Classic Jerry Lewis bits

I know Jerry Lewis is an acquired taste, and modern audiences have kind of forgotten about him to a point nowadays, but I always found his early films to be amusing and I think he's capable of brilliant moments now and then.

One of my favorites was his 1961 film The Errand Boy, in which Lewis starred, co-wrote, and directed. My favorite scene in the movie was the one where he sits at a big movie studio executive's desk and pantomimes to Count Basie's "Blues in Hoss' Flat" while smoking a big cigar. You can watch the movie -- for free! -- from this YouTube link, which inexplicably is posted for free from Paramount. It's got some embedded commercials, but they're not too bad and the quality of the mastering on this one is great.



Jump ahead to 1:15:30 for the pantomime routine. Absolutely a classic... and good jazz, too.

 

Huge Lewis fan here. His timing was amazing, the clip you posted shows it.

I just watched Visit To A Small Planet the other day and last week I spun one of my favs of his, The Disorderly Orderly.

Man, that one is a real hoot.

I don't understand why Visit To A Small Planet is not on a USA region DVD. I had to pull out my multi region player to watch my non USA DVD.

My older brother was an orderly in a nursing home back in the 1970's and some of the stories he told sounded just like a Jerry Lewis movie.

 

Another huge fan of Jerry Lewis. Mr Lewis is so under appreciated.

 

Vidiot - That "pantomime to Count Basie's "Blues in Hoss' Flat" while smoking a big cigar" is
also my all time favorite bit he ever did. It's remarkable, also, because I believe he did it in one
take.

 

When I was a kid this was done by Jerry at some point on almost every Telethon...

 

My favorite bit from Errand Boy..Jerry could have been a silent film comedian easily.

 

So many great bits from Errand Boy..physical comedy at its best lol...

 

IMHO Lewis's best films areThe Bellboy and the last one he made with Dean Martin, Hollywood Or Bust. Lewis himself claims never to have seen HOB, as it has too many bad memories (Martin did not speak to Lewis on the set unless they were on camera). But it has some great gags from former cartoonist/Warners animator Frank Tashlin -- I love the final shot.

Lewis's funniest surviving work is probably the kinescopes from M&L's early live TV work (especially The Colgate Comedy Hour) where his zany antics could be given free rein. There are some occasional great bits in the movies, such as prepping for the fight in Sailor Beware and calisthenics by radio in Money From Home, later reworked as the cigarette commercial bit in Visit To A Small Planet..

The Classic Comedy thread:
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/posts/13103481/

 

In Errand Boy, I love the scene where he gets into a line, is ushered onto a movie set where the audience is to sing with a stage singer. Jerry doesn't know any of the words, but happily joins in. That cracks me up.

I have not seen Visit to a Small Planet since new in the theatre, and have never seen it listed as being shown on TV. I thought that was because Gore Vidal put the whammy on it.

 

It's not very good!

 

I love Jerry and agree "Hollywood or Bust" and "The Errand Boy" are two of his best. Here's another great bit from it

 

so many great bits from "The Errand Boy"

 

My favorite as a kid was "Way Way Out!" Not sure why because when I watch it now it's mostly dated Cold War and sex jokes. But that theme song is still great! There's a nice HD copy on iTunes (I don't think it ever came out on DVD)

 

every friggin scene he's in in the Disorderly Orderly... just killer funny.

 

A big fan here. The Errand Boy office scene is a perfect example of comic timing; anticipation and body language. The way he ' prepares' the audience for his next moves during the quiet moments is amazing.

 

He was in Queens last night at the Museum of the Moving Image interviewed by Martin Scorsese

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/07/jerry-lewis-martin-scorsese-new-york-film-festival

 

One of my favorites is "Who's Minding The Store". Especially the vacuum cleaner scene:

 

Saw that at the Castro Theater when it came out . . . that scene alone made me a fan, at least for a while. I felt like most of his best routines could have been in silent movies.

 

I know there are critics who loved this scene -- it's been said that this was one of the moments that caused some French critics to proclaim Lewis an auteur back in 1961 -- but I found the whole scene cloying and phony. To me, it's one thing when Jerry is funny, but the moment he tries to be profound or moving, to me it has the subtlety of a sledgehammer. It just feels too contrived to me. I think it's one of the rare wrong notes in the whole film.

I don't dispute there are fans who really liked the scene, and I would bet kids who saw the movie 50 years ago liked it, but it just makes me wince. But the funny moments in Errand Boy are still very funny.

 

Jerry was revelatory in Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from An Idiot's Marriage (1984)

 

Mister Watanabeeeee!

 

Youre right. The scene in the movie itself is not Jerrys naturally best moment. I didnt laugh much when I watched it from the clip. He is stiff and a parody. For me, its more a childhood memory when such things werent thought out in my mind. One that I can feel my brother, sister, mom and me piled up in bed together watching. A tradition. Something for a totally disfunctional family rarely happened.

Out of the context of the movie and set aside as a "piece", which it had no context in the movie anyway (which is another main reason it appears akward); it references to Jerrys physical comedy in a tributorial sense when he performed it later. Not funny hillarious but sentimental. And sentimental isnt really funny at all.

 

The very young Jerry Lewis movies were the best by far. Later he just seems too old to get away with it. Seems they relied more on gimmicks than wit. Jim Carey suffers the same. The rubbery and elastic qualities are stiff plastic as they aged. It must have been difficult to play that type of comedian as long as Jerry did. In the early films you cant tell whats written and whats just Jerry. In the later films the pure Jerry moments are fewer and far between.

Still, about a handful of Jerry Lewis movies are classics and can make me really laugh.

 

Yeah, I think there are a lot of things in life that we have great nostalgia for because it reminds of us a terrific time in our lives. But... you look at it 40 years later, and you go, "WTF?"

The sight gags in the first 10 or so Lewis films are often fall-down funny, particularly the bizarre ones that just come from out of nowhere. Jerry's timing was second to none, and he had great instincts for comedy as both a director and as the guy supervising the editor.

 

I love "The Errand Boy" and I totally agree with your take, Vidiot.

Jerry must have had a thing for that puppet- he trots it out again for a proto-Patch Adams moment during this "Ben Casey" episode from a couple years later. He directed this and it was another attempt by him to do a serious turn-he also did a version of "The Jazz Singer" which is on DVD and also worth watching if for no other reason than it's an excellently preserve document of early color TV.

The puppet rears its ugly head about 48 minutes in...