Jerry Lewis, 1926-2017

In "The Ladies Man," 1961

In late 2008 or early 2009 I began writing for the MSN editorial website, specifically MSN Movies, and the first thing my editor asked me to draft was a Jerry Lewis obituary. Word on the street, or some street, was that Lewis' various ailments were about to bring him down for good. As MSN then aspired to a print-style editorial standard, it was thought that having an obit on file would be the good newspapery thing to do. 

I wrote the piece with that standard in mind, so it was newspapery, dry, factual , but it does have a thread of critical appreciation running through it. Since the great artist is now gone, having outlived the editorial website of MSN by more than five years, I thought I might offer the obit as I filed it, oddly undated, TKs left unfilled. 

 

Jerry Lewis obituary

For [REDACTED]  at MSN Movies

By Glenn Kenny

Date Filed: 

Date of death TK

Jerry Lewis, the comedian, comic actor, filmmaker, inventor and philanthropist who was a defining, contentious figure in both American show business and art, died at LOCATION TK, of CAUSE TK. He was AGE TK.

Born in Newark, New Jersey on March 16, 1926, Lewis (whose actual last name was Levitch) had show business in his blood; both of his parents were entertainers on the circuit known as the “Borscht Belt,” which included the resorts in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York that attracted a largely urban, Jewish clientele. Lewis’ humor--boisterous, energetic, often sardonic and loud—derived from that heritage. Before he had even turned 20, he was a bizzer; the high-school dropout married band singer Patty Palmer in 1944, and developed a standup act in which he played recorded vocals of well-known performers and parodied/mimicked their actions. In 1946 he met the Ohio-born crooner Dean Martin, and they teamed up to concoct an anarchic nightclub act which shot a jolt of adrenaline, or maybe even amphetamine, into the ethos created by Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

Martin and Lewis began making films together in 1949, and their pictures together helped define ‘50s culture. Not the bland, conformist, Eisenhower-defined culture of popular myth that, the myth continues, was upended by the swinging ‘60s, but the roiling, industrialist, somewhat ruthless culture of a post-war America that was redefining itself as a global power. As the film critic Andrew Sarris put it, “The great thing about them was their incomparable incompatibility, the persistent sexual hostility, the professional knowingness they shared about the cutthroat world they were conquering.” That knowingess translated on to celluloid in fascinating ways, particularly when the team was paired with the director Frank Tashlin, who had a background in animated shorts. The later Martin and Lewis films “Artists and Models” and “Hollywood or Bust” are replete with self-conscious, fourth-wall-breaking gags that would later influence not only sitcom humor but highbrow cinema as well. The tension of the Martin-Lewis act itself, with Dean the amiable, smooth, serious one and Jerry as the often remarkably obnoxious man-child who always gets the duo into another fine mess, increasingly bled into their off-screen relationship, and the team broke up in 1956, after which the two performers were personally estranged for some time.

After parting ways with Martin, Lewis threw himself into his solo film career with great ferocity, and began producing films right off the bat. He had ever been an apt pupil of the medium. In 2003 Lewis told the critic Chris Fujiwara, “The first year Dean and I were on the lot, they couldn’t find me. I was in the camera department, I was in editing, I was in miniatures, I was in wardrobe, in makeup, in post; they had to find me to get me on stage to do a scene.” Despite having been thrown off the set of “Hollywood or Bust” by Tashlin for bad behavior that was a by-product of the deterioration in his relationship with Martin, Lewis re-teamed with the director for such innovative pictures as “Cinderfella” and “It’s Only Money.” His debut as a director was 1960’s “The Bellboy,” starring himself in the title role. A lengthy series of situations and gags set in and filmed at the then hyper-modern Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida, it’s largely a homage to the clowns of silent cinema; Lewis’ bellboy character does not speak throughout, and the filmmaker consulted with the great golden age comic Stan Laurel on the script. It was on this film that Lewis pioneered the “video assist” that has since become a staple of filmmaking; a video system, with its camera mounted concurrent to the film camera, recorded the action so that director Lewis could instantly assess a take from performer Lewis.

Lewis also appeared as himself in “The Bellboy,” and the difference between the “self” he portrayed in that picture--a slick, arrogant, uncaring star surrounded by sycophants—was a stark contrast to the inept, silly, but at least ostensibly sweet and lovable overgrown child who was the title character here, a variation on whom made up the standard Lewis onscreen persona at the time. This dichotomy recalled the tension that animated the Martin-Lewis team-ups, and reached an apotheosis of sorts in 1963’s “The Nutty Professor,” in which Lewis played the good-hearted but clumsy and grotesque scientist Julius Kelp, who transformed, with the help of a potion of his own concoction, into the unctuous, mean-spirited, and multi-talented “lady killer” Buddy Love. This eye-popping update of “Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde” was seen by some as a commentary by Lewis on the relationship between himself and Martin. But Lewis himself more or less admitted that the cocksure Buddy Love was merely another version of himself. The various contradictions he embodied in his private self and his public personae were also reflected in his charity work. In March of 1952 Martin and Lewis co-hosted their first “telethon,” a midnight-to-nearly-5 p.m. televised variety show to which viewers could call in to donate funds for a cause; in this case, the construction of a cardiac hospital, and the charity chosen by Martin and Lewis themselves, the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation. Since 1966, Lewis has been the driving force behind a Labor Day Weekend telethon for the foundation, and the phrase “Jerry’s Kids” (Muscular Dystrophy is a disease that targets children) has entered the pop culture lingua franca. Lewis’s all-nighters hosting these telethons, during which he was by turns wheedling, dismissive, treacly, manic, and often genuinely flabbergasted and overwhelmed (as when a surprise on-air reunion with Dean Martin, engineered by their common friend Frank Sinatra, happened in 1976) are still the stuff of show business legend.

As is his reputation as a filmmaker. His solo pictures of the ‘60s were terrific moneymakers, but were largely critically reviled in his native land. In France, however, the intellectuals at publications such as “Cahiers du Cinema” and “Positif” took him quite seriously indeed. His work profoundly influenced the critic-turned-director Jean-Luc Godard, whose “cutaway” set of a sausage factory in his 1972 “Tout va bien” (co-directed with Jean-Pierre Gorin) was a direct reference to a similar piece of stagework in Lewis’s 1961 “The Ladies Man.” A joke among mainstream American middlebrows of a certain generations runs along the lines of “Well, what do the French know; they think Jerry Lewis is funny/an artist.” (Indeed, as for the latter designation, Lewis was officially inducted into the order of the Commandeurs of the Légion d’honneur in France in 1984.) There is also the matter of Lewis’s self-directed foray into “serious” drama, the notorious, much-speculated-upon but never-released 1972 picture “The Day The Clown Cried,” in which Lewis plays a once-celebrated clown in a Nazi death camp. “When Lewis decides he has something to say, it comes out conformist, sentimental and banal,” Andrew Sarris said of the filmmaker several years prior to the making of “Clown.” Never officially completed, it is unlikely that the picture will ever be seen.

For all that, Lewis acquitted himself brilliantly in a more-or-less straight dramatic role, playing comic and talk-show host Jerry Langford, who falls victim to seemingly goofy celeb stalker Rupert Pupkin (played by a here very uncool Robert DeNiro), in Martin Scorsese’s chilly, alienating 1983 showbiz parable “The King of Comedy.” In 1983 he also made his final feature as a director, “Cracking Up.” His film appearances began to dry up (he did a turn opposite Johnny Depp in the eccentric 1993 picture “Arizona Dream,” directed by the Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica), but he nonetheless continued to seem a tireless entertainer, particularly in light of the various health crises he has had since at least the mid-60s, when a spinal injury from a fall led to an addiction to painkillers that he conquered in the mid-70s. Heart attacks, diabetes, prostate cancer and other such troubles plagued him, and he nonetheless soldiered on like the trouper he always took pride in being. In the mid-1990s he played on Broadway and toured with a production of the musical “Damn Yankees.” In addition to continuing to host his telethon, he made scattered television appearances, and talked often of adapting his film “The Nutty Professor” into a Broadway show. Seemingly unable to help being a lightning rod for controversy, his unfortunate penchant for wisecracking concerning homosexuals caused some to protest his receiving a 2009 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. More recently, he raised some eyebrows with his suggestion that troubled starlet Lindsay Lohan might benefit from a spanking. Through a career that spanned more than half a century, he established, and retained, a remarkable figure that achieved solidity and grandeur almost entirely via its contradictions. “I know Jerry,” Lewis told Chris Fujiwara; “I sleep with him, remember? I know him, I know that son-of-a-bitch in and out. I know his needs, I know that without him I wouldn’t have food on the table. He works for me and very well. When I talk about him in the first person, people look at you askance. Are you f—kin’ schizophrenic? In the creative, yes.”

Lewis’s 1944 marriage to Patty Palmer endured to 1984; the couple had six children, including Gary Lewis, whose band The Playboys had a ‘60s hit with the Al-Kooper-penned “This Diamond Ring.” In 1983 Lewis married SanDee Pitnick. Lewis is survived by her and seven children and TK grandchildren.

There is not much emotion in the above so I will say now that Lewis is a subject near and very dear to both my heart and my aesthetic. The more you learn of his work, the more impressive he becomes. I do not believe I entirely agree with Andrew Sarris' estimation of Lewis' attempts at serious statement, although I can't say he was entirely wrong either. What remains true it that the one sure sign in film conversation that you are dealing with a near-irredeemable philistine is a "Well they love Jerry Lewis in France" remark. 

UPDATE: Thanks for reading this but my friend Dave Kehr's obit for the New York Times, which was also written a while ago as Dave is no longer with the paper, is the one. 

Comments

[Pinko Punko]

Well said, GK

[Petey]

"There is not much emotion in the above..."

Yup. I feel as if you did not perch in the cutting room and lick the emulsion prior to writing this.

(In that vein, I was stunned to real that The Total Film-Maker is so long out of print that used copies cost more than $200. I read and re-read a $2 used copy when I was learning film production, and damn that book is great stuff. Someone ought to re-issue it as a public service. As Black Francis would say, it's educational.)

[Petey]

"What remains true it that the one sure sign in film conversation that you are dealing with a near-irredeemable philistine is a "Well they love Jerry Lewis in France" remark."

Also, if you're looking for a hate-read, the Variety obit is written by FULLY-irredeemable philistine...

[Matt]

When it comes to late-period/90s Lewis appearances, I've always had real a soft spot for Chelsom's "Funny Bones", and Lee Evans recreation of those famous nightclub radio mimes therein. I don't know what role, if any, Lewis played in the scripting process there, but the shadow he casts over the film is large, and ends up morphing the film into a kind of funhouse mirror biopic...

[James]

A wonderfully affectionate but fair & balanced tribute, Glenn. So glad I never returned that copy of The Total Filmmaker to the Boston Public Library 20+ years ago.