Writer and Director Frank Tashlin
1950's Hollywood Comedy Auteur Best Known for Work with Jerry Lewis
Nov 10, 2008
Frank Tashlin started his carer in 1933 working for the animation department at Warner Brothers, were he wrote and directed animated cartoons.
In 1946 Tashlin became a gag writer for such important comedy acts as The Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and Red Skelton, which led to writing and directing Bob Hope in Son of Paleface (1952).
Fortunately Frank Tashlin had the opportunity to work with the best comedian team of the 1950's. Martin and Lewis were in need of some energetic and innovative direction in their later years and that was precisely what Thaslin provided in films like Artists and Models (1955) and Hollywood or Bust (1956).
In 1956 Tashlin also directed the classic Rock and Roll era satires The Girl Cant Help It and Will success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957). Both films starred Jane Mansfield who was accompanied by Tom Ewell in the first and Tony Randal in the latter and are among the most acclaimed comedies of the 1950’s.
However it would be with Jerry Lewis that Tashlin would work in most of his subsequent movies creating one of the most successful partnerships in comic film history.
The Jerry Lewis Movies
Although Jerry Lewis first solo movies: The Delicate Delinquent directed by Don Mcguire and The Sad Sack directed by George Marshal, both from 1957, were very popular, they didn’t evolved significantly from the Martin and Lewis vehicles.
However, Lewis intelligently understood that Thaslin was a major talent and he reunited with him for Rock- a - Bye a Baby (1958) and The Gueisha Boy (1958), followed by Cinderfella (1960), and even after Lewis found success as director with The Bell Boy (1960), The Errand Boy (1961), The Ladies Man (1961), and The Nutty Professor (1963), he continued working with Tashlin in It’s Only Money (1962) and Who's Minding the Store? (1963).
There’s no doubt that Jerry Lewis learned a lot with Tashlin, unfortunately 1964 The Disorderly Orderly was the last pairing of the team and it remains one of the best Jerry Lewis films of the sixties. The story of a medical orderly who wants to be a doctor but experiences the patients symptoms is very amusing. With its usual blend of comedy, romance and pathos, the film offers some memorable gags, most of them very cartoonish in inspiration with a story line that is at same time funny and emotional.
The Last Movies
Tashlin continued working with veteran stars during the sixties, like Doris Day in The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) and Caprice (1967) or Danny Kaye in The Man from the Diner’s Club (1963), but with the decline of the Hollywood Production system and has stars like Kaye, Lewis, Hope and Day, found themselves out of touch with teenage audiences of the late 60’s Tashlin’s carer came to an end after directing showbiz legend Bob Hope in one of his last films, The Private Navy of Sgt. O’ Farrell (1968).
Frank Tashlin’s body of work will survive as one of the most innovative and influent American comedy auteur’s of the 1950’s and 1960’s. His visual style made the best use of wide screen formats and his sense of humour, often considered cartoonish, was essentially visual, making the best use of physical comedians like Jerry Lewis, Jane Mansfield and Danny Kaye.
In his films Tashlin often made fun of America’s consumerism and superficiality. From the comic books obsession of Jerry Lewis character in Artists and Models, to the Alice Pearce TV fanatic character in Rock-a-Bye Baby and the sexual artificiality of Jane Mansfield in The Girl Can’t Help It, Frank Tashlin’s movies were often brilliant exercises in satire that exposed the contradictions of America’s shallow society.
