Dean Martin, 46, is a reconditioned crooner who looks like a Vitalis ad, but too often his behavior on the screen is just greasy kid stuff. He has a low flair for stand-up comedy and lie-down love scenes, but he tries so hard to be smooth that he mostly seems oily. What’s worse, in recent years his style has been influenced by one of his best friends, and something like Sinatrophy appears to be setting in.
4 for Texas, in which Martin shares star billing with Sinatra, is one of those pictures that are known in Hollywood as Clanbakes. They are made by Frankie and his friends, a collection of show business characters who are pleased to call themselves The Clan, and if showbuzz-buzz can be believed really are a lot of fun to film. Unfortunately, they are not much fun to see.
Ocean’s 11 was a slightly amusing remake of Rififi that instituted a custom: every Clan picture carries a number in its title. Sergeants 3 was a feeble remake of Gunga Din. 4 for Texas, apparently intended as a jestern, or horselaugh opera, isn’t really funny. It isn’t really funny to see two overage destroyers (Martin and Sinatra) wallowing in floods of booze. It isn’t really funny to see two top-heavy tootsies (Anita Ekberg and Ursula Andress) involved in a tasteless chest contest. And it isn’t really funny to hear line after line that develops a double meaning from a single idea.
What’s mainly wrong with Texas, though, is what’s wrong with all Clan pictures: the attitude of the people on the screen. They constitute an ingroup, and they seem bored with the outside world. Sometimes, perish the thought, they even seem bored with each other. They scratch, they mumble, they hack around. They appear less concerned to entertain the public than to indulge their private fantasies. Maybe they ought to call their next picture 30.
Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? It’s that Martin man again. This time he is carrying a stethoscope instead of a six-shooter, but never mind. He’s the same old Dean-o, and he’s got the same old thing on his mind in this bedtime story, written for depraved children of all ages, about a Daddy Bear and a lot of mamma wolves he happens to know.
Daddy Bear is Dr. Adams, and he is the star of a television show on which he gives medical advice to the millions. His advice seems so sound that housewives keep barging into his Beverly Hills house for help. One of the wives is French: she cooks for him. One of the wives is Japanese: she massages his back with her feet. And one of the wives is a great big daddy-sized redhead named Jill St. John—a very matey lady with lots of black paint over her eyes. All she does is dance, dance, dance. Wicked Jill and the other wives cause Dean to have a nervous breakdown. Not that any of them have been sleeping in his bed; it’s just that he is engaged to marry Elizabeth Montgomery and worries that she too might turn out to be a Daddy Bear baiter.
Later, Elizabeth almost has a breakdown because her roommate is Carol Burnett. Carol plays the good fairy who tries to keep things from falling apart. She, too, has seen the script, which needs first aid, so she gallantly does a striptease, caroms into doors, turns her face inside out, and gets Elizabeth and Dean back together. Alas, by that time all the depraved children are fast asleep, and Dean looks as though he wishes he had stood in Texas.
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