Living It Up (1954)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Director:

Norman Taurog

Writers:

Ben Hecht (play)
Jack Rose (writer)

Release Date:

23 July 1954 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

THEY'RE LAFFIN' IT UP! (original print ad - all caps)

Plot:

An unsophisticated stationmaster from provincial New Mexico fraudulently claims that he is dying in order to get an expense-paid dream tour of New York.

Plot Keywords:

Reporter | Boy Scouts | Medical Test | Skeleton | Atomic Testing

Cast

Dean Martin	...	Dr. Steve Harris
Jerry Lewis	...	Homer Flagg
Janet Leigh	...	Wally Cook
Edward Arnold	...	The Mayor
Fred Clark	...	Oliver Stone
Sheree North	...	Jitterbug Dancer
Sammy White	...	Waiter
Sid Tomack	...	Master of Ceremonies
Sig Ruman	...	Dr. Emile Egelhofer
Richard Loo	...	Dr. Lee
Raymond Greenleaf	...	Conductor
Walter Baldwin	...	Isaiah Jackson
Fay Roope	...	Man
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Brick Sullivan	...	Cop

Runtime:

95 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Australia:G | Finland:S | USA:Approved (PCA #16815, General Audience)

Filming Locations:

East 111th Street, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

York Pictures Corporation

Quotes:

Homer Flagg: [running excitedly around his expensive hotel suite] Another bathroom! So shiny, so clean you gotta wash up before you go in there!

Movie Connections:

References Sabrina (1954)

Soundtrack:

Money Burns a Hole in My Pocket

My Favorite Martin and Lewis Movie

LIVING IT UP is a reworking of the Carole Lombard classic NOTHING SACRED now tailored to the talents of the 50's greatest movie team, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Lewis takes on the Lombard role as Homer Flagg, a small town schnook, who after exposure to radiation, believes he is dying and when word spreads all the way to Manhattan of his misfortune, a reporter for a big New York paper decides to treat Homer to a vacation in the Big Apple, sort of a final fling before Homer meets his maker. Martin plays Steve, Homer's doctor, who discovers before the arrival of the reporter, that Homer isn't really dying, but agrees to play along so that Homer can go to New York and is even more willing to play along when he meets the reporter, played by the lovely Janet Leigh. Growing up in the 60's, I had seen Jerry Lewis movies and I had seen Dean Martin movies, but I was almost an adult by the time I learned that they had made movies as a team. This laugh-a-minute comedy was my first exposure to them as a team and it is my favorite outing of theirs and is a part of my permanent video collection. Martin and Lewis are a well-oiled machine and Janet Leigh makes a lovely leading lady There's also a great comic turn by comic veteran Fred Clark as Leigh's boss, whose character name is Oliver Stone! Sheree North also makes a memorable cameo at a jitterbug contest. But this is a Martin and Lewis show all the way, highlights including Dino's crooning of a love song to a photo of Audrey Hepburn and the duo's now classic "Every Street's a Boulevard in Old New York." This is Martin and Lewis in their prime and a comedy classic that's still funny fifty years later.