Hollywood Or Bust (1956)

Amazing Martin - Lewis in Motion

Gorgeously original slapdash comedy,suave Dean Martin and geeky Jerry Lewis team up with badass ride and great dane to cruise to Hollywood.Hilarious nostalgic fun,one of Frank Tashlin's best. April 26, 2002

Martin and Lewis part with their greatest film.

'Hollywood Or Bust', along with 'Artists And Models', is the finest Martin and Lewis vehicle - both were directed by genius Frank Tashlin, a former cartoonist who brought a comic-strip sensibility to his movies. 'Bust' is best seen as a glorious live-action cartoon, all bright painted colours (especially red and green) and exagerrated set-pieces in which extreme violence and crisis have no physical or mental effect, the characters picking themselves up, dusting off and continuing. The patterning of red, especially, has a splendid pay off when a red-jacketed Jerry finds himself in a corral with a ferocious bull.

Dino is a petty gangster in serious hock to a 'bookie' - he devises a plan whereby he'll forge tickets for a Chevy raffle, which prize he'll sell to pay his debts. The real winning ticket belongs to Jerry, a nerdish film buff who wants to travel to Hollywood to meet his idol, Anita Ekberg. Dino's attempts to ditch this nuisance fail, so they head West, picking up an aspiring starlet on the way, one initially hostile to Dino's pressing charms. Their adventures include having their car robbed by a gun-wielding granny; a dry-run for Anita's famous fountain-dip in 'La Dolce Vita'; and a raucous chase through the Paramount lot.

The Martin-Lewis relationship in this film is best seen as that between a father and son, the first unwilling and exasperated, but eventually humanised; the latter crazed with pubescent lust for buxom blondes, restless, disruptive, easily bored, but doggedly loyal. This division affects the treatment of their respective romantic interludes - Dino's is an adult, playful pursuit in which sexuality is clearly the issue; Jerry's is an absurd, sexless joke.

Or is it? Tashlin maight be considered the Douglas Sirk of 50s comedy, somebody who played the Hollywood game, and provided the entertainments his patrons and audiences wanted, but who smuggled in subversive ideas and critiques. Dino's romance is the stuff of conventional romantic comedy - two people, initially hostile because of misunderstanding, realise they love each other, and overcome obstacles to be together. There are sinister aspects to this plot - including a near-rape by a lake - but it follows the familiar route. It is parodically mirrored twice, however - not only by Jerry's preposterous antics, but the amorousness of his hound, Mr. Bascombe, slithering in poolside longing after Ekberg's poodle: for the first time in the film, his identifying, er, appendages, are clearly visible (deriding the censorship-appeasing euphemisms of the film). It's surely no coincidence that his long-limbed loucheness is very Dean Martin. Here is a downward-turning evolutionary process, the 'normality' of the Dino plot made to seem ridiculous and bestial. Earlier, Mr. Bascombe had figured as a restraining influence on Dino, foiling his every attempt to cheat Jerry. As the heel repents, the guardian morally declines, mocking the idea that 'conscience' could ever be embodied in a dog.

Throughout the film, Tashlin is similarly emphasising the film's lack of realism, and displaying the proceses of its construction, from the ironic use of backdrop, the ostentatious framing, the playing to the camera (with Jerry hurling a football at us), the stilted switches between narrative and musical sequences, to the 'disrobing' of Hollywood pretence in the Paramount sequence. It's no coincidence that Godard and Truffaut were huge fans of Martin and Lewis - 'Bust' is one of the great Hollywood expressions of cinephilia. It's also a road movie as ironic Western, invoking Horace Greeley and the dreams of going West, but finding it supercivilised and industrialised - hostile to dream, the frontier spirit tamed by capitalism - even the Indians have become American teenagers.

For all its flaunting Hollywood landmarks, the film is an expression of 50s crisis in the industry, acknowledging film's losing ground to TV and 'youth' culture (especially rock'n'roll). Jerry is a kind of Buster Keaton figure here, the dreamer who transforms horrible reality with his dreams, the only arena in which he can become a hero. Hollywood, according to Tashlin, can no longer afford that luxury. March 28, 2002

Dean and Jerry Go Bust

"Hollywood or Bust" (1956) marked the cinematic swansong of Martin and Lewis, with the comedy team on its last legs. Despite Frank Tashlin's inventive direction, the film is terribly uneven. Jerry has some memorable routines, but it's evident that Dino has had enough - the chemistry is gone. Still, it remains one of the duo's better efforts. October 11, 1999

Great Dane lovers this is for you!

Overlooked for being on the cover this movie is lots of fun because of Mr. Bascombe, the Great Dane! Lovers of Great Danes are bound to be tickled by this movie by what the dog does. A favorite in our house by people and danes living here! September 8, 1999

great look @ america in 1956

the film is a panoramic look (some will say cliched look) at america in the fifties(no warts) just good clean fun-they say dean and jerry weren't getting along, but i can't tell that from the film.....i hadn't seen it in a long time and it still looks good! December 25, 1998

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