User Reviews

I would imagine that after their breakup four years after this film was made, both Martin and Lewis could look back on this film as being a bit of a premonition of things to come. Here, a singer (obviously Dean) with a stage act that is going flat hires a stooge (obviously Jerry) to spice up the act. But in a sense, it's a role reversal, because here Jerry is getting no attention, while Dean gets all the kudos in the press. Ironically, after the real Martin & Lewis breakup, it was Dean that was expected to flounder and disappear, while Jerry was expected to continue to rocket to success. How ironic that in this film Dean is told, "You're not a single, and you never will be!" While there's lots of classic Martin & Lewis here, this film does have a serious story line...2, in fact. Singer neglects and almost loses wife. Singer doesn't provide his stooge with the dignity he deserves and almost loses act. There's some good sentimentality here, and both Martin and Lewis probably do their best real acting to date.

Dean has several good songs here -- "I'm Yours", "With My Eyes Wide Open I'm Dreaming", and "A Girl Named Mary And A Boy Named Bill". Plus there's a fun Dean & Jerry version of "Just One More Chance".

Polly Bergen is very good as Dean's wife. We survive through Marion Marshall as Jerry's love interest...again. Eddie Mayehoff is really good as the agent. And it's interesting to see Frances Bavier (Aunt Bee on Andy Griffith's show a few years later) as Jerry's mother.

This is one of the better Martin & Lewis films because -- like "That's My Boy", there's some drama mixed in with the comedy. Recommended, but their best films are yet to come.

"The Stooge" though filmed in 1951, was not released until 1953 due to it's dramatic theme which made studio execs rather nervous.

Bill Miller (Dean Martin) is a successful vaudeville performer along with his partner Ben Bailey (Richard Erdman). At his wedding to Mary Turner (Polly Bergen) Miller announces that he is going solo much to the chagrin of his manager Leo Lyman (Eddie Mayehoff). Miller bombs as a solo act. Lyman gets the idea to hire a stooge who will sit in the audience and trade barbs with Miller.

Ted Rogers (Jerry Lewis) is hired for the role. The act is a huge success but Miller refuses to give Ted his proper recognition for the success. While sitting in the audience, Ted meets freckle faced "Frecklehead" Tait (Marion Marshall) who develops a crush on Ted. In spite of urgings from Lyman and Mary, Miller continues to deny Ted his proper recognition. When the act is booked into Sutherland's Revue things come to a head, Ted walks away and.............................

Though there are some funny moments here, Martin as the egotisical self-centered Miller takes away from the humor. His on stage act, even with Lewis frankly stinks. He really is not a likeable character until the final Hollywood happy ending. However we are given a peak into Martin's dramatic talent which would serve him well following his breakup with Lewis in 1956. Lewis has his moments such as the scene in a diner with owner Donald MacBride and his clumsy exit from Percy Helton's office.

Others in the cast include Frances Bavier ("Ain't" Bea in TV's "Andy Griffith Show") as Lewis' mother, Charles Evans as impresario Mr. Sutherland (i.e. Ziegfeld) and Don Haggerty as Mr. Wintson.

Martin and Lewis would do much better when they stuck to their original formula of Martin as the suave nightclub performer and Lewis with his madcap comedy.

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!!!!

Martin & Lewis films are not among my favorites. Hollywood shot these with low money and easy-going scripts to appeal to the vast majority of adults and children, easily cashing in on as many and as fast as possible. Quantity over quality, which Elvis' filmography can tell you a lot about. The Stooge is the best one, simply by the fact that I wasn't expecting more than fun but insipid slapstick 50s comedy. Not that this movie doesn't provide stuff of the sort at points, but I wasn't expecting something deep, or moving, or carefully thought out. It separates itself from other pictures Jerry Lewis used to make, and it is quite weird the way it does it.

Dean Martin's character Bill Miller, a performer looking for a replacement for his old partner, is told to get a "stooge". A stooge would be an unintentional partner, a man that isn't bright enough to realize he's the main focus of the laughter coming from the audience. Without a stooge Bill is worthless. The stooge, of course, is Jerry Lewis, or in this case, Ted Rogers, and he is the greatest one you could find. Once they meet they go on the road to present stage shows as their relationship evolves.

The Stooge was the first film production to ever feature the duo, given that prior, any "Martin & Lewis" association would come from their live comedy shows. Here's where this movie confuses the hell out of me, because it tells the story of two young men, a seductive yet talented singer and a dumb but lovable stooge, that hit it big given their chemistry, and it evolves to a point were the former starts to take advantage of the latter's talent without him realizing it, and without giving him any credit. Is this a premonition? Because Jerry Lewis, as many posterior films would confirm, had potential to carry an act all by himself; Dean Martin wasn't talented enough to do so. It is so ahead of its own effects, that it actually seems like the equivalent to what Limelight meant for Charlie Chaplin's career: a fictionalized version of real struggles regarding success and vulnerability as an artist. Limelight came out decades after Chaplin had turned into the most famous performer of his era. This movie plays like Martin & Lewis' last and most conscious film, but is actually their first.

We get to see first hand what Martin & Lewis' Broadway acts were all about: ridiculous, hilarious musical pieces between a prince and a clown. The catalogue of movies they did after this very film launched them to stardom, but are tasteless and lack empathy for their characters by way of cheap laughs, resembling the sketches Bill and Ted perform on the shows in The Stooge. This is the most self-aware film the duo ever made, and it is self-aware of something that hadn't really been laid to tape. It is an accidental realization of meta writing.

This is not to say that Jerry Lewis wasn't funny, he was, and Dean Martin was a great partner of his. But the film isn't much of a Martin & Lewis comedy, as it is a closer look on Martin & Lewis themselves, explored through fictional events. Bill is not Martin given that he is quite cynical at times, even if he has moments of redemption, and Ted is not Lewis given Lewis in real life was not the fool he appeared to be. The performances may seem as one-dimensional as they usually would be, but the script flips it into a superior and more interesting thing. Bill tears his wife Mary apart without realizing it by how uncaring he is of Ted's presence. Mary adores Ted and wants the best for him, given Ted is too innocent and humble to ask Bill, to him his best friend, to treat him as an equal. This and more drama ensues.

There are genuine moments of love and caring, memorable scenes, for instance when Ted composes a song for Bill to sing Mary, and in a moment when she is upset in the next room, Bill sings the song to her, guided by Ted. Also, there's a love story between Jerry Lewis' character and Marion Marshall's character, Frecklehead. We get to see Ted's first kiss, and his reaction is a funny expression of amusement followed by the line "that didn't had any effect on me whatsoever". Then Lewis falls through the stairs and it is hilarious as well. This is what I mean, Jerry Lewis is still Jerry Lewis as you know him, but there are layers of felt emotion behind. The final moments are great, Bill realizing he is nothing without Ted and being unable to bare having an indifferent crowd, swallows his ego and apologizes before Ted appears to save his act, and the rest of his career. It is nothing but wholesome. In moments like these the movie puts comedic effect aside, and their chemistry functions as an actual tool to tell an impressive, heartfelt story.

I have complaints though. The ideal version of The Stooge would be one in which these characters, even if cartoonish, have moments of real pain and joy while keeping the performances consistent. Whenever there's a show, the movie is trying to let us experience a Martin & Lewis' Vegas performance. It shouldn't be doing that in the raw. Because Ted's performances seem too smart. Ted is supposed to be a very simple man, that isn't that bright. A stooge, if you will. But there are moments in the film were he suddenly changes his voice to a deeper tone for comedic effect, or he tells a joke with suspiciously perfect timing. And it's funny, sure, but that doesn't come from Ted, that comes from Lewis himself and it misrepresents the character.

It's surreal. Subtly. How is it that a "stooge" can be funny all the time? Nobody in real life is unintentionally and adequately funny when they are needed to be. At first it tickled me a little bit but then I started realizing that the movie wants to portray the concept of a "stooge" as a literally magical walking comedy show. If you think of it that way it is understandable. That is not the problem, however. It's the unassuming and nonchalant response from Bill and everybody else. They just seem to naturally accept he's been touched by God to be the ultimate neverending butt of the joke. Not on stage, but in life itself, which kind of blurs the line between what is real and what is fiction, when it should've been one of the two instead.

Those times when we are genuinely sorry for Bill's treatment of Ted, or mad because of Mary's feelings towards Bill, or charmed by the lovely relationship between Ted and Frecklehead, are somehow forgotten the moment Lewis' breaks character, and does something that is genuinely and consciously smart and funny, which is something Ted would never do, given the portrayal of the character in the first act. That aside, and some overacting coming from Marion Marshall, the movie is quite a treat.

It's in a different category than something as shallow as Who's Minding the Store? Or Rock-a-Bye Baby. Not that those are terrible, but they don't have the cleverness and depth this movie particularly has. The Stooge as a general script is a delight. It is sad and beautiful and a pleasant surprise for those who have been eating up those clichéd Martin & Lewis films, and want to see something touching. On the other hand, the actual shows by Martin & Lewis are funny and original, and, I suspect, peak material of their stage comedy. These two aspects don't fully compliment each other, but if you can separate them, and appreciate them that way, I'm sure you'll have one of your best watches in a long time, just as I did.

Tight 8/10.

Ah man, Martin and Lewis never fail on their act together! Martin is always the beautiful singer and Lewis is always still the goofy one that you would fall in love with too! I loved how he was always attached to his mother, it's just like all of us can't live without our mammy's!

Both of them were mighty and romantic! I thought Lewis was never gonna marry 'Frecklehead' after all the daftness that she said she can't marry him due to the fact, she thought Martin's character was using him to grow his own fame and not his! Marion Marshall looked so adorable, she looks like little Bo Peep. I'm glad her and Lewis were finally a couple, she unfortunately had to faint from the kiss haha!

I would agree with Lewis on this one, this is the best movie that the pair have ever done in their careers!

I would LOVE to know more about the background for this film. After all, so many elements are reminiscent of the real team of Martin & Lewis that it's hard to know how much is fiction and how much is autobiographical. I do know, however, why Jerry Lewis loved this film. And, you could probably assume that Dean Martin didn't, as it really made him look like an awful person.

In many ways, this film is not really a comedy--making it unique for the team. And, in many ways, the act on screen looked a lot like Martin & Lewis' real stage act--something that people particularly loved on television where they made a HUGE splash. Dean plays a straight man who croons and Jerry an obnoxious guy in the crowd who disrupts the act and acts really goofy. However, unlike the real team, Jerry plays a really dumb guy--a guy who is successful just being himself. The problem in the film is that Dean's character is totally selfish and exploits Jerry. They are less a partnership and more Dean having hired help. But, as the act becomes more and more popular, it's more and more obvious that Jerry is an important part of the act--something Dean just doesn't want to admit. And, because Jerry is no nice and guileless, people around Dean grow to hate him. As I said, the film makes Dean look like a horrible person and Jerry a poor victim. It's very entertaining and dramatic....but as I said above, you wonder how close this is to fact.

On the plus side, Jerry's performance isn't quite as broad and obnoxious as many of his other films. Dean is just fine but I would give $100000 to have been able to read his mind when this film was being made. You also wonder if, perhaps, this film may have laid some of the groundwork for the team's break up several years later. Because of this, it's a bit uncomfortable to watch--is it a case of art imitating life (or vice-versa)? Compelling and very interesting.

This picture may have been so well placed to the truth and success of the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis team of the 1950s.

To begin with, even though it was made in 1951, Polly Bergen is totally unrecognizable. Her voice was as beautiful as ever but even that seemed different.

Dino is the selfish song and dance man who decides to go it alone but soon takes Lewis as his partner to add to the act. Did I say add to the act? Lewis was the act. His zany antics with that childish voice were beyond comprehension and just fabulous.

Dean's refusal to give any acknowledgment to Lewis in the act begins to alienate his manager and fan and in a rage, he throws Lewis out only to flat on stage with Lewis coming to the rescue.

A film proving that it takes an act to make a success, not necessarily one individual.

The film opens with Bill Miller (Dean Martin) in bed with his love interest (a magazine with his face on the cover), but it isn't long before Bill becomes too sexed up from his magazine cover that he telephones his girlfriend Mary Turner (Polly Bergen) who also happens to be getting restless and squirrelly in bed with her own magazine cover. No, not the magazine with Bill on the cover, you see Mary also has a magazine with her own face gracing the cover. This is either a quick and effective way by the director (Norman Taurog) in letting the audience understand that these two people are either very talented singers on their way to stardom, or that they're incredibly narcissistic self lovers that only use the sounds of each other's voices to finish off before going to sleep. The film leads me to believe it's both. So, as narcissism raises its pretty face at the opening of the film, we see these two characters on equal footing. Before the end of the film each character will strip away their narcissistic tendencies, hers through self-sacrifice by becoming a scrapbook queen, his by turning to the bottle and nearly destroying his burgeoning performing career along with any relationship he's had with anyone female or idiot.

The wild card in all of this mix is that of Ted Rogers (Jerry Lewis). Ted is the man who not only holds the fate of Bill in his hands, but who also has the wherewithal to help save Bill and Mary's relationship when Bill becomes too ambitious with his own career. Ted is such a great guy that he can be seen writing the finishing touches of a birthday note to Mary that Bill was too shortsighted to complete. Ted is also the guy who has the inspiration to write a love song to Mary so that Bill can get in Mary's good graces when Bill selfishly blew off her birthday party. In fact, the only time when Mary truly hears any meaning behind the words, "I love you" is when they are uttered from the drunken lips of Ted while both Mary and Bill are undressing Ted for bed. Mary gives Ted a kiss on the cheek while Bill takes off Ted's shoes. This is the closest thing to an Ménage a Trois that 1950's American cinema could approach. I'm glad that's as far as it could go; I don't want to know anything about anyone's little 'Whozis'.

Seeing that this is a 1950's comedy/drama, everything has a tidy and happy ending; even Ted manages to land a hot little number in disguise. Affectionately referred to as 'Freckle Head' (Marion Marshall) by Ted throughout the movie, Ted's love interest practically steals the screen from Mary. 'Freckle Head' becomes infatuated with Ted from the moment they share a balcony at one of Bill's shows. She then employs the look of love damn near every second of the movie she's in. Her comic facial gestures hold their own against those of the extremely 'hamorific' Lewis. Somehow the two have a mild chemistry together and seem to make a fairly good couple.

Leo Lyman (Eddie Mayehoff) plays Bill's agent. He plays a sort of unsung silent hero throughout the movie. Silent because most of his screen time shows him clapping in the front row at his two prized clients or walking out of a scene looking dejected at how Bill has misbehaved. He's another character who wants to stand up for a principle and by the end of the movie he gets to…what else would you expect?

Even to the most casual movie fan, "The Stooge" cannot simply play itself out solely as a typical 'cash in movie vehicle' that draws upon the innocent caricatures of Martin & Lewis, the film's storyline takes on the feel of an unintentional premonitory guide book replete with glaring sign posts, warning of the duo's dissolving partnership that was only five years away.

But really, try not to think about that. Just let "The Stooge" roll over you, take one for the team. It really is their best film. I wouldn't ask you to do this for "At War With The Army"; only an enemy would ask you to do something like that.

Clark Richards 8/10.