The incredibly hard to find
"Visit To A Small Planet" was a broadway play written by the masterful author Gore Vidal! The theme music was written by the amazing composer Leigh Harline, who started his career way back in 1933 on the Walt Disney Silly Symphony cartoon short entitled "Father Noah's Ark" and wrote the score for Disney's "Pinocchio" and also "Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs" among a hoarde of other titles!
It's the perfect vehicle for the antics of Jerry Lewis, France's other American film hero besides Eddie Constantine!!
Because it was written as a play, the whole beginning of the film looks and feels like a 1960's TV sitcom with a lot of familiar TV faces!
Jerry, as Kreton comes to earth to explore and play around. Being a master of space and time, he was headed for the civil war era and dressed appropiately, but his calculations were off and he lands in the 1960's right when all these folks are getting ready to go to a costume party. Kreton elbows Lee Patrick as Rheba Spelding while daughter Ellen portrayed by Joan Blackman watches!
TV stalwart Gale Gordon is the nosey neighbor Bob Mayberry, and if he looks familiar, it's because Gale was Mr. Wilson in the Dennis the Menace TV show, and appeared in over 180 episodes of various Lucille Ball shows!
Fred Clark appears as Major Roger Putnam Spelding, another very familiar face who made a career of playing a cranky bald dude in everything from "Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb" to "F-Troop," "Petticoat Junction" and "The Beverly Hillbillies" and too much more! In this scene, Ellen's boyfriend Conrad played by Earl Holliman, not knowing Kreton is from another galaxy, decides to go to the costume party this year as a guy from outer space! Oh, the irony!!
This film is loaded with sexual innuendos. Where Kreton comes from, they no longer have any reason to procreate, so he is incredibly interested in
watching how it's done, much to Ellen's chagrin! Among many other roles, the lovely Joan Blackman would marry Elvis in "Blue Hawaii!" Earl Holliman is unforgettable for his role as the cook in "Forbidden Planet" who gets Robby The Robot to make him booze, and also his 91 episodes in "Police Woman" as Lt. Bill Crowley, etc. etc. There's no end!!
John "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" Williams as the overseer Delton, watches on as Major Spelding gives Kreton his first taste of that demon alcohol...and the not so surprising results!!!
Above Conrad's objections, Ellen takes Kreton to their favorite 'local' hangout, "The Hungry Brain." Kreton got 'dressed up' for the occasion, and he outweirds the weirdos!
The music starts swinging, but nobody's paying a whole lot of attention yet, in this crowd of beatniks, but this is the start of the reason why I love this movie so much!!
Wow, this cat's out of this world! Gene "Zorro" Collins and Kreton get inside of each other's heads! Other beatniks scattered throughout the crowd are Beach "Creature From The Haunted Sea" Dickerson, and Titus "Rat Pfink a Boo Boo" Moede, among others!!
The mind-blowing band consists of bassist Don Bagley, Frank Socolow on sax, Jack Costanzo on the bongos, and Buddy Rich on the trap set!!!
This still is a beyond cool portrait of
The Man, Buddy Rich!!
Buddy Rich and Kreton have a drum duel with Kreton playing the bongos with his mind! I have an album of "Buddy Rich vs Gene Krupa" that works along the same lines!
Here's the crazy part, this whole scene is just starting to jive! Now it's time for Barbara Lawson as the nutzoid Desdemona to do her scat-singing thing!
Sounds pretty far out, but dancer Barbara only ever acted one other time, and that was in the same year on "The Millionaire" TV show!
The song that is bringing Kreton to tears is called "Desdemona's Lament" and was written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. Together, Pomus and Shuman wrote the words and music to the hits "Save The Last Dance For Me," "Suspicion," "Viva Las Vegas" and much more.
No, they're not done yet, now it's time for Kreton and Desdemona's big dance number choreographed by Miriam Nelson who also worked off and on for years on The Red Skelton Show! Now that makes sense!!! The music for this dance sequence is the ginchiest! It's totally gone!!
After all that, it's back to reality, Kreton falls for Ellen, but is stopped from kissing her as his protective shield is reversed by Delton, but his feelings are so strong, it breaks the barrier!
Which leaves him unprotected to attack by the likes of Conrad!!
Kreton ends up having to go back where he came from, and Rheba Spelding brings out a whole platter of chicken sandwiches for the people watching the send-off!
I've only given you a glimpse of the sights and sounds in this film, do whatever you can do, to find a copy, and ponder for yourself why it's not more readily available!! Thanx be to Los Oso Grande Ted for providing this copy!
Director Jack Arnold is one of the all-time best, period!! His titles speak for themselves!! Besides, SOUNDCLIP NO LONGER AVAILABLE he is also responsible for "It Came From Outer Space", "Creature From The Black Lagoon", and "Tarantula" just as a couple of examples, not to mention another 30 years of directing prime time TV shows!
But, since we are here to talk mostly about the music, I gotta tell you that they missed a very golden opportunity here. Somebody was real smart and used trumpet player Ray Anthony as a soloist during the theme music, and it is quite beautiful, rich and you're really going to dig it! Here's my problem, why only during the theme? There are very long parts of this movie with no dialogue when teeny tiny Robert Scott Carey is trapped in the basement, and has the adventure of his life, and all the music is totally orchestrated, and loses all it's character! Supposedly stellar names like Irving Gertz, Elliot Lawrence, Hans J. Salter, and Herman Stein are responsible, but as you can see on the credits, it's only music supervision by Joseph Gershenson. 
A fantastic duo, Grant Williams as Scott Carey, and the enchanting Randy Stuart as Mrs. Louise Carey! Life is perfect!! But then........
Here it comes, whatever it is! This story was written by another Sci-Fi master, Richard Matheson, and combined with a great cast, you've got yourself one real classic monster movie!! Another great film where there is no need to explain anything, weird stuff just happens and you deal with it!!
Right here's where the good music and the good times stop! Reality for Scott and Lou is a thing of the past, and it's all down hill from here!!! The movie just got started and you've already got the moral of the story! Get your own beer!!
You know what's causing the shrinking, but you will never know why! So what the heck was in that fog anyway? Pixie dust? Space Debris? No, just regular shrinkin' stuff!!!
They throw a real midget, the ultra famous face of Billy Curtis, into the act, for a quick bit just to legitimize things! See Mildred, I told you they was midgets!!
Maybe after they built all those killer sets, they didn't have enough money to pay Ray Anthony to blow throughout the whole film! Don't get me wrong, it's a great movie, it just could have been that much better!!!
This film doesn't exactly have a happy ending, here Louise gets ready to drive off in a very nice Chrysler with Scott's brother, never to return!
This movie never ends, it just keeps getting smaller!!
