Sailor Beware

The unlikely team of crooner Dean Martin and wacky Jerry Lewis (pictured), veterans of the nightclub circuit in the late 1940s, successfully parlayed their act into smallscreen stardom for the blossoming TV market while also triumphing as boxoffice bijou titans during the early to mid- 1950s. Their movies have strangely fallen into obscurity, however, which makes this weekend’s 35mm screening of the 1952 Paramount comedy Sailor Beware at Rome’s Capitol Theatre, 220 W. Dominick St., even more of a rare treat. The second of the team’s three service farces, flanked by 1950’s At War with the Army and 1952’s Air Force-themed Jumping Jacks, Sailor Beware puts the boys in swabby uniforms for the usual Navy high-jinks, which leaves room for surprise appearances from Betty Hutton and James Dean. Also on the bill: the 1937 short subject Foxy Pup, featuring Columbia Pictures’ forgotten ’toon character Scrappy. The program runs Saturday, May 7, 7 p.m., as an American Cancer Society fundraiser presented by the Rome Friends and Family Relay Team, which also has an auction of items located in the Capitol’s lobby. Admission is $5.50 for adults, $1.50 for children. For details, dial 337-6453.