After playing small and medium-sized parts in 75 movies, including good performances in "Marty" and "The Caine Mutiny," Paris signed on as Dick Van Dyke's next door neighbor on TV.

"But after a year of that," he said, "Carl Reiner suggested that he write me out of the show and I could start directing it. Which I did. Altogether, I directed 130 Van Dyke shows. And now finally I'm doing this."

Directing movies, that is. He has made three: "How Sweet It Is!," which opens the first week of August at the State Lake; "Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River," the new Jerry Lewis comedy opening Friday in neighborhood theaters, and a still-unreleased Disney feature.

"At last I can paint the whole canvas." He said. "How's that for a figure of speech, eh? When I was a character actor, I was painting only one color - blue or green, as it were. Now I can work on the whole movie.

"My trouble as an actor was twofold. I was too tall, and I wasn't handsome enough. Richard Widmark wanted me, in a couple of movies, and they told him I was too tall; I'd make him look short. Widmark said what the hell, we can dig a hole. And I remember I was Robert Taylor's roommate in 'D-Day,' and I had to sit down all the time.

"Yeah. I remember the scene where I was leaving, and I was supposed to bid him goodbye. The director told me to sit on the bed.

What's this? I said. I'm leaving, and I'm sitting on the bed? The director says, give him a can of beer or something. He can be drinking a can of beer, and then we cut to him outside the door."

Paris grinned. "You, ever see a picture called 'The Flying Missile?' I was in it, and Glenn Ford starred. We were on a submarine, and I was looking out of the periscope all the time. Only it would look bad if we had to lower the periscope for Ford after I finished looking out of it. So I spent the whole picture crouched over."

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