbs to pine for. Her showpiece number comes after Dean croons “Innamorata” (it became a chart hit) while mooning over Malone. The sequence shifts to MacLaine doing a goof version of the tune,’seducing’ clueless Lewis on a staircase; it’s a physical comedy gem. Throughout the show, shot in VistaVision so clear you can count the freckles on Shirley’s back, veteran cartoonist Tashlin’s gift for gloriously garish color palettes makes even the most ordinary scene a visual treat whether you respond to the jokes or not.

The gross of $10,900,000 (in North America) ranked 28th for the year, outperforming their other ’55 entry, You’re Never Too Young.

With George “Foghorn” Winslow, Herbert Rudley, Jack Elam, Richard Webb, Kathleen Freeman, Babette Bain, Nancy Abbate and Carleton Young. 102 minutes.

Is that an Ekberg behind the door—or are you just glad to Dean me?

* Mensch or glutton for punishment?—the following year Tashlin handled the final Martin & Lewis nutjob, Hollywood Or Bust, and would go on to work with Lewis on Rock-A-Bye Baby, The Geisha Boy, Cinderfella, It’s Only Money, Who’s Minding The Store and The Disorderly Orderly.

Lewis, about Tashlin: “Well, he was my teacher. Greatest influence in the world. He taught me more than I could even begin to tell you, because I was well on my way at the time that I started to work with Frank. I was well on my way to learning anyhow. I was really bent on knowing everything there was to know about making films. And without even realizing it, Frank was giving me total information on all things. And I wasn’t totally aware of what I’d learned from him until three or four years ago. Great, great creator.”