THE BELLBOY delivered $10,300,000 to Paramount’s vault in 1960, the year’s 20th most-flocked flick crushing the $900,000 production tab. Money-schmoney, what it really did was leave crazed bell-ringer Jerry Lewis a big tip, since this outing signaled his near total takeover of his film career. After the split from Dean Martin in 1956, he’d soloed in five pictures, cameoed in one more, and produced three of them. Here it was ALL JERRY!!!—starring, producing, writing & directing. Whether that was a good thing for comedy writ large or a step back toward the cave for humanity in general depends on where one falls in the love vs. loathing camps about the manic man-child. Worshipped by some (hotline, push button marked ‘France’) abhorred by most many, it’s safe to say he possessed ample talent, and it’s also true that he pushed it in your puss so aggressively that watching him mug, contort and squeal for more than five minutes required a blood pressure monitor and making sure the object you threw at him wasn’t heavy enough to break the screen.*

The plot: non-existent—or, if you’re a Lewis fanatic—existential. The place: Miami Beach, the Fontainebleau Hilton. Among the platoon of busboys is mega-klutz ‘Stanley’ (take wild guess), who is silent but deadly as he wreaks havoc in  three dozen blackout vignettes. Some are elaborate and/or clever, some are dumb and/or annoying. The silent part is that Stanley only has a few lines of dialog, so you’re mercifully spared his infantile “The Kid” character with the baby talk voice. He has a few more lines, not as Stanley but when he does a cameo—as Jerry Lewis—yes, in his own movie, sharing one scene with guest ham Milton Berle (as himself). **

Well, schmuck you, too

Walter Scharf tackled the music; he’d scored five of the Martin & Lewis flicks, this one of ten he did for The Kid as a solo act. Haskell B. Boggs (Teacher’s Pet, The Geisha Boy, I Married A Monster From Outer Space) did a swell job on the cinematography.

This was one of three Jerry entrees for the 1960, preceded by Visit To A Small Planet, followed by Cinderfella. That one was actually ready to go for the summer, but Lewis wanted it held for Christmas, so to placate the studio he blizzard whipped up The Bellboy. They all made money; this one is superior to the others. Besides showing he could simultaneously juggle multiple creative hats, he also won credit for creating a precursor to the video-assist system, which he then patented.

With Alex Clerry, Bob Clayton, Bill Richmond (paying homage to Stan Laurel), Jack Kruschen, Maxie Rosenbloom, Joe E. Ross. 72 minutes.

* “To each”, yeah yeah, etcetera—one seeks to be ‘fair & balanced’, but since that phrase has been warped by some of the planet’s highest paid liars and frauds into something as meaningless as ‘truth in advertising’, we’ll risk a fess up: Jerry’s vids would not be in our desert island rucksack. We try, we really do: like Rommel he defeats us over & over again, and is about as much fun. Now, that tank genius usually doesn’t have ‘like’ associated with him, but ‘respect’ turns up without fail. So, yes, we respect that Jerry Lewis had a considerable array of talents, and was very popular from the late 1940’s until the mid-1960’s. Many kids liked him, one entire, hard-to-read country remained a grudging ally thanks to seeing Einstein when most of us saw The Missing Link, and, hey, his loyal fans still adore the guy. Since he dealt in laughter (when not being a monumental egotistical jerk, a teeth-grinding 8.0 on the Trumpian Trickster Scale) he lobs the occasional Hail Mary pass (The Nutty Professor) and if you love him, well, you stopped reading this after the opening paragraph, anyway, so the grand scheme of things proceeds inexorably.

** “You mean they killed the messenger?”—one example of Lewisian overreach is the gag with which he brings his ‘real’ Jerry into the fray: a stretch limo pulls up and the passengers get out…and keep getting out. Not ten, or fifteen but twenty-six exit before the star emerges, the joke milked into oblivion. The guy could never leave well enough alone.