The Geisha Boy

Jerry Lewis was one of the stars honored in Summer Under the Stars back in August, and TCM ran quite a few of his films that I had not seen before and weren't on my Jerry Lewis box set that I've gone through over the past several years. I think I finished up that set when I posted on The Nutty Professor since that one was on the TCM schedule. The upshot is that I've got a fair amount of Lewis' work to get through over the next several months before the stuff expires from the YouTube TV DVR. But even before that, I noticed that I had a different Lewis movie that aired on TCM previously and was not reused for the Summer Under the Stars block: The Geisha Boy, which showed up when Sessue Hayakawa was Star of the Month in May.

Jerry Lewis stars as Gilbert Wooley, a failed musician who hasn't worked in months but has a rabbit, Harry, who's the star of the show. Gilbert and Harry show up at the airport in Los Angeles because they've been booked as part of a USO tour of Japan that's being headlined by actress Lola Livingston (Marie McDonald). Wooley and Lola immediately do the exact opposite of hitting it off, as Harry agitates Lola's dog to the point that the military orders the dog to stay behind as part of its no pets policy. Then, on the flight, Wooley keeps causing trouble as part of his attempts to keep everybody from finding out about the existence of Harry. The only person who seems to have any sympathy for Wooley is stewardess Sgt. Pearson (Suzanne Pleshette in one of her earliest roles).

When the plane lands in Tokyo, Wolley screws up Lola's PR reveal so badly that Lola uses her influence as headliner to get Wooley kicked off the tour. But Wooley also developed an ally as a result of his physical comedy failures. Maj. Ridgely (Barton MacLane), the organizer of the tour, doesn't speak Japnese, and needs an interpreter, which he's given in the form of Kimi Sikita. She's also the guardian of her nephew, Mitsuo, as his parents died tragically some time back and Mitsuo hasn't gotten over it. Until now, as Wooley's antics cause Mitsuo to smile and laugh for the first time in ages.

So Wooley now has a little boy who looks up to him, and a woman who in a normal movie would become a love interest. But this is a Jerry Lewis film, so you know it's going to be more about the sight gags than about a wholly coherent plot. And in any case, Kimi also has a boyfriend, or at least someone she's "supposed" to marry, that being the star pitcher on one of the the local baseball teams. This subplot is never fully realized but is used to set up a scene of an exhibition game between the Japanese team and the Dodgers who had literally just moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

Eventually the time comes for Wooley to return to America, but little Mitsuo doesn't want Wooley to leave. Mitsuo is willing to create an international incident to deal with his plight, although that incident leads to the requisite happy ending for all the right characters.

As I've strongly implied above, The Geisha Boy is another of Jerry Lewis' movies that's much stronger in the sight gag and physical comedy departments than it is in the area of a good story. Indeed, the whole idea of the "clash of cultures" is one where it's easy to see people getting humor from, while at the same time running a serious risk of greatly offending people if it isn't handled well. Thankfully, most of the movie is on the side that doesn't play to the stereotypes, although I found the baseball game scene poorly handled. As for Hayakawa, he plays Kimi's father, and gets a sight gag of his own when he's directing a bunch of men in his backyard garden pond to build a bridge that looks suspiciously like the one on the river Kwai.

The Geisha Boy didn't get the best reception, and watching it, it's easy to see why this of Lewis' films is so little remembered. There are some fun sight gags here, but that's not enough to sustain an entire movie.