The Stooge was Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis's 7th Movie together (8th if you include the blink and you'll miss it cameo in Hope/Crosby's Road to Bali), and it's one of their best.
Dean plays Bill Miller a Broadway star and part of a successful musical comedy double act, who decides that he could be just a big a star doing a single act. despite all around him advising him that he couldn't.
As predicted, his solo act goes down like a lead balloon and he lays egg after egg in all the houses he plays, thanks to his poor and well travelled jokes. His agent Leo Lyman, (Eddie Mayehoff), convinces him to get a 'Stooge' to sit in the audience and heckle him as he performs in the hopes of adding life to his stagnant act.
Enter ex stock room boy Ted Rogers,(Jerry), as the klutzy kid hired for the role. The new and revived act brings the house down with audience convulsed with laughter at the way they played off each other.
Bill & Ted tour the country to rave reviews but Bill has delusions of grandeur by thinking he's still a single act. Even though most of newspapers are praising Ted, he receives no formal billing, a fact that either doesn't bother Ted, or he's content to see his friend happy by not mentioning it. In Bill's defence, there is no conscious malice towards Ted as he does genuinely care for Ted as a person, but sees him as nothing more than an essential prop in HIS act.
Ted is naive in every single way and will not have a bad word said about his 'partner', especially when his girlfriend, Genevieve 'Frecklehead' Tait, (Marion Marshall), Leo, and even Bill's wife Mary, (Polly Bergen), try to stick up for him by telling him that he's being made out a stooge in more ways than one. Bill's failure to realise that he is actually part of a mega successful double act finally threatens to alienate everyone close to him and even end his marriage.
The Stooge is in many ways a mirror of Dean & Jerry's own rise to fame and also a precursor of the demise of their partnership in 1956. When they were both booked to play the 500 club as single acts in 1946 both acts were not very successful until Jerry started heckling Dean during his act smashing plates and causing mayhem. The act quickly took off until by the end of their first week it was standing room only. When they split up 10 years to the day later, critics were convinced that Dean Martin would disappear from the scene and wouldn't be able to make it without Jerry who would no doubt become the clown prince of Hollywood. Thus the entire film is an undisputed case of life imitating art.
The support cast is brilliant, the songs superb and you can never EVER get sick and tired of listening to Dino sing. Jerry has couple of great scenes. One see's him singing a song in his own squeaky voice but turns into Maurice Chevalier whenever he puts on a hat, the other is in his very first scene in the diner where he shares the laughs with that brilliant character actor Donald MacBride.
Drama, Comedy, and Dino singing, this movie's got the lot.
Enjoy!!!!
Dean plays Bill Miller a Broadway star and part of a successful musical comedy double act, who decides that he could be just a big a star doing a single act. despite all around him advising him that he couldn't.
As predicted, his solo act goes down like a lead balloon and he lays egg after egg in all the houses he plays, thanks to his poor and well travelled jokes. His agent Leo Lyman, (Eddie Mayehoff), convinces him to get a 'Stooge' to sit in the audience and heckle him as he performs in the hopes of adding life to his stagnant act.
Enter ex stock room boy Ted Rogers,(Jerry), as the klutzy kid hired for the role. The new and revived act brings the house down with audience convulsed with laughter at the way they played off each other.
Bill & Ted tour the country to rave reviews but Bill has delusions of grandeur by thinking he's still a single act. Even though most of newspapers are praising Ted, he receives no formal billing, a fact that either doesn't bother Ted, or he's content to see his friend happy by not mentioning it. In Bill's defence, there is no conscious malice towards Ted as he does genuinely care for Ted as a person, but sees him as nothing more than an essential prop in HIS act.
Ted is naive in every single way and will not have a bad word said about his 'partner', especially when his girlfriend, Genevieve 'Frecklehead' Tait, (Marion Marshall), Leo, and even Bill's wife Mary, (Polly Bergen), try to stick up for him by telling him that he's being made out a stooge in more ways than one. Bill's failure to realise that he is actually part of a mega successful double act finally threatens to alienate everyone close to him and even end his marriage.
The Stooge is in many ways a mirror of Dean & Jerry's own rise to fame and also a precursor of the demise of their partnership in 1956. When they were both booked to play the 500 club as single acts in 1946 both acts were not very successful until Jerry started heckling Dean during his act smashing plates and causing mayhem. The act quickly took off until by the end of their first week it was standing room only. When they split up 10 years to the day later, critics were convinced that Dean Martin would disappear from the scene and wouldn't be able to make it without Jerry who would no doubt become the clown prince of Hollywood. Thus the entire film is an undisputed case of life imitating art.
The support cast is brilliant, the songs superb and you can never EVER get sick and tired of listening to Dino sing. Jerry has couple of great scenes. One see's him singing a song in his own squeaky voice but turns into Maurice Chevalier whenever he puts on a hat, the other is in his very first scene in the diner where he shares the laughs with that brilliant character actor Donald MacBride.
Drama, Comedy, and Dino singing, this movie's got the lot.
Enjoy!!!!