Herald and news., August 31, 1958, Page 30, Image 30

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Which way did those varmints go? Dick Martin (left) and Dan Rowan seem perplexed in "Once Upon a Horse.1
Two Comics with a Problem-
Themselves
by Peer J. Oppenheimer
Rowan and Martin are Hollywood's top laugh team;
now they must avoid the personal pitfalls
that destroyed other famous twosomes.
I he comedy team is dead . . . long live the comedy
team!" That has been Hollywood's chant
through the days of Laurel and Hardy,
Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis. Today it
applies to a new pair of comedy kings, Dan Rowan
and Dick Martin.
The team you'll soon see in Universal-International's
"Once Upon a Horse" differs from their
predecessors, though. College-trained, they create
much of their own material and go about their
careers with the calculated coolness of business ty
coons or, perhaps more properly, business machines.
Rowan and Martin hope something else about
them is different, too:' their ability to work to
gether as smoothly at the top as they did at the
bottom. Successful comedy teams frequently are
their own worst enemy, the classic example being
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
"That's not for us," say the newcomers, and they
recite a long list of solutions to the problems that
split Dean's and Jerry's popular combination.
Maybe Rowan and Martin have the answers. They
undoubtedly are smart boys but comedy .pairs
have a way of outsmarting themselves.
Still, the youngsters have some natural advan
tages. Unlike Martin and Lewis, they have no
desire to work as singles. They tried it and ended
up eating salami sandwiches.
In addition, their ages may be in their favor.
Both are in their early 30s. Dean Martin, who is
ten years older than Jerry Lewis, complained he
often had to act as a father. Ironically, Jerryalso
felt he had to "father" the irrepressible Dean.
The new stars approach their personal problems
with the objectivity of military tacticians. For
example, they determined long ago to keep their
wives away from each other. Comics fight and
make up their wives just fight.
This was no problem until Dick recently aban
doned bachelorhood and married Peggy Connolly.
Dan already is a seasoned husband with three
children, and no doubt his wife, Phyllis, would
get along famously with Peggy but their hus
bands won't gamble on it.
For a show-business team, however, the sorest
problem is publicity. Did X get more press notices
than Y? Which had the funniest lines in their
last movie? Petty jealousies have deflated million
dollar partnerships before, so Rowan and Martin
grant no individual interviews and virtually "use
a slide rule in figuring how much time each gets
before the cameras.
Sounds like a lot of trouble, doesn't it? But
Rowan and Martin have worked too hard to get
to the top to push each other off. Dan, whose
parents produced me.odramas for a carnival, went
to Paramount studios as a junior writer after grad
uating from the University of Missouri. During
World War II he was a fighter pilot in New Guinea;
in the postwar, years, he was a hungry actor.
Dick Martin became a top radio writer after
graduating from Michigan State, but the vagaries
of Hollywood soon relegated him to bartending
and picking up small-change acting roles.
The two got together in 1952 through comic
Tommy Noonan, who knew each wrote fine com
edy material which neither could sell. The answer
was obvious: perform it themselves. They did, at
no pay, and met with instant failure.
Over the years, persistence and improvement
paid off in fat contracts with U-I, the National
Broadcasting Company, and the night-club circuit.
The pair has a special affection for night clubs,
the "alma mater" of their show-business educa
tion, and the gradual disappearance of these
smoky cubicles makes them sad.
"Where will young comedy teams get their train
ing?" ask Rowan and Martin. "We used night
' clubs, but those days., are gone. Maybe we're the
last of the comedy teams!"
Which, of course, is the same lament old comedy
teams wept when they saw the English music hall,
bfirlcsque, vaudeville, and radio "die." Yet ambi
tious performers like Rowan and Martin always
find a proving ground for thpir talents, and the
public is always ready to crown new kings.
Rowan's and Martin's main worry today is not
how new teams will get started but how a top '
team stays on top.
Fnmilu Weekly. August 3. 1951