ROCK-A-BYE BABY
Tit. it.: “Il balio asciutto”; Scen.: Frank Tashlin, dal racconto “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek” di Preston Sturges; F.: Haskell Boggs; M.: Alma Macrorie; Scgf.: Hal Pereira, Tambi Larsen; Cost.: Edith Head; Trucco: Wally Westmore; Mu.: Walter Scharf; Canzoni: Harry Warren, Sammy Cahn; Su.: Gene Merritt, Charles Grenzbach; Ass.R.: C.C. Coleman, Jr.; Int.: Jerry Lewis (Clayton Poole), Marilyn Maxwell (Carla Naples), Reginald Gardiner (Harold Herman), Salvatore Baccaloni (Gigi Naples), Connie Stevens (Sandy Naples), Hans Conried (Mr. Wright), Isobel Elsom (Mrs. Van Cleve), James Gleason (Dr. Simkins), Ida Moore (Bessie Polk), Gary Lewis (il giovane Clayton Poole), Hope Emerson (Mrs. Rogers), Alex Gerry (Judge Jenkins), Mary Treen (infermiera), Judy Franklin (la giovane Carla Naples); Prod.: Jerry Lewis per York Pictures Corporation / Paramount 35mm. D.: 103’. Col.
Film Notes
This film clearly had two authors, Tashlin and Lewis. According to Robert Benayoun, the satyrical element of the film is obviously Tashlin’s, whereas the character of Poole and his ambition to become a “perfect mother” is more likely to be Lewis’s input. The numerous references to the television belong totally to Tashlin’s world, but the longest sequence on the subject shows Lewis, behind the empty shell of an old TV set, playing an anthology of his past and future roles, a country and western cowboy, the forerunner of Julius Kelp in The Nutty Professor, an Italian opera singer and the buck-toothed Japanese character he insisted on playing for years and years…
Jonathan Rosenbaum, in Frank Tashlin, a cura di Roger Garcia e Bernard Eisenschitz, Crisnée 1994