One of a half dozen movies Jerry Lewis made with long-time director Frank Tashlin after splitting up with performing partner Dean Martin, The Disorderly Orderly (1964) was the last of that bunch, a return to full-on slapstick after his own ambitious directorial effort The Patsy (1964). The film's hospital setting is merely an excuse for Lewis to engage in an exhausting parade of healthcare-related gags, from balancing troubles with a patient bandaged head-to-toe like a mummy to the expected difficulties of getting out of a strait-jacket. Tashlin had begun his career as a director of Warner Brothers animated shorts and The Disorderly Orderly betrays its debt to the elastic Looney Tunes (while Lewis himself channels the manic energy of such masters of cinematic calamity as Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Jacques Tati). Suffering from a Zelig-like mental disorder that has him identifying a little too closely with his patients, hospital staffer Lewis juggles women Susan Oliver and Karen Sharpe while trying to fly under the radar of hospital administrators Glenda Farrell and Everett Sloan (in his last feature film role). Doubling for the hospital and grounds is Beverly Hills' Greystone Mansion, former headquarters of the American Film Institute and a longtime movie location, later put to memorable use in The Dirty Dozen (1967), Eraserhead (1977), The Bodyguard (1992), The Big Lebowski (1999), and There Will Be Blood (2007).

By Richard Harland Smith