I mean it! Why is he often so irritable, blunt, and crude when people, perhaps not those of his coterie (or in show business in general), approach him? We know how high-minded Jerry is for his work on behalf of Mucular Dystrophy research and treatment; and he has plenty other positive qualities and talents. So why does he seem to bit off the heads of people who talk to him?
Ok…what exactly are we talking about here? (I’m a good 25 years behind on my Jerry Lewis research.)
Myster Ecks, I’m being as literal and direct as I can here. I get the impression that Jerry tends to bite people’s heads off…is he merely busy and preoccupied, or does he consider himself above mere mortals?
I think HE thinks he’s a much bigger celebrity than he actually is. He vastly overrates his importance to the world of entertainment. He’s probably surrounded himself with ass-kissing yes-men who tell him he’s one of the world’s best comic actors. This couldn’t be further from the truth if the truth were located somewhere at the other end of the Andromeda galaxy. A lot of celebs from that time period (late 40’s - early 60’s) seem to behave the same way.
Jerry Lewis was once one of the hottest stars around, with a tremendous work ethic, who cracked up millions in the movies. I loved him as a kid, along with Dean Martin and Bob Hope and Binge Crosby.
His candle guttered some years ago, Binge died, Dean died, comedy changed and he wound up on the side streets of Broadway. Hope is tottering on. His was the form of comedy where no one used dirty words, the simple, goofy kid won the beautiful girl by being True Hearted, Honest and Loyal, plus his concept of comedy often gave him free range in directing his movies.
Now, he’s a footnote in history. Fame is fleeting. Had he died 20 years or so ago, his death probably would have been in all papers, in all media and stories would have been broadcast for weeks about him. If he dies now, there is a chance that he will receive just as minor a footnote as the recently deceased, once great Steve Allen did.
No one hardly noticed the passing of the great Jimmy Durante. The passing of Moe Howard, the last of the great 3 Stooges just barely made the news.
Jerry is still staying in the lime light, but his popularity is nothing like it used to be when millions of kids swarmed to any movie he was in and he was a household name.
So why doesn’t he just move to France?
He got stuck with Mucular Dystrophy solely because he was critized for making movies where the spaz was stupid.
Then he bent over backwards to make up for it and it’s now all he has left. He can’t even abandon it now to produce something else, or write books like Steve Allen. It’s enough to make any fan-hungry personality depressed.
During the period between Jack Paar and Johnny Carson (Parr left and Carson’s contract didn’t start yet) Lewis hosted several weeks of the Tonight Show. He was also a stand in host in the early years. He showed a very thin skin even during that period. If one TV critic (and there were several–more New York dailys then) said one bad thing about Lewis he (Lewis) would read the criticism on the air and lambast the critic to the nation.
I read in a trivia book that Jerry once got in a feud with his agent, whose picture he subsequently had printed on rolls of toilet paper. (I bet the agent had a few choice things to say about that, that even Jerry couldn’t have mustered.)
There may be more to this than meets the eye, and here I would definitely have to give Jerry his due.
Who among the Teeming Millions would not agree with me that in the last 30 years or so, the definition of “comedy” seems to drift more and more to the kind of dirty snickering jokes we all remember from junior high school–the kids who are just learning about sex and ‘know that sex is dirty’? Apparently George Carlin is the prototype of this–from what I have read he didn’t prosper until he started using the-seven-words-you-can’t-say-on-television type of monolog; and then of course there are Richard Pryor, Pat Cooper, Andrew Dice Clay, Bette Midler and Eddie Murphy. I will defer to Jerry Lewis on this topic, in that I think he is (justifiably!) bitter that “comedy” has degenerated into snickering, dirty junior-high-school type humor.
The Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello…none of them had to resort to smut to get laughs. And I am sure Mr. Lewis knoows this. Why, I may have just answered the question I asked in the OP–not that I am happy at all about it. 
As a longtime fan of the Marx Brothers, I have to say that smut is in the eye of the beholder.
If he’s lucky.
If he’s not lucky, he should get out more.
Justme wrote:
Actually, I was fairly astounded at the level of coverage of the death of Steve Allen. It was mentioned on every BBS I’m on. Everybody I know mentioned it. It was on television everytime I turned it on. The Usenet .mp3 groups started featuring Steve Allen songs. I have never seen an all-but-forgotten celebrity get this much attention. His death was bigger than James Stewart’s and Robert Mitchum’s combined.
I wouldn’t say that he bites people’s heads off per se, but that he has such an inflated sense of self regard that he has unwittingly become a caricature of himself.
Referring to himself in the third person, asserting that today’s comics are light years behind him in such vital comic skills as pratfalls, taking pies in the face, wearing funny glasses etc., plainly he thinks that he is the Man as far as comedy is concerned.
What he fails to realize is that he really isn’t that funny. At least, not in the way he intends. When I laugh at Lewis, I am not laughing at that tired old “hoy, freun-laben” routine, but at what an arrogant ass he is. Lewis is never funnier than when he is trying to be cold serious.
Didn’t he host the Eating Disorders Telethon?
I agree with you on Bob Hope. I used to think that he was just a boring, golf-playing old fogey. Then I saw Road to Morocco, which was great. Toungue-in-cheek comedy, asides to the camera, gentle by-play between Bob and Bing; highly recommended.
As for Jimmy Durante, a pox on him. He was, at least in part, responsible for the downfall of the career of the much greater Buster Keaton. If Buster hadn’t had to play second fiddle to Jimmy, effectively reinforcing the misconception that he couldn’t make it in talkies (see his hysterical bit part in Limelight for an effective refutation of that), we would’ve been much better off.
“No one hardly noticed the passing of the great Jimmy Durante.”
—I beg to differ, says The Queen of the Dead. Jimmy got a front-page obit in the New York Times with a full page inside.
And, Zut, don’t blame Jimmy for those awful movies with Buster Keaton (and yes, they were indeed awful). That was MGM’s doing; and teaming those two probably looked good on paper. For the record, Buster and Jimmy remained good friends; and really, NONE of Buster’s talkies were much good, with or without Jimmy. Don’t jump all over me, I love his silents, but there were a LOT of problems with him and talkies.
Oh, and Jerry Lewis is a faun’s ass.
I saw Jerry on an Actor’s Guild interview with that phony and fawning psychofant host (don’t recall his miserable name).
I was hoping to hear a funny anecdote or memorable moment but all I heard was Jerry enjoying the sound of his own voice while endless cliches spilled from his lips. He has forgotten about being funny and human and has simply become a humourless, tiresome, manipulative bore with illusions of grandure and a big chip on his shoulder about the fact that he is not as big a star as he once was.
I credit him for helping the kids with muscular distrophy but for very little else. His bitterness is pervasive in almost all other aspects of his public life. I tend to think that his telethons are simply the last vehicle for him to be seen, heard and recognized. If not for them, he’d be a forgotten has been.
I got a copy of “The Last Christmas Show”, the book about Bob’s USO tours of everyplace the US armed forces went. If you ever find a copy of it, get it and read it. I’m amazed at what he did. He was hysterical! And his stories about meeting all those starlets, actors, sportsmen and musicans that he invited along was priceless.
Jerry can have his kids, Bob entertained Soliders everyplace from Greenland to Vietnam.
Jerry Lewis was Funny? WHEN?