COMEDY Paramount releases 2 Lewis films on DVD

The new releases include 1963's 'The Nutty Professor.'
By TERRY MORROW
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Jerry Lewis, who in emulation of Jackie Gleason once conducted a series of orchestral records, almost always incorporated musical numbers into his films. Two brilliant examples are found in two of the Lewis films newly released by Paramount. (All of the following Lewis films are now available and individually priced at $14.99.)
The first number happens to be in a brilliant film, 1963's "The Nutty Professor" (4 stars), a Jekyll-and-Hyde-inspired (and just plain inspired) comedy in which Lewis plays a geeky scientist who, upon drinking his own formula, is transformed into Buddy Love, a swinging, singing, lounge lizard who is quite obviously based on a certain former partner. (This movie is only nominally related to Eddie Murphy's 1996 remake.)
The other is the classic bit in 1961's "The Errand Boy" (3 stars) in which Lewis' put-upon movie studio gofer sneaks into the chairman's office, seats himself behind the desk and pantomimes a string of executive decisions to a big-band song on the score. It's a piece of seated choreography that qualifies as a production number.
Along with Lewis' 1960 debut as a director, "The Bellboy" (3 stars), those are the best of the remastered and, in most cases, remixed-for-Surround titles. But as hard as it might be to imagine for those who know Lewis only from TV and telethons, there are a couple of bits in all of Lewis' 1950s and '60s solo movies that render them worth watching.
These include his first film as a solo, 1957's "The Delicate Delinquent" (3 stars), in which a role intended for Dean Martin was reduced and given to Darren McGavin when Lewis and Martin broke up, and 1960's, Frank Tashlin-directed "Cinderfella" (2 stars), the first time we see Lewis' maudlin streak get in the way of the gags.
But wait. There are more movies: 1961's "The Ladies' Man" (3 stars), with Lewis as an unlucky-in-love nebbish who takes a job as handyman at a girls school; 1964's "The Patsy" (2 stars), in which the pathos begins to overpower the humor; "The Disorderly Orderly" (3 stars), which is hilarious slapstick; and 1965's "The Family Jewels" (3 stars), in which Lewis plays seven characters -- six of them the potential guardians of a little female heiress.
Also available on DVD for the first time is 1953's "The Stooge " (2 stars), a showbiz comedy that Lewis rated as his favorite of his films with Martin.