The Nutty Professor (1963)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Jerry Lewis

Writers:

Jerry Lewis (written by) and
Bill Richmond (written by)

Release Date:

4 June 1963 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

What does he become? What kind of monster?

Plot:

To improve his social life, a nerdish professor drinks a potion that temporarily turns him into the handsome, but obnoxious, Buddy Love.

Plot Keywords:

Love | Professor | Student | Teacher | Fall In Love

Awards:

1 win

US TV Schedule:

Mon. July 13

7:45 AM

AMC

Cast

Jerry Lewis	...	Professor Julius Kelp / Buddy Love / Baby Kelp
Stella Stevens	...	Stella Purdy
Del Moore	...	Dr. Hamius R. Warfield
Kathleen Freeman	...	Millie Lemmon
Med Flory	...	Football Player
Norman Alden	...	Football Player
Howard Morris	...	Mr. Elmer Kelp
Elvia Allman	...	Edwina Kelp
Milton Frome	...	Dr. M. Sheppard Leevee
Buddy Lester	...	Bartender
Marvin Kaplan	...	English student
David Landfield	...	College Student
Skip Ward	...	Football Player
Julie Parrish	...	College Student
Henry Gibson	...	Gibson, College Student
Les Brown	...	Himself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Mushy Callahan	...	Cab Driver (scenes deleted)
Murray Alper	...	Gym Attendant (uncredited)
Les Brown Jr.	...	Student at Senior Prom (uncredited)
Joseph Forte	...	College Faculty Member (uncredited)
Art Gilmore	...	Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Gavin Gordon	...	Clothing Salesman (uncredited)
Terry Higgins	...	Purple Pit Cigarette Girl (uncredited)
Stuart Holmes	...	Faculty Member at Senior Prom (uncredited)
Richard Kiel	...	Bodybuilder at Gym (uncredited)
Les Brown and His Band of Renown	...	Themselves (uncredited)
Gary Lewis	...	Boy (uncredited)
Forbes Murray	...	Faculty Member at Senior Prom (uncredited)
Emil Richards	...	Musician - Percussionist (uncredited)
Michael Ross	...	Weight Lifter at Gym (uncredited)
Bert Stevens	...	Purple Pit Customer (uncredited)
Doodles Weaver	...	Rube (uncredited)
Dave Willock	...	Purple Pit Customer (uncredited)
Celeste Yarnall	...	College Student (uncredited)
Francine York	...	College Student (uncredited)

Directed by
Jerry Lewis

Writing credits
Jerry Lewis		(written by) and
Bill Richmond		(written by)

Produced by
Ernest D. Glucksman	....	producer
Arthur P. Schmidt	....	associate producer

Original Music by
Walter Scharf

Cinematography by
W. Wallace Kelley

Film Editing by
John Woodcock

Art Direction by
Hal Pereira
Walter H. Tyler		(as Walter Tyler)

Set Decoration by
Robert R. Benton		(as Robert Benton)
Sam Comer

Costume Design by
Edith Head

Makeup Department
Nellie Manley	....	hair stylist supervision
Jack Stone	....	makeup artist
Wally Westmore	....	makeup supervisor

Production Management
Hal Bell	....	assistant production manager
William Davidson	....	production manager (as Bill Davidson)

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Ralph Axness	....	assistant director

Art Department
Martin Pendleton	....	property master

Sound Department
Charles Grenzbach	....	sound recordist
Hugo Grenzbach	....	sound recordist
Bud Parman	....	boom operator (uncredited)
Bill Wistrom	....	sound editor (uncredited)

Special Effects by
Paul K. Lerpae	....	special photographic effects

Stunts
Bob May	....	stunts (uncredited)

Camera and Electrical Department
Murray Young	....	key grip (uncredited)

Costume and Wardrobe Department
Sy Devore	....	wardrobe: men
Nat Wise	....	wardrobe: men

Editorial Department
Richard Mueller	....	color consultant: Technicolor

Music Department
Walter Scharf	....	conductor
Walter Scharf	....	musician: "I'm In the Mood for Love" (uncredited)

Other crew
Marshall Katz	....	assistant to producer
Marvin Weldon	....	dialogue coach
Dorothy Yutzi	....	script supervisor

Production Companies

• Paramount Pictures
• Jerry Lewis Enterprises

Distributors

• Paramount Pictures (1963) (USA) (theatrical)
• American Broadcasting Company (ABC) (1968) (USA) (TV) (broadcast premiere)
• CIC Vídeo (Brazil) (VHS)
• CIC-Taft Home Video (19??) (Australia) (VHS)
• Paramount Home Entertainment (2004) (Brazil) (DVD)
• Paramount Home Entertainment (2002) (UK) (DVD)
• Paramount Home Entertainment (2002) (Netherlands) (DVD)
• Paramount Home Video (19??) (USA) (VHS)
• Paramount Home Video (19??) (USA) (video) (laserdisc)
• Paramount Home Video (2000) (USA) (DVD)
• Paramount Home Video (2004) (USA) (DVD) (special edition)

Other Companies

• Band of Renown  group cast members
• Phoenix Film Office  special thanks

Runtime:

107 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Iceland:L | Finland:K-8 | Sweden:11 | UK:PG | USA:Unrated | West Germany:16

Filming Locations:

Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

Film debut of Celeste Yarnall.

Goofs:

Continuity: At the prom, Stella's hand changes position on/off Buddy's shoulder,

Quotes:

Buddy Love: They're nice kids. All nice. All nice kids. They have very, very good taste, I might add.
Stella Purdy: I'm glad. It would be a shame to waste the genius of yours on the riff-raff.
Buddy Love: Well, honey, I always say, if you're good and you know it, why waste time beating around the bush, true?
Stella Purdy: And I always say that to love yourself is the beginning of a life-long romance. And after watching you, I know that you and you will be very happy together.
Buddy Love: Just a minute, sweetheart. I don't recall dismissing you.
Stella Purdy: You rude, discourteous egomaniac!
[...]

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in "The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XIV (#15.1)" (2003)

Soundtrack:

The Marine Hymn

Hidelle and Jerk?

On the Nutty Professor DVD extras, Jerry Lewis says that he had been "enthralled with Jekyll and Hyde" since he was a kid. So it's only logical that he'd long to create this "Jekyll and Hyde comedy/musical". Oddly, The Nutty Professor tends to be read as only a comedy, in the modern colloquial sense of that genre term, as "a film that's supposed to make you laugh", but there's much more to it than that, and more intended than that. Which is probably a good thing, because even though I didn't laugh out loud very frequently while watching The Nutty Professor, I did enjoy it quite a bit, despite the flaws.

Lewis--who also directs--plays Professor Julius Kelp, a bizarrely nerdy-but-stupid chemistry professor. He has a knack for conducting dangerous, unauthorized experiments in the presence of students. At the beginning of the film, he blows up his classroom yet again. On a later day, a football student who was denied permission to leave class early for football practice responds by stuffing Kelp into a shelf. Beautiful student Stella Purdy (Stella Stevens) feels sorry for Kelp and helps him unstuff himself. Stevens skillfully has the slightest gleam in her eye while doing this so that we can tell that Purdy has an attraction to the strange-looking professor.

Spurred on by the incident--with both the physical abuse and the physical attraction as motivators, Kelp decides to give himself a make over. He first tries his luck at the local gym. When that doesn't work out so well he puts his chemistry knowledge to use and hits upon a potion that produces a Jekyll & Hyde transformation. The Nutty Professor has Kelp trying to balance the two personalities, with the expected calamitous but humorous results.

Although Lewis' Hyde character, "Buddy Love", is often said to be a skewering of his early comedy partner and pal Dean Martin, Lewis claims this wasn't the case. Both the nerd and the debonair but sublimely obnoxious hipster were supposedly amalgamations of different people Lewis had encountered over the years. Still, the similarities to Martin are difficult to deny; perhaps the character was partially a subconscious parody of Martin.

In any event, Love is entertaining to watch--he's something like a glossy trainwreck. Or maybe like a suave Satan in a silk suit. Lewis makes both characters complex in their differences from their respective stereotypes. Kelp is the stereotypical "absent-minded professor", only the absent-minded professor is usually a wiz at his academic subject. Lewis paints Kelp as primarily a wiz at being a slightly sympathetic dork, where his cockeyed chemistry successes are more accidental. Love is the stereotypical overbearing but attractive-to-the-women brute, yet Lewis is quick to imbue him with an odd combination of pathos and flair, so that Love ends up being both more fragile and more talented/intelligent.

Some of the material employing both characters is quite funny, but Lewis dwells on humor no more than a whole gamut of modes and emotions, from fairly serious horror material during the slightly overlong initial Jekyll/Hyde transformation to poignantly sad, touching scenes showing the crack in the Love armor. To an extent, the Jekyll/Hyde theme permeates the film in its shifting tones.

One of those modes that works surprisingly well is the musical material. Lewis hired the superb Les Brown and other great jazz musicians to provide songs. Les Brown's "Band of Renown" even makes an on screen appearance, performing a couple songs at a college dance. Lewis isn't the greatest singer, but he does a passable job with an alluring rendition of "That Old Black Magic". There's also a great version of "Stella by Starlight" in the background of a couple scenes.

The performances are quite good. Both Stevens and Del Moore, as Dr. Hamius R. Warfield, the college dean, easily hold their own next to Lewis, who does a remarkable job with the transformations. He's helped a lot by W. Wallace Kelley's cinematography. Kelley had a more than respectable, varied background, including camera experience on a couple Alfred Hitchcock films--To Catch A Thief (1955) and Vertigo (1958)--and Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). Kelley uses very subtle angle changes to make Kelp seem small and insignificant (aided by Lewis' physical contortions) while making Love seem like a big, macho guy.

The production design is also gorgeous. Lewis directs his crew to fill the film with bold, unusual color combinations--most overtly in the rainbow-colored paints on the lab floor during the first Jekyll/Hyde transformation, the nice overlaying of purples and reds in The Purple Pit club, and the great, unusual coordinations of Love's suits.

Whether you find The Nutty Professor hilarious or not, it has certainly been influential. Lewis considers this his best film. The American Film Institute placed The Nutty Professor at number ninety-nine on its list of the "100 Funniest American Films" ("100 Years/100 Laughs"). Both Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey have obviously been influenced by this film, as they have been by Lewis in general. And Andy Kaufman's disparate characters Latka Gravas (from 1978-1983's "Taxi") and Tony Clifton (a regular part of his live act) are direct parallels to Kelp and Love, even if Kaufman had other influences for those characters, as well.

The Nutty Professor is also a "message" film. The dual "morals" of the story, in addition to the less conspicuous subtexts dealing with personal identity, are to not be afraid to be your true self and to accept others for their true selves--to look deeper than the surface level.

Given such wide-ranging moods and aims, it's probably best to watch the film without genre expectations. That's not likely to make those averse to Lewis' shtick enjoy it any more, but for everyone else, The Nutty Professor is worth a look. It will surprise you with its diversity.