Which Way to the Front

Last August, Jerry Lewis was selected as part of TCM's Summer Under the Stars, which gave me the chance to record several of his movies that I hadn't seen before. Lewis' movie career really petered out after 1970, and watching the movie that caused this -- Which Way to the Front? -- it's easy to see why.

The movie is set in 1943, which is of course the height of World War II. Lewis plays Brendan Byers III, the owner of several businesses producing weaponry and other stuff for the US war effort. Now, because of this, and the fact that Lewis was already past 40 by the time he made this movie, you'd think that the US government wouldn't want him fighting. Byers is the classic "dollar-a-year" man. And yet, Byers gets a draft notice; not only that, but he seems happy to be called to fight, which makes you wonder why he didn't volunteer in the first place. But he's rejected by the Army. Not because of his usefulness back on the home front, but because he's 4-F for what are presumably mental reasons; we see him suck on a baby's pacifier as well as do the Jerry Lewis gibberish routine after he's rejected.

Brendan commiserates with three other rejects, all of whom wanted to fight in the war because they have other things to get away from. Sid Hackle (Jan Murray) is a nightclub comedian who's ticked off the wrong Mob-affiliated people, and has them coming after him. Peter Bland (Steve Franken) has a domineering wife and mother both of whom treat him like crap. And Terry Love (Dack Rambo) has a wife who's about to give birth, only for his old girlfriend to show up.

Brendan, being rich, comes up with an idea: train all of them, and perhaps be able to be of some us to the military as a volunteer force. After all, Brendan has the money to do it and not be a financial burden on the war effort. So he hires people who can do military training and trains this motley crew, before putting them all on his yacht and heading off to Italy. Surprisingly, they survive the trip to Italy without getting discovered by the Allied forces or torpedoed by U-boats. When they get to Italy, where the front lines have been in a stalemante for some months, Brendand bluffs his way into getting orders to deal with the situation.

Brendan's plan is to imitate Erik Kesselring (also played by Lewis, of course), who is one of the bigwigs in the Nazi occupation force in Italy. Since the Allies win the war, and this movie is supposed to be a comedy, we can deduce that Brendan's plan is going to succeed.

Unfortunately, Jerry Lewis directed himself once again, and as always, he never seemed to know how to rein himself in. It also doesn't help that Lewis was stuck in the rut of having done the same sort of comedy for closing in on 15 years now, if not 20, and it was really beginning to look old-fashioned. Further, the production values here are terrible, looking like a bad Jack Webb-produced TV show. The result is that Which Way to the Front? is a movie with a terrible reputation, and frankly quite deserving of that reputation. Maybe you should try giving it one watch to see where things went so badly wrong for Lewis, but that's probably all you'll want.