Jerry Lewis's The Bellboy

The Bellboy is a missed opportunity but interesting, being Lewis's first film as director and made on a low budget, as a group of ideas loosely strung together for later plucking.  This is especially true as Lewis plays the simple mute bellboy and also himself as sophisticated guest, an idea that was expanded into The Nutty Professor (1963), where Lewis portrayed himself and a version of Dean Martin, with whom he had broken up in the late fifties. Few of the unrelated gags in The Bellboy are particularly funny and most of them exhibit a mechanical property that makes little sense on any level:  Jerry filling an auditorium with chairs in a matter of minutes, Jerry somehow flying an airplane, Jerry taking the engine out of a Volkswagen thinking it is the luggage in the trunk (this one almost works).

Lewis was too much in thrall to Stan Laurel when he made this film (Lewis's character is named Stanley), with actor Bill Richmond portraying a silent Laurel in several scenes and there is an element of misanthropy and misogyny in The Bellboy similar to that in Laurel and Hardy (Big Business, 1929).  For those who think of Buster Keaton when they think of Jerry Lewis I suggest comparing Lewis's conducting a non-existent orchestra in The Bellboy with Keaton miming a baseball game in The Cameraman (1928):  Keaton brings baseball to life by miming all the positions beautifully, including the umpire, while Lewis's "conducting" is just goofy soundtrack and facial expressions.