Best Memories of Jerry Lewis

Jerry Lewis (born March 16, 1926) is an American comedian, actor, film producer, writer, film director, singer and humanitarian. He is best-known for his slapstick humor in stage, screen, television, radio, recording and is also known for his charity fund-raising telethons and position as national chairman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA). Lewis has won several awards for lifetime achievements from The American Comedy Awards, The Golden Camera, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and The Venice Film Festival, and he has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2005, he received the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors, which is the highest Emmy Award presented.^[1]

On February 22, 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. As an innovative filmmaker, Lewis is credited with inventing the video assist system in cinematography (some doubt now exists about this, due to a patent predating Lewis’ by more than a decade ^[2]). Lewis was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the comedy team of Martin and Lewis. In addition to the team’s popular nightclub work, they starred in a successful series of comedy films for Paramount Pictures. The act broke up ten years later.

Early life

Jerry Lewis was born Joseph Levitch in Newark, New Jersey, the son of parents of Russian Jewish ancestry.^[3] His parents, married in January 1925,^[4] were Daniel Levitch, a Master of Ceremonies and vaudeville entertainer^[5][6][7] who used the professional name Danny Lewis,^[8] and Rachel (“Rae”) Levitch (née Brodsky),^[9] a piano player for the radio station WOR and musical arrangement performer.

Lewis started performing at the age of five, and by the age of fifteen had developed his Record Act, in which he mimed lyrics of operatic and popular songs to a phonograph. He attended Irvington High School in Irvington, NJ. At about age sixteen, he began using the professional name Jerry Lewis instead of Joey Lewis to avoid confusion with comedian, Joe E. Lewis or heavyweight champion Joe Louis.^[10]

Jerry Lewis Actor, Writer, Singer, Radio Star, Philanthropist

Career

Teaming with Dean Martin

Lewis initially gained fame with singer Dean Martin, who served as straight man to Lewis’s zany antics in the Martin and Lewis comedy team. They distinguished themselves from the majority of comedy acts of the 1940s by relying on the interaction of the two comics instead of planned skits. In the late 1940s, they quickly rose to national prominence, first with their popular nightclub act, next as stars of their own radio program, then with appearances on early live television (most notably in 1950 as the first of a series of hosts of The Colgate Comedy Hour), and finally as film stars in a string of successes for Paramount Pictures.

However, as Martin’s roles in their films became less important, the partnership became strained. Martin’s diminished participation became an embarrassment in 1954, when Look magazine used a publicity photo of the team for the magazine cover, but cropped Martin out of the photo. The partnership finally ended on July 25, 1956. Attesting the team’s popularity, DC Comics published the best-selling The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comic books from 1952 to 1957. The series continued a year after the team broke up as DC Comics then featured Lewis solo, until 1971, in The Adventures of Jerry Lewis comic books. In this latter series, Lewis was sometimes featured with Superman, Batman, and various other DC Comics heroes and villains.

Both Martin and Lewis went on to successful solo careers, but for years neither would comment on the split, nor consider a reunion. The next time they were seen together in public was a surprise appearance by Martin on Lewis’s Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy Telethon in 1976, arranged by Frank Sinatra. As well, in Lewis’s 2005 book Dean and Me (A Love Story), Lewis wrote of his kinship with Martin, who had died in 1995. The pair eventually reconciled in the late 1980s after the death of Martin’s son, Dean Paul Martin. The two men were seen together on stage in Las Vegas when Lewis pushed out Dean’s birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday to him.^[11]

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