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The Biggest Thing in Show Business
Living It Up with Martin & Lewis
by Murray Pomerance and Matthew Solomon
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Book Presentation:
A freewheeling, nonlinear exploration of the performing duo and their decade-long collaboration from 1946 to 1956.
From 1946 to 1956, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis provoked audiences into rollicking laughter as they shook up and delighted a culture they both mediated and made fun of. Using the duo's phenomenal popularity as a starting point, The Biggest Thing in Show Business looks askance at postwar America with a fast-moving sweep, jam-packed with unexpected connections, revealing details, and surprising insights. Aiming to be as unconventional as their subjects, Murray Pomerance and Matthew Solomon enact a highly spontaneous and up-to-the-minute approach to coauthorship that re-establishes the importance of Martin & Lewis in the cultural pantheon. As a result, the book's structure, methodology, and writing style are thoroughly dialogic and firmly opposed to stale convention.
About the authors:
Murray Pomerance is an independent scholar living in Toronto and Adjunct Professor in the School of Media and Communication at the RMIT University, Melbourne. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, A Silence from Hitchcock (also published by SUNY Press) and Uncanny Cinema: Agonies of the Viewing Experience. Matthew Solomon is Professor of Film, Television, and Media at the University of Michigan. His most recent book is Méliès Boots: Footwear and Film Manufacturing in Second Industrial Revolution Paris.
Press Reviews:
"Contrary to the cult of Jerry Lewis that formed in the wake of Positif and Cahiers' provocative celebration of Lewis as the consummate American idiot—work that overvalued his later films—the best of Jerry Lewis, as Murray Pomerance and Matthew Solomon convincingly contend, was surely the early stuff with Dean Martin, back when the two of them together were 'the biggest thing in show business.' Pomerance and Solomon do their level best to tell us why, and, like the comedy duo's performances they so complexly attend, the cultural history they offer is surprising and profound." — Jon Lewis, author of Road Trip to Nowhere: Hollywood Encounters the Counterculture
"For a brief period, Martin and Lewis were indeed the 'biggest thing in show business,' and this book does a wonderful job of presenting the postwar environment and what audiences at the time were drawn to. Pomerance and Solomon offer a deep and rich presentation and appreciation of the multitude of elements that made up the essence of the duo's performances." — Kristine Brunovska Karnick, coeditor of Classical Hollywood Comedy
See the publisher website: State University of New York Press
See the complete filmography of Jerry Lewis on the website: IMDB ...
> From the same authors:
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Subject: Director > Mervyn LeRoy
Méliès Boots (2022)
Footwear and Film Manufacturing in Second Industrial Revolution Paris
Subject: Director > Georges Méliès
Autism in Film and Television (2022)
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Subject: Sociology
The Other Hollywood Renaissance (2020)
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Subject: Countries > United States
The Many Cinemas of Michael Curtiz (2018)
Dir. R. Barton Palmer and Murray Pomerance
Subject: Director > Michael Curtiz
Close-Up (2018)
Great Cinematic Performances Volume 2: International
Dir. Murray Pomerance and Kyle Stevens
Hamlet Lives in Hollywood (2017)
John Barrymore and the Acting Tradition Onscreen
Dir. Murray Pomerance and Steven Rybin
Subject: Actor > John Barrymore
Moment of Action (2016)
Riddles of Cinematic Performance
Thinking in the Dark (2015)
Cinema, Theory, Practice
Dir. Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer
Subject: Theory
George Cukor (2015)
Hollywood Master
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Hollywood's Chosen People (2012)
The Jewish Experience in American Cinema
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Shining in Shadows (2011)
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A Little Solitaire (2011)
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Subject: Director > John Frankenheimer
Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination (2011)
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Subject: One Film > A Trip to the Moon
Michelangelo Red Antonioni Blue (2011)
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Subject: Silent Cinema
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Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice (2001)
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Dir. Frances Gateward and Murray Pomerance
Subject: Sociology
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls (2001)
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Dir. Murray Pomerance
Subject: Sociology
> On a related topic:
The Jerry Lewis Films (1994)
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Subject: Actor > Jerry Lewis
SHEMP! (2024)
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The Marx Brothers and America (2022)
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Subject: Actor > Marx Brothers
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