My Friend Irma (film)

1949 film by George Marshall

My Friend Irma is a 1949 American comedy film
starring John Lund, Diana Lynn, Don DeFore, and Marie Wilson. Directed by George Marshall, it featured the motion picture debut of the Martin and Lewis comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. The film is based upon the CBS radio series My Friend Irma that first aired in 1947. Released by Paramount, it premiered in New York City on September 28,1949.

Friends Irma Peterson and Jane Stacey room together in New York. Irma is a somewhat dim witted blonde who deep down has good intentions. Jane is an ambitious woman who dreams of marrying a rich man. She winds up as a secretary for a millionaire, Richard Rhinelander. Meanwhile, Irma is in love with Al, a con artist looking to get rich quick. Al visits an orange juice stand and encounters Steve Laird singing. He convinces him to leave his job and promises to make him famous. Al then invites Steve and his partner Seymour to live at Irma and Jane's apartment. Jane is angry, but Irma convinces her to let them stay. Jane and Steve fall in love. After a successful singing debut, Steve gets upset with Jane's determination to marry a wealthy man and returns to the juice stand. Meanwhile, Irma gets into a situation and decides to end her life. However, she finds out a radio contest is about to call her for a $50,000 question, so she rushes home to answer the phone. She wins the prize and all live happily ever after.

My Friend Irma was filmed from February 22 through April 12, 1949. Although production was already underway, producer Hal B. Wallis thought it would be a low risk introduction of the team of Martin & Lewis to the screen. They had been approached by several film studios before signing a five year contract with Paramount Pictures. Lewis was originally cast to play Al, but after the first day of screen tests it was obvious that he was wrong for the part. Concerned that he would be left out of the film and that they were abandoning the formula that had created the Martin & Lewis team's comedic success ("handsome guy with the monkey"), a frantic Lewis quickly came up with the idea of playing a comical sidekick to Steve, and the character Seymour was written into the script. Lewis reminisces in detail about this career turning point in his book on Martin (Dean and Me) as well as his lengthy online Archive of American Television videotaped interview. Marie Wilson, Hans Conried, and Gloria Gordon played the same characters in the movie that they did on the radio show. Felix Bressart was originally cast in the film as Professor Kropotkin, but he died suddenly during filming. His completed scenes were reshot with Hans Conried.

It was followed the following year by a sequel, My Friend Irma Goes West directed by Hal Walker, the only sequel that Martin & Lewis ever made.

My Friend Irma has been released twice on DVD By Paramount Home Entertainment. It was originally released on a two film collection with its sequel, My Friend Irma Goes West, on October 25, 2005. A year later, it was included on an eight film DVD set, the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis Collection: Volume One, released on October 31, 2006.

It is one of the few pre 1950 Paramount sound films still owned by it, as most of its catalog of films were sold to EMKA, Ltd., which was purchased by MCA Inc. in 1958. MCA would acquire Universal Pictures in 1962, and has been the distributor for those films ever since. The 2002 film Martin and Lewis was a biopic about the comedy team starring Sean Hayes and Jeremy Northam. A scene from the film depicts Lewis as wanting to play the role of Al, but Wallis suggesting that he should play a new character, Seymour, instead, to which Lewis reluctantly agrees.