80 Years of Martin and Lewis: Living It Up (1954)

About 80 Years of Martin and Lewis: Living It Up (1954)

Small-town railroad worker Homer Flagg (Lewis) sighs away his days dreaming of a better life in the big city. After exposure to a supposedly fatal dose of nuclear radiation, his absurdly incompetent doctor (Martin) informs him that he has only weeks to live. Sensing a scoop, a scrappy newspaper reporter (Janet Leigh) transforms Homer into a national celebrity, whisking him (and, of course, his doctor too) away on an all-expenses-paid trip to New York.

But disaster soon strikes when the pair discover that Homer is not, in fact, dying. Dead-set on maintaining their newfound life of luxury, they devise a series of brilliantly ludicrous schemes to conceal his inconvenient good health. 

The eleventh Martin and Lewis starring vehicle is among their most lavish. With vibrant Technicolor dialled up to eleven, Living It Up transforms a Manhattan hotel suite into an eye-popping wonderland of cartoonish materialism and play.

The film is one of several screwball remakes Dean and Jerry made their own, this time reimagining the March/Lombard classic Nothing Sacred (1937) for the atomic age (and reshaping its gender dynamics to suit their well-established rapport).

The film will be preceded by an introduction from I’ll Say She Is curator Charlotte Ross.