Doctor Detroit

Doctor Detroit. 1983 Universal Pictures.
Starring: Dan Aykroyd, Howard Hesseman, Donna Dixon, Lydia Lei, T.K. Carter, Lynn Whitfield, Fran Drescher, Kate Murtagh
Director: Michael Pressman
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Clifford Skridlow (Aykroyd) is a shy and geeky professor of literature at a financially struggling Chicago college.

Smooth Walker (Hesseman) is the pimp of four high-class prostitutes, and he's in deep to a mob boss known as "Mom" (Murtagh). To save his own skin, Walker makes up a fictitious business partner named "Doctor Detroit", and somehow, Skridlow is conned into posing as Doctor Detroit, trying to protect Walker's girls while hiding his alter ego from his conservative parents and while trying to secure a large endowment grant for his college.

The movie ends with Cliff needing to appear as himself and Doctor Detroit at two events on the same evening at the same time, and how his two worlds come together with "Mom" getting her comeuppance. Recommended.

I also have a fairly interesting story from my youth about this film:

When I first heard of Doctor Detroit after it started airing regularly on HBO after its cinematic run (I was probably seven years old at the time), I wanted to see it, simply because I thought it had something to do with Detroit, the region I was born in back in 1976. Not only was I wrong about that, my parents wouldn't allow me to watch it, because it was an R-rated movie.

Flash forward to one early summer evening. I had gone out to play, and apparently, I had either forgotten to tell my family where I was going, or I came home much later than I was supposed to. Regardless of what happened, I came home to an empty house; even our new dachshund puppy was gone, and it just did not register with me that something may be wrong. So, I turned on the television, and hey, Doctor Detroit is on HBO, fairly early in the evening for an R-rated feature.

Right as the scene where Cliff is hastily changing into his Doctor Detroit persona while running between a ceremony for the college he works in, and the Players Ball in the next building, my parents, sister, and puppy all came home at once, unsuccessful at finding me in the park across the street, or in the immediate neighborhood. When people started yelling at me, asking just what the hell was I doing, I innocently answered "Watching Doctor Detroit?" For a few brief moments, I thought I was going to be punished for being caught watching an R-rated movie, instead of either wandering off without telling anybody, or not coming home on time, and scaring the wits out of everyone in the neighborhood who knew me.