Whether you believe Jerry Lewis is a comic genius, a braying clown, a shrewd show - biz pro who carefully cultivated a popular stage and screen persona,
a hopeless egotist with a cringing need for attention, or simply a comic with a gift for manic physical humor that clicked with audiences in the fifties and sixties, most people agree that The Nutty Professor was his greatest film as a director and his most interesting variation on the child - man figure he had transformed into Hollywood gold.