Jim Morrison's mythology, The Flynn effect

Jim Morrison’s voice on the early Doors’ records is haunting. It conjures an earlier self and the need to achieve a spiritual autonomy above all else. This evolution was also reflected in Morrison’s writing, which became more concrete, and in his singing voice, which slowly degraded as the toll of his suicidal lifestyle began to show. “Blood in the streets it’s up to my ankles/Blood in the streets it’s up to my knee,” he sings on the 1970 “Peace Frog,” one of their best late songs. “Blood on the rise it’s following me.” The song, which shows off all the band members’ muscles, is tough to beat as a testament to late sixties dread. On the group’s last album, L.A. Woman, the blues orientation becomes most explicit, as does Morrison’s sense of isolation. Rock’s best long song, “L.A. Woman” has served as accompaniment for countless ecstatic road trips, but it’s more desolate than it sounds, while “Riders on the Storm,” though ostensibly about a serial killer, sounds almost hopeful by the end. The emotional core of “L.A. Woman” comes from its famous bridge, in which the last remnants of the Lizard King dissolve into Morrison’s final incarnation, Mr. Mojo Risin’.

In the Morrison mythology, his admiral father plays the part of the standard 1950s dad, too invested in his career and too repressed to understand his artistic son, whose middle name, Douglas, was for Douglas MacArthur. George S. Morrison’s life was every bit as eventful as his son’s. At 22, he was serving aboard the minelayer Pruitt in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked. He became the youngest admiral in the navy in 1966, just as the Doors were astounding audiences at the Whiskey a-Go Go on the Sunset Strip and preparing to record their first album. By then, the admiral and Jim had fallen out, polarized by years of mutual incomprehension and by the father’s harsh dismissal of the son’s career plans. When the Doors made it, Jim told reporters that his parents were dead. Though he had seemed on a career fast track, George S. Morrison never became a 4-star Admiral, and Doors drummer John Densmore believes that Jim’s notorious reputation was a key reason why. The navy, Densmore suggests, was reluctant to give the father of the Doors’ lead singer a higher profile. During Jim’s Miami obscenity trial, his defense team admitted a supportive letter from the admiral in which he vouched for his son’s good character while acknowledging that he had barely spoken with him for years. He had followed Jim’s career, he wrote, “with a mixture of amazement and in the case of Miami, great concern and sorrow.”  Source: www.theamericanconservative.com

Earrings owned by Pamela Courson. "Personally given to my aunt by Pamela Morrison during the last year of Pam's life. Pamela was lonely, troubled and severely addicted to heroin. Unfortunately, my aunt was also addicted to heroin, which is how they became friends. Fortunately, she survived to a much older age than Pam. I met Pam only one time during a vacation to visit my aunt. She was pretty, although she looked older than her true age. I only got to spend not much longer than an hour with her, but I cherish the memory. Pamela was a sweet and engaging person, even with the cursing. As curious as I was, I didn't ask any questions about Jim. My aunt warned me not to. Pamela confided to her that she and Jim had been using heroin the night he died and he probably overdosed. I have never worn the earrings since inheriting them, they are an irreplaceable piece of history and were kept in a safety deposit box." Source: www.ebay.com

According to Tone McGuire (from Toné McGuire Media Productions), it was really a testament to Pamela Courson that, despite the difficulty of her relationship with Jim being a musician, she was always going to be the centerpiece in his heart. I think that Jim at the end (in Paris) had done the wild thing and that he was ready to just wind down with Pamela.  Jim allowed Pamela to use his last name as she saw fit. She used both names, Courson and Morrison, and sometimes wore a ring on the ring finger, one that she chose for herself as a symbol of her taken status. Jim gave her whatever she wanted, and happily, because if Pamela was happy, it meant that he could relax too. 

Pamela lived how she wanted to live (she traveled and stayed in nice hotels and flew first class impulsively), and it was because Jim wanted her to. Tone McGuire had a lot of candid conversations with Jim about Pamela, and Jim really expressed to him that Pamela was his one true half, they just struggled a lot with the scene's lifestyle they experimented. Pam had two brief relationships after Jim's death, with Randy Ralston, whom she met at a restaurant in 1972, and Phil Barnett, a friend of hers and Jim's who she lived with for about six months. Phil Barnett took the last known photo of Pamela before she died.  —Pamela Courson-She Dances In a Ring of Fire 

The surviving Doors must have felt resentment toward Jim Morrison (and probably a fair amount of jealousy) to stand idly by and allow for this "image" to get so out of control, or maybe this was their stupid way of staying on the radar. But "No One Here Gets Out Alive" backfired. Since Jim's camp was more than willing to throw him under the bus it has been open season on him ever since. I truly feel that the problem stems from  "No One Here Gets Out Alive". People who were interviewed for the book, from Jim's family members to Doors producer Paul Rothchild, were very angry about how Jim Morrison came across in what, to me, is Rock's answer to "Mommie Dearest". As Paul Rothchild put it, "The best parts of Jim Morrison are not in there." The book was clearly marketed to appeal to a young audience and it took the story of an unhealthy, deeply unhappy, self-destructive young man and tried to coat it with a gloss of "mystique," and people resent that. Morrison did not have a lot of friends in the industry and was probably the object of a lot of jealousy and resentment. 

Maybe if they had put him in a more accurate context - that he was also a painfully shy, self-conscious, lonely, sensitive, perceptive, intelligent young man who battled depression and other emotional problems on top of alcoholism. They also left out the side of Jim Morrison that has been described as sweet, funny, generous, kind and loving. The part about him standing outside his girlfriend Tandy Martin's window before his family moved. "The dark figure got in the car and disappeared" or something to that effect. They angled everything to make him sound creepy. Jim Morrison was sad about leaving his friends again and was taking one last look at Tandy Martin's window.

The Doors producer Paul Rothchild had this to say about "No One Here Gets Out Alive" and Danny Sugerman: "Danny Sugerman took Jerry Hopkins' original manuscript and destroyed it. Danny didn't interview me, Jerry did. Danny then changed a lot of my interview to HEARSAY that other people did. I am furious about the book, and so is everyone else I've talked to who is quoted in it. It's a great piece of sensationalism, very little of which holds to historical fact. Jim is sensationalized rather spectacularly, and the best parts of Morrison are not there. The only people who come off well in my opinion are the groupies and sycophants who were hanging around the band and close to Danny Sugerman - who was a groupie himself." Also, Sugerman insisted on giving credibility to some nasty, self-professed Pagan witch who basically stalked Jim Morrison and claimed to have had a long term relationship with him and that claim has been proven false many times over. Its hard to find a book that is fair and truthful when it comes to Jim Morrison. —Am I the only one who feels like the Doors have been forgotten by most people? by RiderOntheStorm1969

Researchers find IQ scores dropping since the 1970s: Population intelligence quotients increased throughout the 20th century—a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect—although recent years have seen a slowdown or reversal of this trend in several countries. A pair of researchers with the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Norway has found that IQ test scores have been slowly dropping over the past several decades. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg describe their study and the results they found. They also offer some possible explanations for their findings. Prior studies have shown that people grew smarter over the first part of last century, as measured by the intelligence quotient—a trend that was dubbed the Flynn effect. But, now, according to the researchers in Norway, that trend has ended. Instead of getting smarter, humans have started getting dumber. The increase of scores of general intelligence stopped after the mid-1990s and it's difficult to interpret since these countries have had significant recent immigration from countries with lower average national IQs. During the last century, there is a negative correlation between fertility and intelligence. Sadly, other researchers have found similar results. A British team recently found IQ score results falling by 2.5 to 4.3 points every decade since approximately the end of the second world war. And this past December, another group from the U.S. found that children who grew up eating a lot of fish tended to have higher IQs—and they slept better, too, which is another factor involved in adult intelligence levels. Source: medicalxpress.com

Hollywood's Eve, A Rock-and-Roll Memoir

Hollywood, California, in the 60s and 70s was the cultural capital of America and the world—a movie factory, a music factory, a dream factory. Eve Babitz, the subject of Lili Anolik’s remarkable new book, is Hollywood’s native daughter. "What truly sets Babitz apart from L.A. writers like Joan Didion or Nathanael West is that no matter what cruel realities she might face, a part of her still buys the Hollywood fantasy, feels its magnetic pull as much as that Midwestern hopeful who heads to the coast in pursuit of 'movie dreams.'" Babitz turned herself into the West Coast’s answer to Edie Sedgwick: a groupie with an artistic streak. She designed album covers for Buffalo Springfield and Linda Ronstadt, and seduced Jim Morrison. Throughout Babitz’s stories, there’s an awareness of the dichotomy between the often vapid realities of Los Angeles and the ideals of an authentic Bohemia. Anolik’s dazzling Hollywood’s Eve is many things: a philosophical investigation, a critical appreciation, a sociological study, a cultural commentary, and a noir-style mystery. Hollywood's Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A. will be released on January 8, 2019.

Eve Babitz in L.A. Woman (2015): "Greatness is a disease. That must have been what was wrong with Jim Morrison. His silences were deadly and the fury within him to capture the world's imagination was so dignified and ironical that, like pain, you only remembered what it was like when it was too late." Eve may be LA Woman, inspiration for The Doors song. “Never saw a woman/ So alone”– that’s her. Source: www.amazon.com

“Grace Slick always thought she was ugly,” said Eve Babitz. “But she was certainly gorgeous.” Grace Slick, the Acid Queen of Haight Ashbury, had just as much fun as the guys on the road. “I pretty much nailed anybody that was handy,” she claims. “My only regret is that I didn’t get Jimi Hendrix or Peter O’Toole.” During the legendary Doors/Airplane European tour of 1968, she ended up in Jim Morrison’s bedroom at the Belgravia Hotel, where they romped around and covered each other with strawberries. “Jim Morrison inhabited two places at once, and although there was some pattern of events going on in his head that connected what I’d just said, it never made sense. I’m sure that the people who knew him well must have heard normal dialogue out of him like, “What time does the plane arrive?” But I never heard anything intelligible I could respond to until I was able to see what he was like alone, away from the frantic energy of the music halls. I also wish I could tell you that he came to my room to hustle me. But I was the perpetrator. “Okay if I put this plate on the radiator?” I asked. This was Europe, 1968. No central heating. After I set the plate of  frozen strawberries on the cold radiator, he crawled over the top of the bed. I can play this, I thought, and I relaxed. It wasn’t 9 ½ Weeks with Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke using food as erotic lubricant; it was more like kindergarten play. I was afraid I’d be stepping on that Fantasia tape that seemed to be running in his cranium. This was like making love to a floating art form. I’d never had anyone “study” me like that. He seemed to be appraising the distance between us as if it was an invisible garment that needed to be continually breached with each motion. With our hips joined together and his body moving up and down, if felt like he was taking a moment each time to circle the area between our bodies and consider the space that separated us. At the same time, he was surprisingly gentle. Somehow, I’d expected a sort of frantic horizontal ritual. It’s interesting; the most maniacal guys on stage can be such sublime lovers. He was a well built boy, his cock was slightly larger than average. Jim mystified me with that otherworldly expression, and at the same time, his hips never lost the insistent rolling motion that was driving the dance. 

When Jim did look directly in my face, he seemed to be constantly searching for the expression that might break the lock, as if I might be wearing a disguise. I’m not sure what I mean by that, but I can say that it was both intriguing and disconcerting, waiting for him to ask me if I was someone else – an impostor or a product of his imagination. I dressed as fast as I could, without looking like it was a race. Jim didn’t seem to notice; he appeared to be totally unconscious, just lying there motionless on the bed. But naked, with eyes closed and without moving a muscle from his completely immobile posture, he said, “Why wouldn’t you come back?” Since I hadn’t said anything about coming or going, I didn’t know what he expected to hear, so I went into proper Finch College mode and said, “Only if I’m asked.” He smiled, but never asked. Danny Sugerman said, “You know, Grace, I’m glad you're telling everybody you screwed Jim. You can’t believe the amount of ugly women who’ve claimed to have fucked him.” —Somebody to Love?: A Rock-and-Roll Memoir (1999) by Grace Slick

Judy Huddleston on Jim Morrison: "Like everyone, he had moments of happiness or joy, but clearly he was not happy. On balance, he was more tortured than most--genetics, karma, childhood, alcoholism--whatever the reason. Was he bipolar, borderline psychotic? It was like a switch got flipped, far beyond a regular mood swing." A new peer-reviewed paper (published in the January 2018 issue of ScienceDirect) has shown that possessing a high intellect could be directly linked to several psychological disorders including Depression, Anxiety, ADHD and Autism. The highly intelligent individual has a remarkable capacity for seeing and internalizing vast uncertainties, possibilities, and problems. This gift can either be a catalyst for empowerment and self-actualization or it can be a predictor of dysregulation and debilitation. The study also found that high intelligence could also potentially be linked to almost double the risk associated with autoimmune disease. The study also suggests that an above average IQ could also have a large impact on physical health. *Mood Disorders - National average 9.5% High Intelligence 26.8% *Anxiety Disorders - National average 10.9% High Intelligence 20% *Depressive disorders - National average 6.7% High Intelligence 25.8% Source: www.sciencedirect.com

During 1999–2016, suicide rates increased in nearly every state in America, including >30% increases in 25 states. In 2016, a Harvard University study revealed that 51% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 “don’t support” capitalism—and only 42% support it. So if not capitalism, then what? The study found young people favor socialism, but that’s not the only alternative. There has been an uptick of interest in a 170-year old political system — that dirtiest of C-words. Communism. It’s no secret that the United States doesn’t have the best relationship with communism. Much of this is rooted in the The Red Scare of the 1940s and ’50s, which fueled the Cold War and the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and which had a lasting effect on how people in the U.S. view the political system. Since then, the U.S. government has interfered in multiple countries  in order to weed out communism anywhere it popped up. In any case, in recent months, communist ideology has seemed to catch on with more Americans. The Communist Party USA — a national organization founded in 1919, with 7,000 registered members — has reported a significant spike in interest and membership with 5,000 new members. CPUSA’s international secretary said, “There is growing interest in communist ideas.” The Seattle Communists, a chapter of the Pacific Northwest-based Communist Labor Party, has seen its numbers swell. Further, communists believe that fascism happens when capitalism is under threat. As the economic system becomes unstable, white working class people are directed to blame immigrants and people of color and are steered toward white nationalism. In this sense, simultaneous rises in both far right and far left ideas are inevitable under capitalism.  Source: theestablishment.co

Jim Morrison could be pretty funny at times. He smirked: “Well, in fifty-sixty years this whole set-up is going to collapse. Everybody's gonna lose their money to a bunch of crooked politicians and white-collar criminals. You'll see. And then these guys, let’s call them economists, they're all gonna say finally, ‘Well, Ezra Pound was right!’ And Social Credit will come in." “Well Jim, ya’know Pound was in the nuthouse at Saint Elizabeth's hospital for twelve years.” “So what?” “Well, there’s this charge of Treason.” He cocked his head and gave me a sharp glance. “Sure. His transcripts were censored. And what the fools don't realize is that Pound is a hero and should’ve been given the Congressional Medal of Honor! It's all in code, the broadcasts! It's in cypher! You just gotta know how to figure it out. Pound was a spy for the government and he oughta be decorated." He concluded, “Everybody else thinks you’re a communist or whatever. Actually, you're a patriot. So Pound was doomed – unless he played ball with the Government. Of course, he could have stayed right here in America, but that's what makes him such a hero.” “Well, why didn't all this come out at the trial?” “Because, by 1946, when the troops arrested Pound, Roosevelt was dead, and Truman didn't know anything about the code." And there he had me. “Well, why didn't Pound say anything after they put him in the nut house, Jim?” “Because the U.S. Military put him in that cage in Pisa and he went bonkers. This was a case of state security. It's as plain as day.” 

Jim Morrison could be oddly patriotic. “Dostoyevsky said, the Russian hates freedom. Those fuckers wouldn't know what to make of it. Like a primitive man under an open sky gone crazy from the light. The Politician, one of the two examples of the ‘secular Priest’, becomes the consummate actor of our day,” Jim said. “What's the other example?” “The Psychiatrist. According to Freud, the future of illusion needed secularization.” I said: “Your Mr. Pound said that Rome was destroyed by its Rhetoriticians.” “The Rhetoriticians took over when the Romans lost their Poets. Rhetoric is just another word for politics,” said Jim: “Politicians are too shrewd to be neurotic, by and large. Greed so wonderfully concentrates a man’s mind.”—"Summer with Morrison: The Early Life and Times of James Douglas Morrison, A Memoir" (2011) by Dennis C. Jakob

RIP Jerry Hopkins, Before the End

Jerry Hopkins (RIP): "Oliver Stone bought the rights to my book, and he bought the rights to my research material, which were essentially the transcripts to 200 interviews I had done. That was the extent of my involvement in the film. I have mixed feelings about the movie. Mainly that it was so one-sided. I knew Morrison. I knew him to be a man who had a sense of humor about himself. He was a man of staggering intelligence. He read enormously, and he remembered everything he read. The man put things together in an interesting manner, and he was a great conversationalist. Very little of that comes out in the movie. Forty percent of the movie is sheer fiction. Stone merged characters. He ignored chronology. It was Stone writing his version of the sixties. Hollywood never has let the facts get in the way of a good story. People credit Rolling Stone with inventing gonzo journalism but Hollywood was way ahead of them. The way Hollywood portrays the American West wasn't the way it was. Oliver was just being Oliver. He is a terrific filmmaker. What bothers me most about Stone is that most young people today use movies as their major information sources and he knows it. If they get misinformation from the film they won't even bother to crosscheck with a book. Oliver's dishonesty and he is not alone in this, is a disservice to young people whose ideas are formed by what they see in the movies." Source: scottmurray.info

Letter from Jeff Finn for one 'not a fan' of Jim Morrison: At any rate, after 32 years of researching Jim’s life and interviewing his family, friends and lovers, I’ve come away with a vastly different picture of Morrison than the mainstream media have painted. Jim was not the narcissistic, tantrum-throwing, raging drunk/man-child Oliver Stone would have said media and everyone else believe. Keep in mind Stone, after Alain Ronay asked him why he chose not to portray Jim the way he really was [displaying warmth, humor, etc, in addition to his darker moments], was said to have replied with a grin: “Because the truth doesn’t sell.” According to Ronay, Jim was chockfull of the nuances of humanity, as opposed to the one-dimensional, fallen rock god-cum-buffoon to which he’s been reduced by former fans such as yourself. So, imagine if you will: Jim was an actual human being, riddled with complexity. Did he hit bottom? Yes. But he also lived and breathed and flourished in stark contrast to the totally self-absorbed, drunken/stoned-24/7 human cartoon Stone chose to depict, an image that has deeply tainted Jim’s legacy. Hence the making of my documentary in general and my response to your reply in particular.

We ALL have levels of “healthy” narcissism, some healthier than others, but you seem to imply Jim had full-blown Narcissistic Personality Disorder which, to my knowledge, is a rather rare condition (between 0.5-1% of the general population). And I’m not trying to paint Jim as some goddamn saint, but nearly all those I interviewed refuted the notion that he had NPD, or that he was even a “narcissist.” Narcissists, by nature, are uninterested in anyone but themselves. Jim, conversely, is said to have been vastly interested in others. But say for the sake of argument Jim did have NPD. Would that then have entitled the New Haven police to beat the hell out of him on December 9, 1967? That’s apparently the case - as per your cruel logic. Now, the way I see it, Jim’s real “crime" that night was daring to stand up to a New England cop [who'd been hired to protect Jim & The Doors!]. From what I’ve gathered, the cop flaunted his ego, along with his Mace, and that resulted in ABUSE OF POWER and POLICE BRUTALITY.

All this begs the question: Whose side are you on, man? Jim Morrison, who used his MIND to help evolve the Free Speech movement and help Rock & Roll come of age or the New Haven Police Department, a corrupt gang of thugs who apparently chose to overcompensate for their insecurities by using their FISTS to pound on a skinny 145-lb singer already half-blinded by their Mace? I will end by paraphrasing a quote from Henry Rollins: “There is no existential threat to the police that rivals what the police inflict upon themselves.” I find your lack of compassion disturbing and indicative of the mass apathy that’s sweeping the U.S. BEFORE THE END documentary is in the process of being shopped to the major streaming services (Netflix, Amazon). A DVD release is in the works as well. ~ Jeff Finn

The Doors: Waiting for the Sun's 50th Anniversary

Jim Morrison had a deep, almost classical baritone, and when accompanied by the Doors' rhapsodic garage ensemble, he lent a unique, mesmeric clarity to the primordial yearnings of the late ’60s. He was also the first superstar hippie with an aura of pre-counterculture masculinity. There was nothing remotely smiley or reassuring about Morrison. Mostly, though, Oliver Stone's film wants to be an intimate portrait of Morrison. And that’s where Stone’s frenzied, one-thing-after-another approach takes its toll. As docudramas go, The Doors is more docu than drama: It simply presents Morrison’s life and dissolution, bottle by bottle, without really giving us a peek into his soul. Stone essentially buys into the star’s myth about himself. Then the movie undercuts the myth by showing us, in agonizing detail, what the booze did to him. Morrison’s fatalistic yearnings seem to touch a responsive chord in Stone. Lying dead in his Paris bathtub, Morrison has a transcendent smile. Stone doesn’t pretend to know whether Morrison did break on through to the other side. But the flashes of brilliance in the film exert a powerful hold. Forty years after his death, Jim Morrison can still convince an audience that he’s onto something. Whatever one can say about Morrison’s method toward revelation, the truth is it ultimately destroyed him. Source: hiphappy.com

"I was born to sail away to touch the land of my dreams but evil winds filled my sails and finally I lost my way. The ship run aground of my life and now, I lie here broken, helpless." —Jim Morrison

Break On Through: The Life and Death of Jim Morrison, (ekindle, 2014) by James Riordan and Jerry Prochnicky, reveals how Morrison overdosed on Pam Courson's heroin. This is, without a doubt, the most thoroughly researched book on Jim Morrison and the Doors yet to be published, and reveals Danny Sugerman's No One Here Gets Out Alive for the puerile, fawning mess it is. But it is less the star and more the martyr that surfaces here, with gruesome accounts of Morrison being beaten by cops, lambasted by finicky critics, verbally abused by audiences, and emotionally drained by a neurotic girlfriend. The story is that Morrison was a failed visionary, and that "I can do anything" was the shallow, desperate boast of a man already fallen off the edge on which he so loved to live. The tragedy of Jim Morrison—who, like all sacrificial media gods, will always be young; that's why we love to kill them—is that he destroyed himself in full view of millions, and no one did a thing to stop him. Source: www.stereophile.com

Waiting for the Sun was the third studio album by The Doors, recorded from February to May 1968 and released in July 1968. It became the band's first and only No. 1 album, spawning their second US number one single, "Hello, I Love You". Waiting for the Sun contains two songs with military themes: "Five to One" and "The Unknown Soldier". In his 1980 Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive, Jerry Hopkins speculates the song seems to be a parody of all the naive revolutionary rhetoric heard on the streets spouted by the "hippie/flower child" hordes, an interpretation strongly supported by the final verse "Your ballroom days are over, baby." Waiting for the Sun was praised by James Riordan as The Doors' best album with no complaints about its brevity. Sal Cinquemani of Slant magazine wrote: "Despite the fact that Morrison was becoming a self-destructing mess, Krieger,  Manzarek and Densmore were never more lucid – perhaps to compensate. This was a band at its most dexterous, creative, and musically diverse..."

I’m With the Band, the classic confessional of Pamela Des Barres’s sexual and romantic escapades with a cacophony of rock stars, is republished in a 30th anniversary edition this month. In bracing detail, the woman born Pamela Miller in Reseda, California, details her high jinks on the Sunset Strip of late-60s and early-70s Los Angeles. “I was the muse,” she adds, “and I don’t care what people say about that. Groupies enhanced these people’s lives in a huge way. And if it weren’t for us, they would not be who they are.” Mick Jagger was asked once in Rolling Stone what he thought of Des Barres' book. He said he had no problem with it: ‘I was there.’ “Jimi Hendrix hit on me and it’s impossible to describe his charisma, it was huge,” she said. “I didn’t sleep with him though — I was only 17 and way too young.” But Miss Pamela didn’t think twice when it came to Jim Morrison, although she only went to second base with The Doors front man. Source: www.nme.com

'An Alternate History': Jim Morrison & Pamela

A prolific groupie who counts Jimmy Page among her former lovers has said her drug-fuelled sexual encounters empowered women. Pamela Des Barres says the Led Zeppelin guitarist was a 'true love' but also had flings with The Who's Keith Moon and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. The 69-year-old believes she was a positive role model to younger women. Whether it was watching Elvis sat between Jimmy and his band's frontman Robert Plant, or sitting on stage watching the legendary guitarist entertain 80,000 fans, she had a front row seat for the rock 'n' roll antics of the 1960s.

As she promotes the republication of her now 30-year-old memoirs I'm With The Band, she told The Sun: 'Sitting on Jimmy’s amp, I almost felt like one of the group. Girls in the audience looked up at me and wondered which one I was sleeping with, and I was so proud. Any woman who gets out there, looks on stage and goes after someone who inspires her, that is the ultimate feminist act, surely?' she said. "People ask me the #MeToo’ question a lot, I had #MeToo’ stories growing up–but not with musicians. I was never harmed. I considered myself a feminist." One man who couldn't charm Pamela into bed was Jimi Hendrix, for whom she performed in a short film dancing around his band. She said the impossibly charismatic guitarist hit on her but she felt she was too young to sleep with him at the age of 17. 

But the same year Pamela hooked up with The Doors frontman Jim Morrison after hearing his song The End playing from a nearby building. She went to his house to find him singing along to his own record while standing shirtless next to his fridge in leather trousers. Pamela recalls 'making out passionately' and described the singer as the most beautiful man she has ever seen.

In 1973 Pamela called time on her groupie lifestyle, but married singer Michael Des Barres. They divorced in 1991 after having a child, Nicholas, in 1978. The former groupie is believed to be the inspiration for the 2000 film Almost Famous, but Pamela wasn't impressed with the movie. Pamela, who now lives alone in LA, identifies as a Christian and squares the religion's moral dogma with her promiscuous past by describing orgasms as 'godly'. Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

In the early 60's both Jack Kerouac and Jim Morrison were living in the Clearwater, Florida area, a time in Kerouac’s life that he was hitting local bars with an entourage of teenage admirers. It’s tempting to imagine a teenage Jim Morrison sharing a beer with Kerouac, but no such meeting has ever been mentioned. At the time Morrison was known to be extremely shy, a few years before when the Morrison’s lived in San Francisco Morrison went to the City Lights Bookstore while poet-owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti was there and Morrison was too shy to approach him. 

Jim Morrison 'An Alternate History' by Jim Cherry: In Beat poet Michael McClure Jim Morrison found a kindred poetic spirit and a productive relationship, but not at first. McClure and Morrison first met in New York while McClure was rehearsing his play “The Beard.” Both men were drinking and had an immediate dislike for each other. That hurdle seems to have been overcome by the time The Doors went to play their European tour. Morrison ran into McClure and invited him over to read some of his poetry. McClure was soon encouraging Morrison to get his poetry self-published it. By 1969 Morrison was impressed by McClure’s novel “The Adept” which had themes and settings in common with Morrison’s. They rented an office in a Hollywood building and worked on a screenplay of “The Adept” but because of its lack of cohesion was rejected by an agent, and the two went on to other projects. 

One of the most frequently asked questions among Doors fans, is what would Jim Morrison be doing if he hadn't died? July 3, 1971, 4am, Paris, France. Jim Morrison wakes up after falling asleep in the bathtub after a night of drinking. Morrison wraps himself in a warm robe and goes back to bed. As he gets into bed he’s careful not to wake Pam. August 1971. He comes to the conclusion that although he’s feeling better he can’t recreate the creative burst he felt on Venice Beach six years earlier. Morrison adopts the same discipline he had when working with Michael McClure. Morrison, gaining creative confidence and control, decides to accede to Pam Courson’s wishes that she and Jim have a normal life. He buys an old church in the French countryside that will be renovated into their home. In the meantime Morrison wanting to finish ‘old business’ works on his manuscript of Observations While on Trial in Miami. The book is observational as well as philosophical with a surrealist edge to it and provides a look into the American judicial system of the time. It becomes an underground hit and is considered by many to be one of the last great writings of the 1960’s counterculture movement.

The producers of Altered States see Morrison and are so impressed they want him to star in their movie. Morrison, familiar with the Paddy Chayefsky novel and seeing this as a chance to advance his film career agrees to play the lead as long as he can direct. Morrison argues that based on past experiences he has some insight into the subject matter and he throws in the use of a Doors song as well. The producers agree and Jim Morrison stars in and directs Altered States which is released in 1980... As I was writing this a sense of sadness overcame me for what could have been. Jim Morrison’s talents were many and his potential was within his grasp all he had to do was find a way. Source: medium.com

Maybe intellectuals have always been persecuted and shoved in lockers, but today we are at a specially low point — where social media interaction has replaced genuine debate and political discourse, where politicians are judged by whether we’d want to have a beer with them, where scientific consensus is rejected, where culture is underfunded, where journalism is drowning in celebrity gossip. Jim Morrison wouldn't fit well in our era of celebrated mediocrity, that's sure. Pamela Courson was the muse who inspired many of Jim Morrison's songs and poems like "Love Street," "Queen of the Highway," or "Twentieth Century Fox." Morrison began his relationship with Pamela Courson in 1966 when they met during one of the first appearances of the Doors at “London Fog”. She was born in Weed, California and grew up in an area south of L.A., Orange County (Morrison dedicated a piece to her called “Orange County Suite” even at the time it was never published officially). Pam was studying art at L.A. City College and couldn’t wait to explore the big city (in particular the Sunset Strip zone).

Morrison was touched by the sweetness of Pamela, her warm smile and her apparent defencelessness. It didn’t take long for the two to fall in love and so began a relationship which, although it had its ups and downs, was marked by a sense of profound complicity. The main characteristic of their relationship was clearly expressed in the words of the song “Queen of the Highway”. Pam was the princess and Jim was the monster dressed in black leather. Pam was often present at studio recording sessions of the Doors. Jim often used to joke and improvise during the sessions: an example can be heard in “Five To One”, in which Jim repeats both at the beginning and end of the song the words “Love my girl”; no doubt these words were meant for Pam who was sitting in some corner of the studio. Jim in Pamela had finally found his other half.  Source: www.doorscollectors.com

"Danny Says", Jim Morrison & Pamela Courson

Danny Fields was instrumental in the stardom of some of the biggest bands in the ’60s and ’70s from The Stooges to the Ramones to The Doors, acting as a manager, a publicity director, and a writer and editor of such popular magazines as 16.  Fields was everywhere, so much so that his biography might read more like a who’s-who list of the music world. The film starts with some rapid-fire interviews from music legends such as Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper. Then we are taken back and formally introduced to Danny Fields. At Elektra Records he worked with The Doors and was instrumental in signing such artists as MC5 and The Stooges. After being fired from Elektra he became the manager for the Ramones. But as the film shifts into Fields’ time in the music industry, the focus zooms between micro stories about Jim Morrison, Nico, Edie Sedgwick, MC5, and the insane Iggy Pop. Danny Fields: 'I was The Doors’ first press agent in New York. Jim Morrison hated me from then on, because I restricted him. He asked the president of the record company to fire me. God, we hated each other.' But, while these stories are fascinating glimpses into the antics of the icons of the era, they seem to have very little to do with Fields other than the fact that he was there, trying his best to make records sell and prevent everyone from overdosing. And these stories seem to unravel chronologically, moving ever forward through the ups and downs, with no real structure in sight.  Source: waytooindie.com

Feast of Friends (The Doors Tribute & More) will perform at The Cutting Room, 44 E 32nd St, New York, New York 10016 on Saturday, June 9, 2018 at 9:00pm. Feast of Friends captures elements of the bands studio sound and fuses that with the epic improvisational jams that shaped the bands live performances. FoF perform a variety of songs from The Doors historic catalog ranging from 1967 to 1971. You'll hear all the greatest hits and psychedelic deep cuts, plus a unique twist as FoF also include their original music reminiscent of The Doors unmistakable sound into their set lists. Advance tickets available here: Source: tickets.thecuttinggroomnyc.com

If you timeline Patricia Kennealy's "Strange Days" and compare with The Doors schedule you will find that Miss Kennealy spent less than a week and a half with Jim Morrison -- days, not even a month, let alone a year. Angels Dance and Angels Die by Patricia Butler is the bane of her existence and her worst nightmare because it is utterly incompatible with her narrative. Not only is it about Jim Morrison’s love relationship with Pamela, but it describes her as “Pamela Morrison” and people who read this book find it totally plausible and assume it as Morrison's only true relationship. Jerry Hopkins wrote a foreword for Angels Dance and Angels Die, and in it he says all the things that Patricia wants the world to not hear: Hopkins calls Pamela Jim’s “cosmic mate” and “common-law-wife,” saying Butler’s book should be “the final word on the matter,” praising Butler’s work ethic. Hopkins compares Jim & Pam to Heloise and Abelard, and Romeo and Juliet. Also he writes: “thereby, finally, giving Pamela Susan Morrison the consideration she deserves,” and “I believe The Doors sometimes resented Pam’s presence in Jim’s life, because she was a recurring voice that urged him to leave the band and turn his full attention on writing.” Finally Hopkins talks about how he had met Pam about a year before her death, waxes eloquent about her beauty and even chastises Oliver Stone for his depiction of her in the film The Doors. 

Alain Ronay, Jim Morrison's photographer friend, said of Pamela Courson: “She is practically his real wife.” Jim Morrison on Pamela Courson in Circus magazine (1970): "There are no words to describe my relationship with her, but no matter what we did to each other, we always found our way back and now our love is stronger than ever." Morrison's final will and testament reads: "To whom it may concern I bequeath all of my worldly possessions to my only companion in life, Pamela Susan Courson..." Source: satireknight.wordpress.com

Lou Reed's poetry book, Jerry Lewis' trauma

'We are the people who are desperate beyond emotion': Lou Reed's lost poetry to be published for the first time. The verses “We are the people who have known only lies and desperation. We are the people without a country, a voice, or a mirror. We are the crystal gaze returned through the density and immensity of a berserk nation” belong to the poetry volume Do Angels Need Haircuts? (80 pages), published by Anthology Editions on May 1, 2018. It was Anne Waldman who facilitated Reed's first significant reading, on March 10th, 1971, at the Poetry Project, which she ran out of St. Mark's Church just around the corner from The Dom, on Second Avenue and 10th Street. The pieces Reed read that evening, along with bits of his introductions transcribed from an archival recording, form the core of Do Angels Need Haircuts? Bettye Kronstad was in the audience the night of his reading. Having quit the Velvets, Reed began dating Bettye, a young college student with no ties to the downtown scene. They had bagels for brunch and Chinese for dinner with his parents. He told her he was thinking of quitting music to pursue writing. He'd sent out a love poem for Kronstad to The Harvard Advocate magazine. Reed's widow Laurie Anderson explains her relationship to these poems: 'I got to spend twenty-one years with Lou. I married him. It wasn't until a lot later that I fell in love with the young bad boy Lou. He was dead by then and I read his poems. Now he is my muse.' Source: www.rollingstone.com

Jerry Lewis' father Danny would show up at the office or on a set, and Jerry would immediately shrivel into a depression. Bogdanovich witnessed this exchange between the two of them in 1962 on the set of It’s Only Money, recalling that “every time his father came into the studio, he went into a funk. I remember producer Perry Cross practically had sentries out: ‘If you see Danny Lewis coming, slap him in irons.’” Jerry Lewis was also depressed about the bad reviews of The Bell Boy (1960) and when he ran into Wilder, the director told Jerry why the town was against him. "The only reason that they're talking is that they can't do it. And the thing they hate more than anything is that you're doing it and you're showing them they can't." —"Billy Wilder, Movie-Maker: Critical Essays on the Films" (2010) by Karen McNally 

According to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology, performing artists who experienced more abuse, neglect or family dysfunction in childhood tend to have a more intense creative process. “This study reflects years of dedicated research. In general, the performing artists in our sample who experienced a high amount of trauma may suffer more pathology but they also thrive with heightened experiences and value the creative process as a healing and meaningful component in their lives.” The artists with more childhood adversity were more likely to be more fantasy prone, experience more shame and anxiety, and had experienced more traumatic events. Perfectionism is a risk factor for suicide ideation but probably does not indicate a further risk for attempting suicide. Thomson said future research will examine the physical health of artists with a history of trauma. Source: www.psypost.org

Jerry Lewis Collection, 1950s Homes

Paramount Home Media Distribution has assembled a collection of 10 classic movies starring the late comedian Jerry Lewis and will release the 10-disc set on DVD only on June 12. The marquee title is 1963’s The Nutty Professor, which celebrates its 55th anniversary this year. Considered by many to be Lewis’ most memorable film, The Nutty Professor has Lewis portraying a socially awkward professor who invents a serum that turns him into the handsome but obnoxious Buddy Love. The film was included on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 funniest American films of all time. The 10-DVD set also includes the following: The Stooge (1951)—Features one of Lewis’ earliest pairings with Dean Martin as a musical-comedy duo, The Delicate Delinquent (1956), The Bellboy (1960), Cinderfella (1960), The Errand Boy (1961), The Ladies Man (1961), The Disorderly Orderly (1964), The Patsy (1964) and The Family Jewels (1965). Source: www.mediaplaynews.com

Not only Jerry Lewis played the irrepressible big kid to Dean Martin's smooth crooner, there was also a generational gap between both in regard to gender dynamics. Whereas Martin—who bridled over his role as Lewis’s stooge—represented the old heterosexist guard, Lewis was a cultural pioneer by breaking up (at least on film) with the Fifties's rigid concepts of male/female courtship. Although Martin was the official ladies' man of the duo, Lewis also provoked odd feelings of attraction on the bobby soxers generation. Liz Renay, showgirl and Marilyn Monroe look-alike who became Mickey Cohen's lover, was remarkably discreet in discussing her association with Jerry Lewis in her biography My Face for the World to See (2002). Another of his dalliances was with fashion model Lynn Dixon in the early 1950s. She was introduced to Lewis by Milton Berle and their affair  lasted from 1949-1952.

Information gathered by psychologist Lewis Terman in the 1930s showed that of women born before 1890, 13.5 percent had sexual intercourse before marriage. Social research showed that heterosexual intimacy had become common among unmarried youth. For those born in the decade after 1900, the figure rose to 50 percent, with an even higher percentage for women born in the following decade. By 1930 only 12 percent of white married women worked, and limitations upon married women working became even greater during the Depression. Studies during the 1920s and 1930s by physicians, psychiatrists, and sociologists supported the changing values of the new morality and stressed the importance of sexual pleasure within marriage. Studies of different middle-class populations from the late 1920s found large majorities of married couples using some form of contraception on a regular basis. Behaviorist John Watson noted the pervasive presence of sexual themes in the culture of the day—movies, novels, newspapers, and magazines. As a consequence, "'Virtue,' 'purity' in the old sense, rarely exist and are not even considered desirable. But new values are coming into vogue: individuality—clear-sightedness—independence in thought and action."

Wini Breines explores white middle class America and argues that mixed messages given to girls during the 1950s lent fuel to the fire that would later become known as Feminism. Researchers at the University of Arkansas have discovered that though straight partners have sex more often, bisexual and lesbian women have more orgasms – by far. They found that heterosexual men “usually always orgasmed when sexually intimate,” doing so 95 percent of the time. In contrast, straight women orgasm in just 65 percent of cases. They found that women were 33 percent more likely to orgasm when they were having sex with another woman. Dr Kristen Jozkowski said: “Sex that includes more varied sexual behaviour results in women experiencing more orgasms”. Sex between women “was excitingly diversified,” she explained.

The postwar boom led to government policies that helped multiply homeownership rates from roughly 40 percent at the end of the war to 60 percent during the second half of the 20th century. According to Harvard professor and urban planning historian Alexander von Hoffman, a combination of two government initiatives—the establishment of the Federal Housing Authority and the Veterans Administration (VA) home loans programs—served as runways for first-time homebuyers. Initially created during the ’30s, the Federal Housing Authority guaranteed loans as long as new homes that would create the modern mortgage market. An analysis of housing and mortgage data from 1960 by Leo Grebler, a renowned professor of urban land economics at UCLA, demonstrates the pronounced impact of these programs. In 1950, FHA and VA loans accounted for 51 percent of the 1.35 million home starts across the nation. These federal programs would account for anywhere between 30 and 51 percent of housing starts between 1951 and 1957, according to Grebler’s analysis.

Between 1953 and 1957, 2.4 million units were started under these programs, using $3.6 billion in loans. With the U.S. Treasury backing home loans and protecting lenders from defaults, the risk of a bad loan plummeted. Floodgates of capital opened, reshaping land on the periphery of cities. Mortgage rates were incredibly low during the suburban boom of the ’50s and ’60s. In 1960, the average mortgage rate was 5.1 percent. In 1950 alone, suburban growth was 10 times that of central cities, and the nation’s builders registered 2 million housing starts. By the end of the decade, 15 million homes were under construction across the country. And during that decade, as the economy expanded rapidly and interstate roads took shape, residential development in the suburbs accounted for 75 percent of total U.S. construction. Many of these new homes, large-scale, tract-style construction, were built with the backing of various government financing programs, and became available to a much broader cross section of society. “A much larger percentage of homes on the market in the ’50s were new homes, and they are much more expensive in relation to income now than they were then,” says Michael Carliner, a housing economist at Harvard. 1.2 million homes were started across the country in 2017. But adjusted for both an increased population as well as the large drop seen during the recent Great Recession, these numbers appear anemic, the lowest number per capita in 60 years. And unlike the postwar building spree, fewer new homes can be considered affordable starter homes. Builders say the combination of land, labor, and material costs makes affordable homes impossible, and only more expensive models offer enough of a profit margin. Source: www.curbed.com

Happy Anniversary, Jayne Mansfield! Jerry Lewis (Movie Stars of the 1950s): Larger than Life

Frank Tashlin made a couple of bizarre films with Jayne Mansfield, who one might argue was a cartoon version of 20th Century Fox’s other zaftig blonde, Marilyn Monroe. Mansfield’s first real success had been in the Broadway version of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and her part was an explicit parody of Monroe. Her first film with Tashlin at Fox was The Girl Can’t Help It, which includes many early stars of rock and roll, like Fats Domino, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. As the critic Dave Kehr pointed out in his article for The New York Times: "The most absurd figure in Tashlin's films is not the heavy-bosomed blonde but the pathetic male in a pure, helpless state of arousal, continually provoked by the eroticized environment that surrounds him." Jayne Mansfield became a living cartoon of nuclear-powered 50’s femininity in “The Girl Can’t Help It”; Jerry Lewis was her polar opposite, a frightened kid trembling on the edge of a hormonal explosion. In 1956 Mansfield and Lewis had appeared together in Las Vegas, posing with a cake at the Sands Hotel's fourth anniversary celebration. Mansfield was beautiful and curvaceous but possessed comic timing and a sympathetic warmth that many other bombshells couldn't--still can't--muster. Tashlin's films have been somewhat neglected in the US, in part because of his close association with Jerry Lewis. “Decades before postmodernism became fashionable, Tashlin was gleefully constructing a world of simulacra and surfaces in which images refer only to other images and characters cobble their identities from mass media and pop culture.” Frank Tashlin died in 1972, but the world he satirized 50 years ago is still with us, in some ways more than ever. Source: www.moviediva.com

"I remember as a kid, having dreams at nights of becoming a superclown and saving the world from terrible troubles"  —Jerry Lewis

Especially as he gained more control over his movies, Jerry Lewis offered up truly schizophrenic characters. An unleashed maniac offering episodes of comedic anarchy as it can barely contain itself is the core character. But Lewis wants you to love this maniac and know he has the soul of a poet. He establishes this with scenes so mawkish that their pumped-up sugar drools out the sides of the screen. On the one hand, he is a force of nature maniacally destructive and sputteringly out of control. The plots of many of the Lewis films are simple: The Bellboy -- Lewis is amok in a hotel; The Ladies' Man -- amok in an all-girls' boarding house; Who's Minding the Store? -- amok in a department store. On the other, he is a tormented soul, a wounded butterfly, a romantic, an emotionally stunted child. Jim Carrey, however, never looks back in his offensive routines. If you've always wondered what it was about Jerry Lewis that sent the French into ecstasy and the loyal fan screaming, check him out in The Disorderly Orderly. If it leaves you cold, venture no further into Lewis land. —Scanlines (1999) by Louis Black for The Austin Chronicle

Jerry Lewis was a challenging and enigmatic figure long before the French got their hands on him. Although the merits of Jerry Lewis's self-directed films have been hotly debated, comparatively little attention has been paid to the highly successful 1950s films that made possible his move into film directing. Lewis first met Dean Martin in August 1944 when they were signed as individual attractions at New York's Glass Hat Club. Martin was the headliner, while Lewis played his record act and served as master of ceremonies. That's My Boy (1951) had a serious-minded story that anticipates such melodramas of masculine crisis as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Tea and Sympathy (1956), and Home from the Hill (1960). The film's plot deals with questions of how to be a man, and how to be a man among men, with Lewis playing a characteristic psychoneurotic cowed by a hyper-athletic father but finding solace in the sheltering embrace of Martin's gentle buddy. The Stooge (1952) offers the most dramatically sustained exploration of the two-man relationship, with its intermingling of affection and hostility, togetherness and difference. The promise of their union coexisted with a strong awareness that the competition between the two men, and between their distinctive talents, always threatened to rend the partnership asunder. News of Dean Martin's dissatisfaction began to filter into the public arena during the troubled production of 3 Ring Circus. Lewis reported: "During the filming Dean kept blowing his top at me and everyone else, saying he was fed up to the ears playing a stooge.... It developed into psychological warfare for the balance of the picture". Their partnership was clearly on a downward spiral. Reported schisms and rumor-mongering made it difficult for audiences to believe that their freewheeling, fun-loving act was grounded in authentic feeling. 

The Spring 2018 FILMS OF THE GOLDEN AGE is out! Articles: The Five Lane Sisters, Jerry Lewis Part I (by Charles Tranberg), James Mason, Kaye Ballard, Tom Tyler, SHANE (1953), SECRETS OF THE FRENCH POLICE (1932), and the regular feature OVERLOOKED IN HOLLYWOOD (profiles on Lester Vail, Mary Nolan, Lewis Wilson, Peggy Conklin, Rebel Randall, and Paul Page). Charles Tranberg: People might have found Dean Martin more handsome but I would say that is probably true that Jerry Lewis was "cuter." Ironically, despite of Martin being the official heartthrob of the duo, Shawn Levy hints in The King of Comedy (1997) that Jerry Lewis had the most active sexual life, since Martin's seduction game often worked on a superficial level. Lewis himself had confessed to Levy: "I never could stay mad at women, because I had a high sex drive."

When the end came in 1956 the masquerade was over. While he could win over popular audiences, the new Jerry Lewis who rose with such untimely haste from the ashes of the beloved entertainment team met with a remarkably hostile reception from cultural tastemakers. Attacks on his aspirations and abilities were to become commonplace in the press long before "the French" staked their claim to him. The opposition grew more vocal as Lewis explored territories barred to the simple funnyman of old. By the end of the decade he was not just one of the best beloved of American entertainers; he was also just about the most reviled. Films such as The Caddy, Scared Stiff, The Stooge, and Living It Up had teased with the Lewis figure's status as a harassed misfit, but the team's partnership dynamic had always trammeled the poignancy. Unshackled from his quarrelsome partner, Lewis was free to use his familiar Idiot/Kid figure to develop a more extended treatment of the comic misfit as a beleaguered outcast questing for acceptance. Lewis contextualized the traumatic breakup of Martin within a bionarrative of abandonment that stretched back to his lonely childhood. Lewis fleshed out this biographical narrative in an article by journalist Bill Davidson: "I've Always Been Scared," shortly after the partnership folded, in February 1957. This article exposed a bruised sensitivity cowering in the shadow of the manic clown. "All my life," Lewis declares, "I've been afraid of being alone". In a story he would repeat, Lewis portrays himself as a pathetic outsider who deploys the mask of comedy as a protective shield. Seeking love and acceptance via the showbiz success his father never attained, Lewis is compelled to win the substitute gratifications of applause and laughter: "If I could make people laugh, I thought, they'd like me and let me be with them". 

The psychological narrative articulated by these articles highlights the degree to which Lewis's star image occupied a very different constellation from the carefree zany of old. Whereas earlier publicity stressed the congruence between the onstage and offstage selves of Martin and Lewis, Lewis's solo career instituted a strategic opposition between the "real" man alone and the onscreen comic misfit. "It may be," offers Look magazine, "that audiences are drawn to him because they see or sense the real Jerry, the lonely man of many complexes" ("Always in a Crowd-Always Alone," 1958). The director of six Martin and Lewis pictures and two of Lewis's solo films Norman Taurog told Arthur Marx: "In the beginning, he was a doll. He listened, did what I told him, and didn't bother anyone. Then one day I noticed him looking through the camera between takes and starting to make suggestions to Lyle Gregg, our cameraman, on things he had no business making suggestions about: how high a crane to put the camera on, or what kind of lens to use.... I used to tell him, 'For God's sake, Jerry, why do you want to waste your energy doing things other people are getting paid for? Nobody goes to a Martin and Lewis movie because you directed a scene. They go because it says on the marquee-Jerry Lewis in so and so; not Jerry Lewis, cameraman. Save your energy for acting'."

The Delicate Delinquent flaunts Lewis's allegiance to the youth audience. At the same time, it also distances him from the energetic and rebellious excess that marked his earlier performances. Rather than abandoning himself to the delights of sheer abandon, Lewis's delicate delinquent, Sydney Pythias, is searching (literally) for direction. Mistaken for a gang member after a street rumble, the good natured orphan is hauled off to the neighborhood precinct house, where he encounters patrolman Mike Damon (McGavin). A reformed juvenile offender himself, Damon has a mission to save slum kids from criminal temptations. Sydney is perfect for such rehabilitation as he lacks social and familial ties, or any other external context of self-definition. "How does a guy know what he wants to be?" he asks Damon. "Especially somebody like me? I'll tell you what I am-I'm a nowhere." Sydney's eventual success suggests that a good heart will eventually triumph over insecurity and sheer ineptitude. For Bosley Crowther, Sydney's characteristically Lewisian eccentricities sat rather uncomfortably with the idealized authority he is allowed at the end of this "serious-message comedy": "Mr. Lewis runs a gamut from Hamlet to clown. Mr. Lewis, trying to act hard like a man, trying to fit odd-shaped blocks into odd-shaped holes, is a delirious comedian. The good intention of his message may be missed in this eccentricity."

Robert Kass suggested in Films in Review that Lewis emblematized the otherness of "young America gone berserk". From a more celebratory perspective, J. Hoberman proposes that "the young Jerry was America's id. His every cute outburst threatened to escalate into loss of control; the sight of his big mouth promised a kind of ecstatic self-annihilation" ("The Nutty Retrospective," Village Voice, 15 December 1988). The uncontrolled eruptions of Lewis's body connected with the rebellious stirrings of a nascent youth culture, which would itself erupt into national and international consciousness with the primal beat of rock 'n' roll. As Karal Ann Marling argues, "Like Elvis, Jerry Lewis seemed rebellious because he wouldn't stand still; he both projected and aroused strong emotion through motion". —Larger Than Life / Movie Stars of the 1950s: Jerry Lewis (2010) by Frank Krutnik