Three on a Couch (Columbia 1966, Jerry Lewis, Janet Leigh)

In Three on a Couch Jerry Lewis plays a commercial artist whose psychiatrist fiancee (Janet Leigh) refuses to take time from her patients for a wedding and a honeymoon. Lewis takes the drastic step of assuming three different identities and wooing three of Leigh’s female patients, hoping that love will get them to quit therapy.

In his first film after the end of his long association with Paramount, Lewis tried to update his image by playing a more mature character. But his three alter egos provide enough wackiness to please fans of his earlier style.

Janet Leigh had been a longtime friend of Jerry Lewis. He was best man at her and Tony Curtis’s wedding in 1951. She and Curtis appeared in an amateur movie Lewis directed in the early ’50s called Fairfax Avenue, a parody of Sunset Boulevard in which she took the Gloria Swanson role. And Leigh was the leading lady in the 1954 Martin and Lewis film Living It Up.

production details
USA | Columbia | 109 minutes | 1966
Director: Jerry Lewis
Script: Samuel A. Taylor, Bob Ross, Arne Sultan, Marvin Worth,

cast
Kathleen Freeman as Murphy
Janet Leigh as Dr Elizabeth Acord
Leslie Parrish as Mary Lou Mauve
James Best as Dr. Ben Mizer
Jerry Lewis as Christopher Pride / Warren / Ringo / Rutherford / Heather
Mary Ann Mobley as Susan Manning
Gila Golan as Anna Jacque