Dean Martin: Double Feature

In between his lengthy partnership with Jerry Lewis and his long tenure as one of TV's most personable variety show hosts, Dean Martin had a fair-to-middling career in movies. The two films presented on one extra-less disc here—1960's Who Was That Lady? and 1968's How to Save a Marriage (and Ruin Your Life)—are a pair of his best starring vehicles. Both are raucous, risqué comedies, revolving around mistaken-identity complications. Who Was That Lady? teams Dino with Tony Curtis, whose character's wife (played by then real-life Mrs. Curtis, Janet Leigh) threatens divorce after catching Curtis in flagrante delicto; to extricate himself from an awkward predicament, Curtis enlists the aid of Martin's character, and claims to be an undercover FBI agent working a suspect—only to be mistaken for an agent by Russian spies. In How to Save a Marriage, Martin plays a swinging lawyer who mistakes luscious Stella Stevens for his friend's mistress and attempts to seduce her himself in an attempt to save his pal's marriage. Exceedingly tame by today's standards, both movies were considered fairly racy when originally released. Dino is terrific in both, and those who mainly remember him as a seemingly sauced TV performer and Rat Pack charter member might be surprised to discover that he was also an adept comic actor. Recommended. (E. Hulse)