The one thing everybody knows about Jerry Lewis is that he is beloved by the French. The French understand him, while in the U.S. he is at best a riddle. Lewis is someone Americans take profound pleasure in excluding, if not ridiculing.
Enfant Terrible! Jerry Lewis in American Film is the first comprehensive collection of essays devoted to one of the most controversial and accomplished figures in twentieth-century American cinema. A veteran of virtually every form of show business, Lewis's performances onscreen and the motion pictures he has directed reveal significant filmmaking talents, and show him to be what he has called himself, a "total filmmaker." Yet his work has been frequently derided by American critics.
This book challenges that by taking a more careful look at Lewis's
considerable body of work onscreen in 16 diverse and penetrating essays.
Turning to such films as The Nutty
Professor, The Ladies Man, The King of Comedy, The Delicate Delinquent, Living
It Up, The Errand Boy, The Disorderly Orderly, Arizona Dream, and The Geisha Boy, the contributors address
topics ranging from Lewis's on- and off-screen performances, the representations
of disability in his films, and the European obsession with Lewis, to his
relationship with Dean Martin. Far from being an out of control hysteric, Enfant Terrible! instead reveals Jerry
Lewis to be a meticulous master of performance with a keen sense of American
culture and the contemporary world.
In short, he was a cinematic genius.