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Film Actor, Theater Actor, Television Actor, Comedian, Philanthropist (1926–)
Jerry
Lewis rose to fame as Dean Martin's comedic partner, and his slapstick
humor carried the multitalented performer through decades of film,
television, stage and radio shows.
Synopsis
Born on March 16, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, Jerry Lewis grew up performing in a vaudeville family. He met singer Dean Martin in 1945, and they developed a comedy act and performed in nightclubs like the Copacabana. When their routine struck a nerve with audiences, the duo went from making $250 a week to $5,000, and Lewis never looked back. He soon made a successful transition into film with 1949's My Friend Irma, which would lead to a string of roles in popular films and TV appearances.Early Life
Comedian, actor and director Jerry Lewis was born Joseph Levitch on March 16, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey. His father, Daniel Levitch, who went by the stage name Danny Lewis, was an actor, master of ceremonies and all-around performer. His mother, Rae Lewis, played piano for the New York City radio station WOR and was her husband's musical director. Growing up in a show-business family, Lewis began following in his parents' footsteps as a performer from a very young age. He made his debut at the age of 5, singing "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" at New York's "Borscht Belt" nightclubs in the Catskill Mountains.Early Career
A decade later, at the age of 15, Jerry Lewis dropped out of high school to pursue a full-time career as a performer. He devised a comedy routine known as the "Record Act" in which he mimed and mouthed the lyrics to operatic and popular songs while a phonograph played the songs offstage. He took his act to the offices of several booking agents before finally landing a gig at a burlesque house in Buffalo. His debut performance fell flat, though, and unable to book any shows at more prestigious venues, Lewis worked as a theater usher and soda jerk to make ends meet.He grew depressed and was on the verge of giving up on his show-business dreams when a friend of his father's, the comedian Max Coleman, convinced him to give comedy another shot and helped him land a performance at Brown's Hotel in Loch Sheldrake, New York. This time his comedy routine received thunderous applause, and among the enthusiastic audience members was another comedian, Irving Kaye, who helped the young Lewis book more Borscht Belt appearances.
Also during this period, Lewis married Patti Palmer (1944), and they went on to have six children before eventually divorcing in 1982. (In 1983, Lewis married SanDee Pitnick, and they had a daughter together.)
Meeting Dean Martin
Their act began with Martin singing a song only to be interrupted by Lewis, with the routine soon devolving into a hilarious improvised sequence that included ad-libbed insults, food fights and frequent banter with the audience. Billed as Martin and Lewis, the duo became such an instantaneous success that in a matter of months they went from earning $250 a week to earning $5,000.
Big Break in Film
In 1949, the pair landed their own regular radio comedy show, The Martin and Lewis Show, and after Paramount producer Hal Wallis saw them perform at the Copacabana nightclub in New York, he booked them both to a film contract. Martin and Lewis made their big-screen debut in the 1949 film My Friend Irma, earning rave reviews.The New York Times wrote, "We could go along with the laughs which were fetched by a new mad comedian, Jerry Lewis by name. This freakishly built and acting young man, who has been seen in nightclubs hereabouts with a collar-ad partner, Dean Martin, has a genuine comic quality. The swift eccentricity of his movements, the harrowing features of his face, and the squeak of his vocal protestations...have flair. His idiocy constitutes the burlesque of an idiot, which is something else again. He's the funniest thing in the picture."
Over the next decade, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis made 16 films together, including My Friend Irma Goes West (1950), The Stooge (1952) and Hollywood or Bust (1956). The pair also made frequent television appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and The Colgate Comedy Hour. However, by the mid-1950s their partnership and friendship began to fray as Lewis received greater national attention and, as he admitted later, drove Martin away with his egotism and insensitivity. The two split ways, both professionally and personally, in 1956.
Solo Film Star
After his split with Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis went on to a successful solo career as both an actor and director. His first film without Martin, The Delicate Delinquent (1957), was a huge hit and immediately established Lewis as a star in his own right. In 1959, Lewis signed a new contract with Paramount that paid him $10 million up front and 60 percent of box office profits, the most lucrative contract ever signed by a film star at that time. The contract also provided Lewis with greater control over his films, and he made his directorial debut with the 1960 comedy Bellboy.He went on to direct and star in a number of highly successful films, such as The Nutty Professor (1963), Three on a Couch (1966) and The Day the Clown Cried (1972). As an actor, he also turned in an acclaimed performance in the 1982 Martin Scorsese film The King of Comedy and fulfilled his lifelong dream of acting on Broadway as the star of the 1995 production of Damn Yankees.
Other Endeavors
Based on his extensive experience as an actor, director and producer, in 1967 Lewis began teaching graduate film courses at the University of Southern California. His lectures have been collected into a book, The Total Film-Maker (1971), which is considered a seminal text on filmmaking. Lewis also has an unusually fanatical following in Europe, and especially in France, where won Best Director of the Year three times. When his film Hardly Working opened in Paris, the marquee of a cinema on the Champs Elysees read simply, "JERRY."In addition to his prolific career as an entertainer, Lewis has been active in the fight against muscular dystrophy. Until 2011, he served as the chairman of the Muscular Dystrophy Association and hosted an annual telethon that has raised nearly $60 million a year in donations (adding up to $2.5 billion during a nearly half-century run). For his efforts, Lewis was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 and received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 2009 Oscars ceremony.
Family
In 2009, tragedy struck when Lewis' son Joseph, the youngest of six sons from his first marriage and longtime drug addict, committed suicide at age 45. While the two hadn't been close for the previous 20 years, in 2014 Lewis opened up about his son's untimely death, saying, "He was my son and he's gone, and there's not a lot I can do about that. I beat myself a thousand times....You don't get over that."Also in 2009, a woman claiming to be Lewis's daughter came forward, with DNA proof that her claims were true. Suzan Lewis has since gone on to write an autobiography called Jerry Lewis, My Father, Is Always in My Mirror.”
Another notable child is Gary Lewis, Jerry Lewis' oldest son, who was the frontman for the band Gary Lewis and the Playboys. The band had a string of top-ten hits in the mid-1960s.
Jerry Lewis has been married twice, once to Patty Palmer (1944-1980) and again to SanDee Pitnick (1983-).
Later Years
In March 2014, Lewis took to the stage once again, selling out his one-man show at the 2,400-seat La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts in La Mirada, California. A month later, his hand- and footprints were placed into the cement outside Hollywood's TCL Chinese Theatre, an honor long overdue...
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