In defense of Jerry (soft of):
One of the tragedies of growing old in the public eye is that people see you as you are now, as opposed to as you were in your prime. We never got to see James Dean turn into a fat, old Marlon Brando, for example. I believe the same thing can be said for Jerry. I once saw some old TV footage of Jerry and Dean during their prime, and I found them to be quite funny. In particular, I saw some footage of Jerry and Dean onstage with Hope and Crosby, and J&D were totally out of control. They ran around like lunatics, and Crosby finally walked off of the stage in frustration. J&D had stolen the show.
As for Jerry’s films, I always thought he was a fine film maker. “The Nutty Professor” is generally regarded as his masterpiece, and while not a laugh-out-loud film, has some great things in it. It has very vibrant colors throughout, and some subtle (Jerry Lewis, subtle?), under-stated gags. For example, after the lab explosion at the beginning of the film, Jerry walks into the deans office and sits down in a chair, and sinks WAY down into the chair. Worried about the soot on his clothes, he stands up and puts a magazine in the chair to sit on. When he sits on the magazine in the chair, he doesn’t sink into the chair anymore, but instead sits way up high in the chair, as if that flimsy magazine is supporting his weight now. Not a laugh-out-loud gag, but a subtle what-the-hell-was-he-thinking gag. He went to a lot of elaborate set ups and spent a lot of dough, somethimes out of his own pocket, for the gags in his movies. He constructed a huge set with a staircase for one movie (I can’t recall the name - might be Cinderfella), that at the time was one of the biggest sets ever built. I think he is also credited with inventing the use of video playback on his sets, so he could see what he had just filmed rather than have to wait for the film to be developed later. I also heard that the studio he worked for demanded a picture from him before he could shoot another movie, so he filmed “The Bellboy” without aid of a script. He just got some folks together and improvised an entire movie.
Now, is he a genius or a buffoon? Ask Jerry, and he will say genius. Catch him on a talk show, and he comes off a lot like Buddy Love - arrogant, conceited, full of himself and sometimes downright mean. Its as if playing Buddy Love created a permanent schism in his personality (his children have said that during the filming of “Professor” he would come home, still in the Love costume and character, and would scare the hell out of them). You can even see it on the telethons - all serious and singing old show tunes and stuff, and every once in a while, as if Kelps formula is wearing off, the Kid breaks out for a second or two, only to be squashed back down into his psyche by Love. Also, while he made a couple of good films after “Professor”, his downhill slide began soon after, and he never recaptured his former glory (remember his return to directing, “Hardly Working”?)
For me, I will tepidly say genius, but only as a film maker. I think at times he did have flashes of brilliance behind the camera. As a comedian, I don’t want to brand him a buffoon, but I think some of the stage work he and Dean did (not counting the movies, which ARE sappy), was pretty funny stuff. Dean did not like to rehearse, and like I said above, some of their television stuff was just out out of control. I do think that seeing him as he his now dilutes his previous work and makes him easy to dismiss. But like other people who have been labled genius, like Charlie Chaplin, Brian Wilson and Alfred Hitchcock, I find Jerry to be a fascinating case study.