In his first solo effort without partner Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis did a combination West Side Story and a police academy movie in The Delicate Delinquent. West Side Story was running on Broadway and its popularity and Jerry's would have guaranteed a built in audience.
Darren McGavin takes over from Dino and you can almost spot the places songs would have been dropped in. Lewis plays a bumbling young kid who gets accidentally in the middle of a gang rumble between the local Jets and Sharks and is caught in a police dragnet.
Personally I'm not sure how anyone could have mistaken Lewis for a juvenile delinquent, but McGavin is in charge of a mentoring program and he picks Lewis as his prototype test case. And monitoring the mentor is Martha Hyer who is from the City Council.
Jerry has surprisingly little in the way of raucous comedy routines and concentrates on developing his character. The film proceeds at a leisurely pace in telling the story.
Robert Ivers who plays one of Jerry's juvenile delinquent friends has a nice part himself. In the end he actually saves Lewis's career as a budding policeman.
The Delicate Delinquent was a nice solo debut for Lewis. He did much better for himself and Paramount Pictures than his old partner did with Ten Thousand Bedrooms.
Darren McGavin takes over from Dino and you can almost spot the places songs would have been dropped in. Lewis plays a bumbling young kid who gets accidentally in the middle of a gang rumble between the local Jets and Sharks and is caught in a police dragnet.
Personally I'm not sure how anyone could have mistaken Lewis for a juvenile delinquent, but McGavin is in charge of a mentoring program and he picks Lewis as his prototype test case. And monitoring the mentor is Martha Hyer who is from the City Council.
Jerry has surprisingly little in the way of raucous comedy routines and concentrates on developing his character. The film proceeds at a leisurely pace in telling the story.
Robert Ivers who plays one of Jerry's juvenile delinquent friends has a nice part himself. In the end he actually saves Lewis's career as a budding policeman.
The Delicate Delinquent was a nice solo debut for Lewis. He did much better for himself and Paramount Pictures than his old partner did with Ten Thousand Bedrooms.