Main Cast: Jerry Lewis, Joan Blackman, Fred Clark, John Williams
Release Year: 1960
Country: US
Run Time: 85 minutes
Plot
When a space alien's fascination with Earthlings gets the better of him, he breaks one of his planet's laws and speeds off to visit the blue planet. Once there the alien (Jerry Lewis) encounters a nice family who kindly take him in. The father is a news commentator. Ironically, just prior to meeting the visitor, he had just aired a piece in which he derided all notions of extraterrestrial visits. In exchange for having them teach him about human ways, he uses his many fantastic powers to help them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Review
Casting Jerry Lewis as an alien from another planet is not the worst idea, but it doesn't work in Visit to a Small Planet. That's because Visit wasn't originally a Lewis vehicle, but a Gore Vidal stage play that satirically lambasted the McCarthy era. It's easy to see what went wrong: Lewis is not right for the kind of play Vidal wrote, so screenwriters Edmund Belson and Henry Garson adapted the play to better fit the star's talents. But this wasn't a case where it could simply be "adapted;" in order to really work for Lewis, an entirely new work should have been devised. One wasn't, and so Visit falls between two stools, not satisfying as a Lewis laughfest and not satisfying as a Vidal satire. And, to add to the problems, Visit is remarkably dull. Oh, there are a few laughs along the way, especially in the beatnik sequence (which, significantly, was created just for the film); but there's not really much more that's genuinely amusing, even for diehard Lewis fans. The black-and-white cinematography doesn't help, either; this is a piece that cries out for color and feels hemmed in by not having it. Norman Taurog's direction is uneven, sluggish in places and lightning quick in others. For his part, Lewis does find more variety in his performance than he frequently does; it's a shame his efforts weren't in the service of a better film. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
Visit to a Small Planet (1957), a comedy by Gore Vidal. [ Booth Theatre, 388 perf.] Dressed as a proper gentleman of the 1860s, Kreton (Cyril Ritchard), a creature from a planet far out in space and whose hobby has been studying little, backward Earth, lands in Manassas, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Civil War. Unfortunately his timing is a bit off, so he arrives at the modern home of the celebrated television commentator Roger Spelding (Philip Coolidge) just as Spelding is hosting his old friend, the bureaucratic, cliché‐ridden General Tom Powers (Eddie Mayehoff). Kreton becomes intrigued with civilization's improvements—such as giant battleships and hydrogen bombs—and sets about trying to start another world war. To his disappointment, he fails. Heading back home, he decides to see if his time machine will still let him witness the Civil War and promises to return “one bright day in 1861. The Battle of Bull Run. . . . Only next time I think it'll be more fun if the South wins.” Brooks Atkinson hailed the comedy as “a topsy‐turvy lark that has a lot of humorous vitality.”
If a visitor from another galaxy happened to land on earth to observe the United States firsthand, what kind of impression would the country make on a complete stranger to die human race? This is the question posed in Gore Vidal’s Visit to a Small Planet, a comedy subtitled as A Comedy Akin to a Vaudeville. Originally presented as a television play in 1957 (it had a New York City stage premiere in the same year), the satirical play follows the exploits of Kreton, an alien who lands on Earth, hoping to catch a glimpse of the American Civil War only to find that “something went wrong with the machine”; he has landed in the Manassas, Virginia, of the mid-twentieth century, outside of the Spelding family’s home. Upon learning that it is not 1861, Kreton nevertheless decides to stay and observe human behavior: “You are my hobby,” he tells the Speldings, “and I am going native.”
Unlike film aliens such as E.T. or the creatures in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Kreton is no lovable Martian. Arrogant, selfish, and patronizing, he is determined to make his stay memorable by starting a full-scale war between the United States and die Soviet Union (die setting being the days of the Cold War, when trust between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. was distinctly lacking).“I admit I’m leaping into this on the spur of the moment,” he admits at the end of Act I, “but we’re going to have such good times!”
Vidal’s play pokes fun at the post-World War II fear of Communism and the “Red-baiting” (Senator Joseph McCarthy’s house hearings on Un-American Activities) common in the late 1950s, as well as military paranoia and the rising importance of television in American life. Using Kreton as the satiric personification of America’s ugly underbelly, Vidal’s play employs a common science-fiction scenario to explore not alien but American life.
Kreton (Jerry Lewis) is an alien from outer space who is fascinated by human beings. He decides to come to Earth for an extended vacation and becomes friends with a suburban family. Along the way he falls in love with their daughter (Joan Blackman). However, there is a force field around him that prevents any physical contact as his race has abolished any form of affection. After petitioning the superiors of his planet, he is made human. At first he is happy, but he comes to realize that being human isn't always happy: it comes with other less desired emotions such as sadness and jealousy. He decides that those emotions are not worth the trouble and he returns to his own planet.
The play tells the story of Kreton, an alien from an unnamed planet who lands on Earth intending to view the American Civil War. He miscalculates and lands instead 100 years later. Having missed the opportunity to see conflict first hand, but delighted with all the new playthings the twentieth century has invented for war-making, he decides to create a war for himself.
Remake?
In 1994 British artist Georgina Starr made Visit to A Small Planet a 5 screen video installation and book. Having seen the film as a 10 year old child Starr tried to find it again but was unable to trace a copy. She began rewriting the script from memory and eventually re-enacted the movie with herself playing the leading role. In her version she tries to gain the special powers which Kreton has in the original film; to become invisible, communicate with a cat, mind read and also sings with Dean Martin. In her memory Dino was in the film with Jerry Lewis and the film was in technicolour. The work has been exhibited in the UK in The British Art Show 4 and at Kunsthalle Zurich in Switzerland.[citation needed]
