The Biggest Thing in Show Business: Living It Up with Martin & Lewis

Murray Pomerance · Matthew Solomon

Feb 2024 · State University of New York Press

About this ebook

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 author

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.