Rock-a-Bye Baby

I mentioned a couple of times how Jerry Lewis got a day in TCM's Summer Under the Stars last August, and how I recorded a ton of movies, because even though I have a box set of some of Lewis' films, a lot of what TCM selected was not on that box set. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to watching all of them before they expired, but one that I did watch is Rock-a-Bye Baby.

Marilyn Maxwell plays Carla Naples, one of those small-town girls like Esther Blodgett who couldn't stand the small town and went to Hollywood to try to make it big. She's done so, but with a squeaky-clean image. Unbeknownst to the studio, she went and blew up that image by getting married to a bullfighter in Mexico and getting pregnant on her wedding night before the bullfighter was killed in the ring the next day. So there's a kid on the way and no husband or marriage license, Carla having ripped that up.

Carla's agent Harold Hermann (Reginald Garidner) suggests that she go off somewhere to have the kid like Bette Davis in The Great Lie and then have someone she can trust take care of the kid until they can figure out what to do that will be all nice and legal and not ruin Carla's image. Unfortunately, Carla's Italian immigrant father has never forgiven her for wanting to do the Hollywood thing, so he's right out.

But Carla does have a one-time boyfriend in her midwestern hometown from back when both were very young, that being Clayton Poole (Jerry Lewis), who is now working as a TV repairman, although this being Jerry Lewis, the word "repair" is doing a lot of work. Clayton loved Carla even more than she liked him, and he's always wanted to be a father although he's never found the right woman. In fact, the right woman is right under his nose in the form of Carla's kid sister Sandra (Connie Stevens). Carla discovers that she's actually pregnant with triplets, and drops the kids off on Clayton's front step.

Clayton tries to raise the kids as a single father with some help from Sandra. A lot of complications ensue because Clayton isn't quite up to raising triplet infants. Not because he's a bad person or negligent, but he does have to work and somebody has to look after the kids. That's going to lead to a climactic courtroom scene since there are understandably people who think there's something better for the kids than this low-earning single father who is not the biological father. Being a Jerry Lewis comedy, however, there's going to be a requisite happy ending.

Rock-a-Bye Baby is a loose remake of The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, reworked for the abilities of Jerry Lewis. Lewis wasn't directing himself yet, here being directed again by Frank Tashlin who was adept at directing boundary-pushing, mildly subversive comedies (his previous film was Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?), and had directed Lewis a couple of times before. So he's able to tone down Lewis, although some of the physical comedy, as in the initial TV repair scene involving Lewis adjusting a rooftop antenna, does veer into over-the-top territory.

Rock-a-Bye Baby is competently made if not great, more the sort of thing that would serve as comfort food to fans of Lewis.