Lewis served as producer on his first film venture, "The Prime Time" (1959), which was the first feature film produced in Chicago since the late 1910s. He would assume directing duties on nearly all of his films from then on. His first in a lengthy series of collaborations with exploitation producer David F. Friedman, "Living Venus" (1961), was a fictitious account based on the story of Hugh Hefner and the beginnings of "Playboy". Lewis and Friedman's movies were early exploitation films, and the films' nude scenes, although softcore, were not seen in "mainstream" Hollywood pictures because of the censorship imposed by the Motion Picture Production Code.