Martin And Lewis Vol. 2 on 6/6/07 (1 Viewer)

According to the Digital Bits anyway. The set will include Living It Up, You're Never Too Young, Artists And Models, Pardners and Hollywood Or Bust.

The only disturbing thing is ..... where's Three Ring Circus? I can (sort of) understand Paramount eliminating At War With The Army from M&L volume 1 since it's a public domain title but why eliminate Three Ring Circus from vol. 2?

Edit: That's supposed to be 6/5/07 not 6/6.

Considering the first set included 8 titles, it would make sense that 8 are included in this one as well. Maybe it's there and was mistakenly omitted from the info DB obtained. Have to check with my sources as well and see what I can find out. Doesn't appear to be a movie that would be held up for rights issues and as far as the print, it recently surfaced on one of the pay channels so the remastering has already been completed.

I'd be surprised if Three Ring was left out. Can't wait to finally get my hands on Artists and Models and Hollywood or Bust, IMO the top two Martin & Lewis films.

Where's Money from Home in this set?

To have all 16 Martin and Lewis movies released, this second Volume should have included:

At War With the Army
Money From Home
Living It Up
Three Ring Circus
You're Never Too Young
Artists and Models
Pardners
Hollywood or Bust

"At War With the Army" went into public domain, of course, so maybe they don't want to bother with it, although a restored print would have been nice.

The "Money From Home" situation reminds me of "It Ain't Hay" missing from the Abbott and Costello set -- the estate of Damon Runyon strikes again?

I know there's some problem with "Three Ring Circus," too, but I don't remember what it is. Someone will explain soon, I suspect.

It would truly stink if MONEY FROM HOME is held off by yet another Damon Runyan nazi-estate issue.

I hope that these missing titles are just a mistake and that they will be included on the set. THREE RING CIRCUS is a great film.

Any word on the sound mixes on these? MONEY FROM HOME was 3-track, but that's lost. The rest were Perspecta (as they were VistaVision).

The Digital Bits statement says it will "include" those titles. But it also could include "Money From Home" And "Three Ring Circus". Both of these titles have been shown on cable many times in recent years. I am not aware of any rights issues on either one. I am betting both of these titles will also be in Volume 2.

The fact that Paramount is releasing any more vintage titles at all is a small miracle.

"Three Ring Circus" is probably the worst of the Martin & Lewis movies. This is the one that really started the friction between the 2 of them that eventually led to the breakup. Dean hated the character he was playing. (And I don't blame him). Plus his songs were very weak. It was Jerry, Jerry, Jerry all the way in this one. In the 70's it was reissued for Children's Matinee showings under the title "Jericho, the Wonder Clown" the character that Jerry portrays during the movie. It was just another insult to Dean.

My main concern is that they will have that great Technicolor vivid look that Paramount was famous for in the 50's. The VHS releases and TV showings of these titles have looked like crap. Very washed out and grainy. If that is what the DVD's will look like, it will be very disappointing.

DVD Empire has this up for pre-order at $32.99 retail and lists only those 5 films.

I'm sure the lower price point for this set is due to the fact that there are only 5 films.

Well, I can't deny I'd actually like to see "Three Ring Circus," whatever its flaws may be. I've only seen it once, and that was back around 1975 or so.

THREE RING CIRCUS is much better than some of the black and whites, such as, AT WAR WITH THE ARMY (which was a film made to please mobsters) or SCARED STIFF (which M&L did not want to even participate in).

CIRCUS at least has a respectable cast (Joanne Dru, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Wallace Ford), and some great moments (you didn't find the scene where Dean and Jerry dress up in a 10 foot tall costume to get food, or the scene with Elsa Lanchester as the bearded lady funny?).

People are quick to bash the Martin and Lewis films because it seems to be the "hip" thing to do-- bringing in what was going on in their personal life as some sort of excuse to do so. If there wasn't so much bias in that respect, and people sat down to watch these films for what they are, I think most people would find them genuinely funny.

I guess I might need to do a little clarification here and now just in case someone might mistake my negative comments about Three Ring Circus as coming from someone who does not like Martin & Lewis or their films.

I worship Martin & Lewis.

I especially worship the Martin & Lewis films.

I have seen each one at least 20 times. I have seen some of them over 50 times. I bought my first Beta VCR in September, 1977 at a cost of $1,099 specifically to start taping Martin & Lewis movies. And it was only a few weeks after that when Scared Stiff came on channel 11 here in St. Louis and I watched that tape so many times that it eventually faded away and practically disintegrated. It was the only movie in my collection for many months. It was easy to decide what to watch in those days. Now I have over 4,000 DVD's, tapes and laserdiscs of movies but the 16 M&L films are still my favorites.

In my opinion, Three Ring Circus is their worst film of the 16 they made. But I enjoy watching it. I enjoy watching all of their films. And I have enjoyed watching them for about 50 years now ever since I saw some of them in the theaters when I was just a little kid.

Sailor Beware is their best. It is hysterically funny at times and set the pattern for their best work. Hollywood or Bust is their second best and it includes their best songs. Next comes Scared Stiff which was one of their biggest hits and has some classic Jerry moments. You're Never Too Young, Artists and Models, Living It Up, The Caddy and Jumping Jacks are all very good and about the same in quality. Further down the list are The Stooge (an attempt for some dramatic pathos which didn't quite work and sat on the shelf for almost 2 years), That's My Boy (Jerry being a little too tame in this one), Pardners, Money from Home and Three Ring Circus.

I am not counting the 2 Irma movies in the above analysis because of the fact that Dean & Jerry are just featured players and they are not true M&L films. And I also did not include At War with the Army because even though it was their first starring effort, It was based on a play and the narrative keeps Dean & Jerry apart for most of the movie.

The bottom line is there is actually not too big of a gap in the quality of their movies from top to bottom. They never made any great movies that belong on the AFI all time best films. And their weaker movies are not horrible by any means.

It will be very nice to see the VistaVision titles letterboxed for the first time. But they never made any anamorphic widescreen movies, so there will be no startling new picture information to be seen on the forthcoming DVD's.

Actually, you will be seeing more than you do on TV. Many of the television transfers are terribly zoomed in because of VistaVision's hard matting (inherant because you're actually filming the negative in a widescreen fashion). No doubt, you will be seeing extra information on the sides, as well as a correct cropping of the top part of the image which you should not be seeing.

The absense of "Army" is unfortunate, but expected and acceptable.

The missing "Money From Home" and "Three Ring Circus" is a disaster. If they don't get released in this set, I'm affraid they will never be released at all.

I hope Paramount pulls this set until they can do it right. Fat chance.

You must have read something I read. In a book on science fiction movies, the author wrote that Bela Lugosi appeared in "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla" with the Martin-and-Lewis rip-off team Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo -- and he felt compelled to add something like, "Appearing in a real Martin and Lewis movie would have been embarrassing enough, but this was even worse." And I thought it was a really stupid remark. I just wanted to officially say so on the Internet.

This is disappointing. ARMY may be PD, but with a growing number of PD films being rescued in recent years, it would have been nice to get a high quality "official" version.

The missing two films are ones I'm not familiar with, but their omission is a disservice to the legacy of Martin and Lewis. Shame on the Runyan Estate and whoever else is holding this up.

Steve

Turnedr Clssic Movies has been running what is supposed to be a restored version of At War with the Army. It certainly looks better than the public domain dvds that have been issued. It's a shame that someone can't release that.

Great news on Volume 2 coming but a huge dissapointment if it is missing the 3 titles. At War with the Army is acceptable and expected but Money From Home and Three Ring Circus were not expected or accetable. This will make these 2 sets an overall dissapointment. Hopefully they can fix this or they probably never will be released just like Abbott and Costello's: It Ain't Hay.

MONEY FROM HOME may be understandable because of the Runyon estate, but why THREE RING CIRCUS? Both films have played on cable. Is there a print quality issue or because of negative input from Lewis. I seem to recall that THREE RING CIRCUS was a troubled production signalling the beginning of the end for the Martin & Lewis team.

According to the Movies Unlimited website...............all the titles listed in this set will be standard frame(1:33:1)!!!!.......and from Three Ring Circus to Hollywood or Bust all the Martin & Lewis films were shot in VistaVision!!........I hope this isn't true!!

And LIVING IT UP was composed for 1.85 also. I've run an original 35mm Technicolor print in that ratio and it looks terrific.

If these are all presented standard frame, that's a BIG mistake!