Visit to a Small Planet / The Delicate Delinquent

Visit to a Small Planet was a solo hit for Jerry Lewis. Aiding Lewis immeasurably in his hijinks is the delightful score by Leigh Harline. Harline's score for Visit to a Small Planet is a treasure, beginning with a melodic seven-note main theme that is impossible to get out of one's head once it's been heard. Harline makes liberal use of the Theremin and keeps the comedy in the film plowing forward with his clever and infectious musical hijinks. There are a few nice source music cues, too, and the whole thing adds up to an entertaining and buoyant score.

The Delicate Delinquent's scoring assignment fell to someone relatively new to film composition, a young wunderkind named Buddy Bregman. Bregman's score for The Delicate Delinquent is an undiscovered gem. His themes are tuneful and his scoring expert. The score starts out with a bang with the exciting main title—all bongos and drums and percussion until the dynamic orchestra enters with its propulsive rhythms and its jazzy pyrotechnics. There follows a lovely, bluesy theme for saxophone and orchestra and that's followed by the main theme, a truly beautiful melody that will appear throughout the score, along with more of the big-band, jazzier stuff. Bregman never plays up the comedy—it's a straightforward score and it's one of the reasons the film holds up well today.

This is the world premiere release of both scores, taken from tapes housed in the Paramount vaults. These two scores in particular are very different from each other, but each is perfect for the film it's underscoring, and both are delightful to listen to on their own.

This release is limited to 1,000 copies only.