Willard Waterman

Movie-mad nitwit Malcolm Smith (Jerry Lewis) driving across the country to his mecca, Hollywood. He is joined by a New York gambler Steve Wiley (Dean Martin) who wants to break into singing when they pick up Terry Roberts (Pat Crowley), a pretty girl en route. Once in Hollywood nitwit Malcolm finally meets his dream goddess Anita Ekberg.

Audiences always roared with delight when Red Skelton went one-on-one with post-war life in The Yellow Cab Man, The Fuller Brush Man and other films. In Half a Hero, the legendary comic took on a slice of 20th-century Americana that still resonates today: the suburbs. Red plays Ben Dobson, a magazine writer whose boss approves of Ben because he lives in a cramped Manhattan apartment instead of "the slums of tomorrow": the 'burbs. So, of course, when Ben movies his family to a sprawling housing development, he struggles (hilariously_ to keep the fact a secret. Jean Hagen, a year after her iconic portrayal of the itsy-voiced screen siren in Singin' in the Rain, plays Ben's long-suffering wife, and singer Polly Bergen makes a guest appearance with a torrid nightclub-scene rendition of "Love."