The Shrinking of Gore’s PLANET.

There are parts in VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET where Jerry Lewis astounds us with his physical art, yet that is not enough to save this attempted comedy from an atrocious script that exudes astronomical ignorance, and by that I mean: ignorance in astronomy… or maybe, also…?

Jerry is Kreton, from an alien race that lives “on the other side of the universe” (whatever that means), who revels in visiting Earth against the orders of his supervisor, Mr. Delton (John Williams – not the composer, just an old That Guy). On this particular visit, Kreton befriends a middle-American family and stays with them a few days, with the approval of Mr. Delton, on the proviso Kreton only studies them and doesn’t get involved. But Kreton starts helping the family with his omnipotent alien magic, and seemingly gets entangled romantically with the daughter, so Mr. Delton removes Kreton’s powers. It’s played as “a lesson to Kreton” to show him how painful it is to be an Earthling – but Kreton never once wished to be an Earthling. Unless I missed something.

Also, Kreton maintains all love and sex has been excised from his species, so how does he end up desiring the family daughter Ellen (Joan Blackman)? Or is it a simulacrum of desire that he cannot comprehend is not real? So many interesting questions never posed or answered. Kreton gets hubristic, thinking “falling in love” won’t lead to any trouble, and that Mr. Delton won’t be the wiser of Kreton contravening his conditions – all while being part of a culture where he KNOWS he can be spied on 24/7 by Mr. Delton, who can intervene with magic at any time. Which Delton does, zapping Kreton’s powers away. And in doing so, causes Kreton’s trouble. Is anyone paying attention to the contradictions? Or did I miss something else?

VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET was originally a Broadway play written by Gore Vidal, which starred none other than Eddie Mayehoff (Jerry’s father in THAT’S MY BOY)! Earning three Tony noms, it also aired as a TV play in May 1955, and was apparently an intelligent satire on Earth’s self-destructive nature and how aliens misapprehend that nature, the tagline being: A visitor from another planet arrives on Earth and seems anxious to provoke a war – “one thing you people do really well”. (Almost THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, 1951.) Which might explain why Vidal was incensed at Jerry Lewis being tapped for the film version. He knew his concept would be shrunken down to a mere nub of its original intent. But if only Jerry had followed through on his GEISHA BOY introspection and made VISIT faithful to its source material, that might have elevated his cache as a serious filmmaker, and might have saved this confused mess of a dog turd.

Bland, irritating, minimally funny, screenwriters Edmund Beloin and Henry Garson, with director Norman Taurog (who did six other Martin-Lewis movies), scream their inadequacy of astronomy dialect with almost every line of “space” dialogue. In the beatnik bar (which is the most cogent sequence for being so “far out”) someone asks where he can get silver space-duds like Kreton’s, and Kreton replies, “Well, do you know where the Milky Way is?” and points up somewhere. (Daddy-O, you’re IN the Milky Way!) “Well, you turn right at the second nebula” (they obviously don’t have any clue how amorphous a nebula is), “and it’s the third planet at the end of the star cluster.” (Jargon they picked up from an encyclopedia supposed to sound space-y.) To fully deconstruct even this one sentence, we’d have to re-educate the writers from kindergarten: How do we find the third planet past a star cluster if all the stars have planets too? And planets don’t float in arbitrary deep space – isn’t the planet you speak of orbiting a star itself, and doesn’t that make the planet’s star part of the cluster? It’s like Han Solo saying, “It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.” Bullshit dialogue that someone thought sounded like legit space jive. Speaking of which, Kreton’s age is “21 million light years” – and we thought Han was the first doofus to confuse distance with time.

As a youth, I was inclined to think GEISHA BOY was a slow-pacer, and now appreciate it for its depth, whereas VISIT TO A SMALL PLANET was a great lark when younger, but now I realize it is purely for kids and non-thinking adults.

Fred Clark is the father (veteran of two other Martin-Lewis adventures), and Lucille Ball’s own Mr. Mooney, Gale Gordon, over-emotes as a scared neighbor. Buddy Rich cameos as a beatnik drummer.

Tangling with her boyfriend Conrad (tiresome, overacting Earl Holliman), on the couch, I did a double-take when Ellen actually said the line, “Conrad, as you may have suspected, I find you sexually attractive. But you just don’t have any money.” In a 1960 movie! With her mother in the room! Also – blatantly coming right out and admitting she’s a gold-digger. With her mother in the room! Also, Conrad accosting her openly and begging to get married, if not, laid – with her mother in the room! Our culture has moved too far for me to discern exactly how inappropriate or not these kids are being, or whether it’s just another poorly-written scene. Later someone says, “We do think an awful lot about sex around here – but it only happens when no one is looking.” Is this a Jerry Lewis movie, or are these lines left over from Gore Vidal?

Kreton’s powers would be a precursor to the Marvel movies that would come 55 years later, where he can do anything the plot calls for, without any rationale: he can time travel to any point in Earth’s history, disintegrate objects, levitate cars, make a camera spurt milk in someone’s face, tune in on people’s thoughts and enable the pets to talk. While he tries to explain some powers, there is no explanation for these others, so why bother explaining any of it? It’s magic who cares fuck you.

For context, this film was one of the first to poke fun at alien beings, or view them as inept pratfallers; released into a movie climate packed with malign extra-terrestrials, like the aforementioned EARTH STOOD STILL, THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951), WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953), and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)…

When Mr. Delton takes away Kreton’s powers, there is no lesson learned: no pondering on what sacrifice Kreton might have made to retain true love; no yearning on the love he lost by choosing to fly away with Mr. Delton. Just a nothing ending; all he’s learned in his time studying humans, is that he doesn’t want to be without his powers.

We don’t like seeing him much without his powers of comedy either…

END

The Kid Flies Solo!

In his first movie without Dean Martin, THE DELICATE DELINQUENT, Jerry Lewis is a youth mistaken for a gang member, taken under the wing of a mentor cop… Time for the public to find out whether The Kid was all he was cracked up to be, or merely one half of a defunct team that needed the chemistry of both teammates to work.

Final verdict: a bit of both.

Before Jerry found his auteur feet (with THE BELLBOY, THE LADIES MAN, THE NUTTY PROFESSOR), this movie was like a “soft landing” for him, as he is still very much part of a duo, only his straight man is more of a square. Matter of fact, the mentor cop character was written for Dean Martin, and DELICATE DELINQUENT was meant to be the next Martin and Lewis picture, but Dean was livid about being asked to don a cop’s uniform! And thus, when Jerry went ahead and completed this movie – with Darren McGavin in the cop role – the split with Dean was final.

Written and directed by Don McGuire (co-writer ARTISTS AND MODELS), the story is premised on a misunderstanding that doesn’t make any sense, even within its own universe. Beat policeman Mike Damon (McGavin) is looking to reform one of the many street kids in a local gang, and pulls Sidney Pythias from a lineup (Jerry, 30 years old, playing 17). But Pythias is not a delinquent – he’s a janitor, and only acquainted with gang members (led by Robert Ivers) because there are no other “friends” to be had in this neighborhood. How he landed in the police lineup is conveyed in an opening sequence which is powerful yet stupid: When two gangs face off in an alley, klutzy Pythias bursts through a doorway spilling garbage, making them scatter; one of them drops his knife, Pythias picks it up, as police surround them; busted with a weapon with nowhere to run, Pythias is herded into the back of a police truck with the gang. (It doesn’t say much for the intelligence of police if they can’t discern weeping pansy Pythias is not part of this gang.)

The sergeant knows that by asking every lineup to drop trou, the department will discover that he is in the closet one of these days… but today is not that day.

When Jerry bursts through the doorway, he looks like he did in the early days of Martin and Lewis; the black and white filmstock adds to that illusion, though he’s also lost weight since his last film (HOLLYWOOD OR BUST), and he’s playing more energetic again. DELINQUENT was shot from September to October 1956, which means Jerry threw himself into the project as soon as he parted ways with Dean in June of that year (while PARDNERS was just being released and before the last Martin and Lewis film, HOLLYWOOD OR BUST, was released in December ’56!). It makes sense, as the movie was already slated for production with Dean, so the cogs were already turning and Jerry was swept along in the process. (What was surprising is that – they – just – kept – coming. In quick succession, Jerry would turn out comedy after comedy – THE SAD SACK, ROCK-A-BYE BABY, THE GEISHA BOY – with the same regularity as the Martin and Lewis catalogue, until he started writing and directing them as well, and the rest, as they say in France…)

According to the doc, JERRY LEWIS: THE LAST AMERICAN CLOWN, after Jerry split with Dean, his waning confidence was restored when he was asked to take the stage as a favor to Judy Garland, down with pneumonia. His impromptu solo killing is corroborated in Shaun Levy’s The King Of Comedy: The Life And Art Of Jerry Lewis. After that, there was no stopping The Kid.

Still, I would have loved seeing Dean in this film. Damon and Pythias have face-offs that are very emotional; the cop role empathetic, the janitor role pathos. It would have propelled Dean and Jerry into territory they’d never explored before; a great maturation point in their filmic careers. If only….

Thus, with Damon choosing Pythias (yes, the reference to the Greek legend is cited), no REAL delinquent is getting a chance at redemption. (I mean, look up “delinquent” – lawless, criminal, wrongdoer, malefactor – Pythias is NONE of these!) And though it’s written as if Pythias is “redeemed” from the street, there is actually NO REDEEMING ARC. Pythias goes from being a good kid – to being an inept cop. Inept because he is shown klutzing his way through the police academy (because, of course – comedy), and then – surprisingly – passing to the final stage, which is an armed ride-along with Damon, where he proceeds to get bitchbeaten by thugs in a fistfight, whereupon he loses his gun to a thug, who shoots someone with it. What does this say about the judgment of the police to let someone who only barely passes their tests onto the street?

The shooting incident leads to an official inquiry, where Pythias is in danger of being washed out of police academy, and Damon is shown lobbying for Pythias (in what could be considered the closest metaphor for the trust between the Greek legends of the same name). But what does this say about the ethics of the police force? That because you’ve staked your name on reforming a “delinquent,” even if he fails, you should ram him through to save face?

I guess Damon is a Republican.

The movie opens very hip, very “beat”; the jazz of bongos over trumpets, as street thugs face off in a wet alley; appealing to the rebel kids of that generation. Then it ends on an embarrassing sour squark as the message hits loud and unclear: Join The Police Force – Any Idiot Can.

Damon’s love interest is perfect-featured, smokin’ blond Martha (Martha Hyer), an out-of-touch council worker with a severe pointy bra, sent to reform kids with regulations and discipline, instead of empathizing with them or actually providing jobs or youth resources. At least we missed out on a coupla unnecessary Dino songs that he would have no doubt crooned at her.

Funny to see Frank Gorshin as a street “kid” harassing Martha; all we see is the 30-year-old Riddler who would harass Batman. A dame with a bra the size of an elephant (though still very pointy) walks by him, and he sniggers something to a friend, and I swear that times have changed so much, I don’t even know what to make of his comment – whether it’s sexist, funny, or dirty (or all three)!

Surprisingly, Jerry performs the single song in the movie and, for the first time onscreen, uses his natural voice! By Myself is NOT related to the 1980 Peter Criss song of the same name, but done for the exact same reasons! (Criss did it on his first solo album apart from KISS, Jerry does it in his first solo film apart from the guy who looked like Paul Stanley.) He’s not being funny or cute, but introspective. His voice deep, tragic and soulful, he finds his way closer to the Chaplin tragicomedies that inspired him. And when speaking during serious sequences, we’ve never heard Jerry’s voice this unaffected before. His love interest is a young female neighbor (Mary Webster), whom he doesn’t want to ask on a date until he’s a success: “I’m a nothing, and that’s the worst kind of something there is.” Pretty heavy for a Jerry Lewis movie. Her tiny pointy bra agrees.

Jerry would be the producer on DELICATE DELINQUENT (because Hal Wallis, his longtime Martin and Lewis producer had had enough of Jerry’s insubordination); he would star in it, and be an uncredited screenwriter. As with all Jerry’s movies, there are gag sequences that have nothing to do with the throughline, yet add an overall Jerry Lewis-ness to the proceedings: the theremin gag, the sergeant who can’t pronounce Pythias (a hypocritical ass who expects applicants to remember long series of numbers while he can’t even pronounce their name!), the professor making a spaceship for frogs, the Murphy bed, the Japanese wrestler, etc.

Wearing so many hats, one could realistically place the success or failure of THE DELICATE DELINQUENT squarely on Jerry’s shoulders. It cost $487,000 to make, and it grossed $6 million. The Kid was flying high.

END