There's not much plot to The Ladies Man. Jerry Lewis plays new college graduate Herbert Heebert who finds his beloved on the day of his graduation in the arms of another. Depressed and somewhat disgusted he starts looking for work vowing never to marry and live a bachelor life.Bob Hope did a film called Bachelor In Paradise around this time. But what he had was nothing compared to the situation that Lewis winds up with. He answers an advertisement for a handyman and finds it's in a private house that has been converted to a residential hotel for women. Beautiful young woman. Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion has nothing on this place. But the only way to keep him from leaving is to make sure that Jerry feels needed.After that the whole film becomes a series of skits, some better than others, the best being what he does to tough guy Buddy Lester's hat. Running a close second is his bungling during a live broadcast from the house for a television feature. Helen Traubel plays the owner of the house, a former opera star who has turned her place into this residence because she wanted a family, apparently a family of just daughters.Jerry directed himself and possibly The Ladies Man might have been a real classic if a comedy director had controlled Jerry just a little bit. Still give Jerry Lewis a big A for effort and B+ for results.

This is a great Jerry Lewis comedy with a lot of heart. I am touched by how Herbert wants to be treated with understanding by the ladies in the boarding house. As he does each chore and delivers the mail to the ladies he wants them to at least say thanks one rehearsing a scene and others ignore him, he wants to be needed. My favorite scene is when Fay one of the boarders tell him that nice people are needed everywhere. I laughed at the funny moments like with Baby that first dog with a roar like a lion then a lion at the end.. also as he greets this gangster and breaks the string on his hat oh what a patient Stanley who was nervous.

I am being beneficient and/or munificent to give this movie a three-star rating. While as a boy I started seeing some of his first movies (e.g.-Jumping Jacks and Scared Stiff) and almost never missed a one of his movies all through my teen years, and was always taken with his patented laugh and very amusing antics, this movie was, I felt, a disappointment and a anomaly to most of his movies. While I did like seeing and hearing Harry James and His Orchestra, and while I liked seeing George Raft, the movie was basically a letdown. It was boring: it virtually had no plot and the acting was not of any great quality. If boredom is ever recommendable, this movie would singularly qualify for that. Again, I always liked Jerry Lewis', but this movie is, again, for many reasons, one of his worst.

I think it´s time we recognize something that should be said a long time ago: Jerry Lewis is a genius and "Ladies´Man" is his most amazing production. The enormous doll´s house he has created serves perfectly for the development of a succesion of hilarious gags that will make the audience fall from their chairs. Using cranes to shoot the scenes, Lewis obtains beautiful scenes and perfectly timed humor. A band playing lively, walls that move, the partition of the main character in four and lots of beautiful girls complete the picture. Believe me when i say: this man knows what he is doing and it´s about time we accept that he is not just a silly clown; he is a talented and creative filmmaker who took movie techniques to its extremes and gave us both a comic and tragic view of the world we live in. Jerry Lewis is what Godard was to french cinema: an innovator. Let´s adore him.