Joseph Levitch, better known as Jerry
Lewis, is an American comedian, actor, producer, and
director known for his slapstick humor and his charity
fund-raising telethons for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Jerry Lewis, son of a vaudeville performer named
Danny Lewis, gained initial fame with the singer Dean
Martin, who served as a straight man to Lewis' manic,
zany antics as The Martin and Lewis comedy team. They
distinguished themselves for the majority of comedy
acts of the 1940's by relying on the interaction of
the two comics instead of pre-planned skits. In the
late forties, they rose to national prominence, first
with their popular nightclub act and then as film stars.
Critics often found it difficult to describe their
chaotic act beyond the austere "Martin sings and
Lewis clowns". They continued to perform in film
and on television until their split in 1956.
Lewis returned as a solo act with his debut film
The Delicate Delinquent in 1957. Lewis went on to star
in five more films before he produced, directed, wrote,
and starred in his own movie entitled The Bellboy in
1960. Legend has it that he edited the film by day
and performed in Las Vegas at night. During production
Lewis decided to use a video camera to tape the scene
while he was filming it, allowing him to review the
footage instantly. Later, this technique would become
an industry standard known as video assist.
Lewis directed several more of his own films including
The Ladies Man, The Errand Boy, and the iconic film,
The Nutty Professor. During this period he was consistently
praised by many French critics for his comedy and was
awarded the Légion d'honneur, the highest civilian
honor in France. Lewis box office appeal waned by the
mid sixties. In 1966 he began hosting an annual Labor
Day Telethon For The Muscular Dystrophy Association,
a charity he had already been publicly associated with
for more than ten years.
Later, Lewis starred in and directed the unreleased
The Day The Clown Cried in 1972. The film was a comedy
taking place in a Nazi concentration camp. Lewis has
explained why the film hasn't been released by suggesting
litigation over post-production financial difficulties.
It has been seen by very few select individuals, but
those who see it either praise it for comedic genius
or decry it as the utmost in bad taste.
After an eight year absence from movies, Lewis returned
in the early 1980s with Hardly Working, a film he both
directed and starred in. He followed this up with a
critically acclaimed performance in Martin Scorsese's
1983 film The King of Comedy in which Lewis plays a
late night TV host plagued by an obsessive fan. |
