Foreword
As I write this note, Tim Meadows' new movie, based on his Saturday Night Live character, is unspooling in theatres. It is not the first film to use the title "Ladies Man." In the sound era, there have been three predecessors.
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Ladies' Man (1931): A drama starring William Powell, Kay Francis and Carole Lombard.
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Ladies' Man (1947): An Eddie Bracken comedy featuring Spike Jones and His City Slickers.
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Oh, and this one....
| The Ladies' Man (1961): Another Movie That Makes Me Laugh |
| Part 1: Jerry's Funhouse |
|
by Mike Durrett
Dateline: 04/22/99
Updated: 10/13/00
This extravagant Jerry Lewis production #25, made at the height of the dynamo's big time solo movie career, was only his second directorial and (credited) writing effort.
(Bill Richmond co-scripted. He and Lewis would continue to partner on screenplays, writing The Nutty Professor, The Patsy, and The Family Jewels, among others. Mel Brooks was fired off the film early on; he arbitrated for screen credit at the Writers Guild, but was denied.)
As Lewis did in The Bellboy the previous year, this zany comedy of one hapless Herbert H. Heebert -- the "H" is for "Herbert" -- is essentially a parade of silly sequences, although, this time, a connecting plot thread and increased characterization exists.
"Just think, tomorrow, my childhood sweetheart will be my aging wife," college grad Herby -- sorry, that's Herbert! -- waxes longingly on his wedding eve. Seconds later, he's cruelly jilted, losing Faith, his bride-to-be.
Herbert, off women forever, departs his small town's painful memories, only to land in Hollywood, where he accepts a job and, unknowingly, wakes up as the houseboy in the last place he would ever want to be, a ritzy boarding home occupied by dozens of young, gorgeous, available females.
The fun hangs on Herbert's nervous tension, the ladies' kindly mothering, Jerry the star's peerless buffoonery, and Lewis the director's creative sensibilities.
Crammed to the rafters with color, the co-star of The Ladies' Man is the four-story mansion set with its cutaway front wall that exposes a gigantic, symbolic dollhouse, allowing us to peep into each room.
Interestingly, Lewis, working under a seven-year, 14-picture, $10 million deal, the most lucrative contract signed by any talent to that date, requested the unusual and expensive $500,000 prop, which was built inside two Paramount Pictures sound stages, requiring the removal of the adjoining wall.
And, boy, does he proudly show off his set in a six-minute introductory sequence, beginning with a jazzy montage revealing the revealing girls and wrapping with the money shot, which starts close-up on Herbert as he exits his third floor bedroom, expanding as he roams the halls and descends to the ground level, and culminates in an impressive 60-second full pull-back crane-enhanced vista. (On TV, if you look closely, you'll even see the bright movie lights above the set's attic, along the studio ceiling. A similar, but smaller, dollhouse was used 25 years later in the British musical Absolute Beginners with Patsy Kensit and David Bowie.)
While I doubt it was intentional, the multi-leveled rectangular rooms with their walls removed suggest the panels of a comic strip, which is appropriate as this film is a live action cartoon from top to bottom.
Next page > Jerry's Mentor, Porky Pig animator Frank Tashlin > Page 1, 2, 3, 4
Images from The Ladies' Man Merchandising Manual and Pressbook
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