The Bellboy (1960)

Comic Jerry Lewis stepped into the director’s role for this wild assemblage of gags, though it might be more accurate to say he fell. His home studio, Paramount, wanted a summer release, and rather than move up the already completed Cinderfella (1960), which he saw as a Christmas film, he decided to put something together while working at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. There was no time to pull in a director, so after pulling eight all-nighters to write the script, he decided to direct it himself. As a tribute to the silent film comedians he loved, he decided his character, an eccentric bellhop, wouldn’t speak until the very end. He even named his character Stan, for Stan Laurel, and cast an impressionist to play the comic genius. 

d. Jerry Lewis, 72m, DCP