Jerry Lewis

Question: Here's a tough one for you. I saw a movie a while ago in which a woman takes her date to a concert hall where music is being played with typewriters. I don't remember anything else about it. Maybe you can help.

Answer: This is a tough one: I know I've never seen the movie you're describing, but something tells me it might be the Jerry Lewis comedy Who's Minding the Store? (1963), which contains a famous scene involving a concert piece called "The Typewriter," for orchestra and, well, typewriter. The actual piece was composed by Leroy Anderson (1908-1975), whose niche read more

Question: Mr. Televisionary, I'm confused. After seeing the remake, some friends and I rented the original Ocean's Eleven and we got to talking about Dean Martin and his career. Isn't it true that by the time he got his own TV show, he was barely trying? Basically, was he really drunk the whole time? Thanks.

Answer: Well, according to Martin himself, who was backed up by many who knew him at the time, the whole point was to act like he was barely trying — and he managed to fool a lot of people by doing just that. What you reportedly saw on his show much of the time was a glass of apple juice. Of course, the man liked his drink and wasn't shy about social imbibing, but according to those who worked with him closely enough to break through the persona and see the real man, he wasn't nearly the hard-core partier he appeared to be — and he never let it get in the way of read more

Question: My wife and I were having dinner recently at an Italian restaurant and the background music was Dean Martin singing songs from Guys and Dolls. We agreed that Martin would have been much better than Marlon Brando in the movie — was Martin too new on the Hollywood scene to be considered, or was the studio pushing  Brando?

Answer: Producer Sam Goldman wanted Gene Kelly to play Sky Masterson in the movie version of the Broadway hit Guys and Dolls (1955), but Kelly couldn't get released from his MGM contract. (Though MGM stands for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Sam Goldwyn was only part of the studio, which was formed by merging three existing companies, for a couple of years; in 1923, he formed his own Samuel Goldwyn Productions. MGM kept the read more