The Delicate Delinquent *** (1957, Jerry Lewis, Darren McGavin, Martha Hyer, Richard Bakalyan, Mary Webster) – Classic Movie Review 11,589

Writer-director Don McGuire’s 1956 black-and-white and VistaVision comedy The Delicate Delinquent stars Jerry Lewis, who goes it alone for the first time after breaking from screen partner Dean Martin, playing janitor Sidney L Pythias, a petty crook who joins the police force after being arrested by Captain Riley (Horace McMahon), along with three juvenile delinquents, Artie (Richard Bakalyan), Monk (Robert Ivers) and Harry (Joseph Corey).

Sidney (Lewis) wants to become a policeman and gets on in the force with encouragement from New York patrol cop Mike Damon (Darren McGavin), who is given a month by Riley to put him on the straight and narrow, with help from socialite do-gooder Martha Henshaw (Martha Hyer). Sidney wants to impress student nurse Patricia (Mary Webster), who lives in his building, and he is allowed to attend the police academy, and eventually saves Damon from a gang.

Little known writer-director McGuire (the former actor and Lewis’s friend, who had co-written Martin and Lewis’s Three Ring Circus and Artists and Models) turns this sometimes amusing, slightly uneasy mixture of farce, sentimentality, satire (sending up The Wild One-style melodramas) and social awareness into one of Lewis’s better efforts.

Poignantly, the Darren McGavin role was written for Martin, who turned it down, ending the star duo’s partnership.

Boxer Rocky Marciano appears as himself, and so does The Great Togo. Comedian and impressionist Frank Gorshin makes an early dramatic appearance as a gang member, Wise Guy on Street.

It is Lewis’s film producing and (uncredited) screenwriting debut. Lewis plays a juvenile though he was 30.

It was filmed from 5 September to 12 October 1956 and released on 6 June 1957 by Paramount Pictures. McGuire’s script was titled Damon and Pythias and inspired by the Damon and Pythias legend.

No doubt to Lewis’s huge satisfaction, it was a big hit. It cost less than  $500,000 and grossed about $6 million. And it was re-released in 1962 in a double bill with Lewis’s The Sad Sack (1957).

Also in the cast are Martha Hyer, Robert Ivers, Horace McMahon, Richard Bakalyan, Joseph Corey, Mary Webster, Milton Frome, Jefferson Searles, Rocky Marciano, Emory Parnell, Emile Meyer, Dave Willock, Mike Ross, Don Megowan, Irene Winston, Terru Shimada, Kazuo Togo, Taggart Casey, and Don McGuire.

Martha Hyer’s wardrobe is created by Paramount costume designer Edith Head. Hyer married Hal B Wallis, the producer of the Martin and Lewis films, in 1966.

Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,589

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/