Norman Taurog's The Stooge (1951)

The Stooge stars Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin and was released in 1953, though made in 1951; producer Hal Wallis thought it was too serious a film.  The film has a title at the beginning that places it in 1930 but there is little effort to made it a serious period piece.  Rather, it gives a version of how Lewis and Martin came together and how they each felt about the team that may be too close to the truth.  Martin and Lewis made 17 movies in 8 years --1948  to 1956 -- and producer Wallis used undistinguished directors who would not monkey with the winning formula of smooth-singing Martin and goofy Lewis, often with a homoerotic undertone:  when Lewis and Martin first travel together in The Stooge Lewis climbs right in bed with Martin in their sleeping compartment on the train. Martin and Lewis both have wives in the film but obviously care more for each other, though each thinks they are the most important member of the team.  Taurog's direction is routine, consisting of mostly bland medium shots, but it does seem to give some idea of what Lewis and Martin did in their act, even if, in this case, it is taking place in a studio version of vaudeville.

Lewis was determined to improve the quality of directors, perhaps being aware that the Marx Brothers made only one consistently good movie, Duck Soup in 1933, because it was their only film directed by a skilled director of comedy, Leo McCarey.  The last two films of Martin and Lewis -- Artists and Models in 1955 and Hollywood or Bust in 1956 -- were directed by Frank Tashlin and are brilliant in their comic style and visual elegance. But by this time Martin wanted off the comedy roller coaster to do some serious acting, as he did most successfully in Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running (1958).  Lewis continued to make effective films with Tashlin before turning to directing, starting with the low-budget The Bellboy in 1960.