Living It Up
1954 film by Norman Taurog
Living It Up is a 1954 American comedy film starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis which was released by Paramount Pictures.
The film was directed by Norman Taurog and produced by Paul Jones. The screenplay by Jack Rose and Melville Shavelson was based on the musical Hazel Flagg (1953) by Ben Hecht, which was in turn based on the story "Letter to the Editor" by James H. Street.
An earlier film based on Street's story, Nothing Sacred (1937), had been by Selznick International Pictures (released through United Artists) with Carole Lombard and Fredric March, and directed by William A. Wellman. The 1954 version features original music by Walter Scharf, cinematography by Daniel L. Fapp, art direction by Albert Nozaki and Hal Pereira, and costume design by Edith Head.
In addition to Martin and Lewis, the cast of Living It Up includes Janet Leigh, Edward Arnold, Fred Clark, Sheree North, and Sig Ruman.
Plot
Homer Flagg is a railroad worker in the small town of Desert Hole, New Mexico. His big dream in life is to visit New York City while he is young.
One day he finds an abandoned automobile at an old atomic proving ground. His doctor and best friend, Steve Harris, diagnoses him with radiation poisoning and gives Homer three weeks to live.
The public source identifies “Living It Up” as 1954 film by Norman Taurog. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Living, film and Norman.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1199661. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 1953 and 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “Living It Up” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.