The Disorderly Orderly

Frank Tashlin is a director not remembered much today and his association with Jerry Lewis does not help.  Peter Bogdanovitch wrote (in Film Culture, Fall 1962; reprinted in Frank Tashlin, Vineyard Press, 1972) that he is "perhaps the most visually inventive comic director since Keaton" and "visually" is still the key word, since many people still listen to films without looking at them carefully.  Tashlin directed the best of the Martin/Lewis films (Artists and Models, 1955) and The Disorderly Orderly is the last film he made with Jerry Lewis ((1964).  It is full of comic invention with a plot that reminds one of City Lights:  Lewis has to work day and night to pay the hospital bills of a girl he once loved from afar.  Tashlin understands that "comedy is long shot", as Chaplin once said, and there is at least one gag worthy of Buster Keaton:  Lewis slings a bundle of laundry that, with perfect comic timing, just misses an orderly carrying a tray of food.  Many of the gags are based on Tashlin's experience as a cartoonist and animator, but what some people accept in Chuck Jones they don't always accept in live action.  Lewis works in a hospital that not only infantilizes its patients but quickly kicks them out when they can't pay:  "no money, no bed" is the slogan of the board of directors, headed by Everett Sloane (in his last film); Tashlin often criticized predatory capitalism. Lewis's character is constantly accused by his supervisor of "trying too hard", something Lewis was often accused of in his own acting and directing.  Tashlin and Lewis don't transcend the 50's and 60's the way Douglas Sirk does, with irony, but with an emphasis on satire and a garish sense of color, from a purple shag carpet to a light blue telephone.  For those who have trouble getting past their dislike of Jerry Lewis I recommend Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956) and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter (1957); in both cases Tashlin treats Jayne Mansfield with appreciation and compassion.