New Jersey native Frank Tashlin (1913-1972) was a masterful jack of all trades, at any given moment he was a magazine-cartoonist, a film animator for Terrytoons and Merrie Melodies, a gag writer for Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers to name but a couple; a production manager for Screen Gems and a story director for Disney cartoons and from 1944 on, a writer of live-action features.
Beginning with Runyon's the Lemon Drop Kid (1951) (which he co-directed even though he didn't exactly receive any screen credit for such) Tashlin would team with erstwhile Vaudeville legend Sidney Lanfield before directing on his lonesome prolifically until the year 1968. A fair share of Anglo-American critics had an affinity for reducing Frank Tashlin's career, deeming it little more than a mere appendage to the work of Jerry Lewis, who starred in an octet of Tashlin's movies. The critics continued to perpetually undersell the director, apart from the fact that two of Tashlin's most inspired films - The Girl Can't Help It and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) - had absolutely nothing to do with Lewis; such judgments would sadly also dismiss his contribution to Lewis' career. Tashlin was the brains behind what was perhaps the finest of all the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis entries - Artists and Models (1955) and would go on to write and direct six of Lewis' solo vehicles between 1958 and 1964.
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| Hope knits eternal in The Lemon Drop Kid |
Tashlin would bring a distinct innovation to Hollywood comedies. His greatest fear was the consistent turning of 'reality' into a cartoon caricature of itself - his films are peppered with visual and aural gags all derived from his first and true love - animation. He, without relent, parodied the crassness and power of the media, most notably television (especially in his Fifties films), but also advertising, rock'n'roll, publishing and other movies, not least his own. And he was the very first director to take on the challenge issued by 1947's Hellzapoppin', by destroying the illusion of cinema and building jokes from an exposure of the filmmaking process itself.