A bumbling private with a photographic memory finds himself a person of interest to enemy spies in Morocco.
Private Meredith C. Bixby (Jerry Lewis) is a hopelessly inept soldier with one extraordinary gift: a perfect memory. His unique ability gets him assigned to guard a top-secret weapon in Morocco. While there, he falls for a local nightclub singer, Zita (Liliane Montevecchi), but his romantic pursuits are interrupted when he is kidnapped. An enemy agent named Abdul (Peter Lorre) has learned that Bixby has memorized the weapon’s instruction manual and is determined to extract the information from his captive’s mind.
This service comedy marked Jerry Lewis’s second solo feature after his highly publicized professional split from Dean Martin. Adapted from George Baker’s classic comic strip, the film provided Lewis a ready-made character that fit perfectly into his established screen persona. As the clumsy but gifted Bixby, Lewis continues to explore the persona of the well-meaning misfit whose unusual talents inadvertently land him in the center of international intrigue, a theme he would return to throughout his career.
Production Co: Paramount / 98 minutes / 1957
Director: George Marshall
Screenplay: Edmund Beloin, Nate Monaster
Music: Walter Scharf
Main Cast: Jerry Lewis (Private Meredith C. Bixby), David Wayne (Corporal Larry Dolan), Phyllis Kirk (Maj. Shelton), Peter Lorre (Abdul), Joe Mantell (Pvt. Stan Wenaslawsky), Liliane Montevecchi (Zita), Gene Evans (Sgt. Major Elmer Pulley)
