Surely the best thing he did late in life was the Henry Fonda role, Juror #8, in the telemovie of 12 Angry Men. In some ways I preferred it to the much beloved original.
I prefer it to the original, and I’m not afraid to say it. He’s great in it.
JL – Hilarious in Odd Couple. Great in The Apartment.
Absolutely tragic in Glengarry Glen Ross. Seeing him go through the gamut of emotions in that movie is priceless. He goes from being so browbeaten, and then after closing, pulls off the “cock of the walk”, talking up his sales stories. He’s still got it!!!
Then, Kevin Spacey says, “how did you know about <such and such>” and it is the biggest balloon bursting since the Hindenburg. You can feel his insides crumple.
One of the best performances in any movie ever, if you ask me.
I’d add The Out of Towners , one of Jack Lemmon’s funniest roles. (The remake was dire beyond belief).
Well, is my face red. I’ll have to watch it again (Dang! See one of my favourite films again!) to see if it is in fact set any earlier than Dec. 31, 1969, but you’re right.
My sole defense is that for some of us, the sixties lasted for longer than for others…
I really like everything I’ve seen with Jack Lemmon, but I fell in love him with his role in Mr. Roberts.
After coming back and re-reading all the additional entries, one has to ask, did Jack Lemmon ever deliver a bad performance? If so, I have yet to see it. When he was in a good movie, he made it great, and when he was in a so-so movie, he still made it worth watching.
They broke the mold, baby.
Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 Hamlet, the only unabridged film version, does indeed have an embarrassingly bad Jack Lemmon appearance, as Marcellus. The film is superlative and should not be missed on any account. One thing you will notice right away is the shocking inadequacy of American actors in actual side-by-side matchups with British. Of the Americans only Charleton Heston acquits himself manfully. He is the full equal of the Brits. Lemmon, as I recall, is in only one very early and mercifully short part. I literally winced through it. You will too, I guarantee.
Well, because you asked–I would say most of his stuff in the 80s and beyond was subpar, with *Buddy Buddy, Hamlet, That’s Life! *and Dad being the grossest offenders. He gives the worst performance in Short Cuts and JFK, and he’s strictly phoning it in with everything he did with Matthau in the 90s. I think one of the things that made Glengarry Glen Ross so revelatory (because it is a truly magnificent performance) was that it was so far removed from the pure hambone we’d been seeing from him for the previous decade.
He’s also just been brazenly miscast in some movies (Cowboy, Airport '77) and seriously overrated in others (Tribute, all the TV movie remakes).
That said, he is heartbreaking in DoW&R, brilliant in Some Like it Hot, extremely well-suited for Missing & China, irresistable in The Great Race, and and very funny in his supporting stuff from the 50s.
I’ll agree with this. Lemmon just seemed, very unusually, under prepared. He’s clearly reciting lines instead of making them sound natural.
Totally unusual from him, who is such a natural actor.
Yes! You beat me to it. Do you hear a whistle?
Mister Rogers and Some Like it Hot are also faves of mine. Great, heartbreaking performance in Missing, as well. Wow, I just checked out his IMDB filmography and I had no idea he was as productive as he apparently has been. Genius comedian with some real dramatic depth.
I think Pocketa-pocketa was Walter Mitty.
Actually that was onomatopoem’s post.
I have seen *It Should Happen to You * perhaps 10 times, and Lemmon is completely disarming in it. He sings “Let’s Fall in Love” with Judy Holliday and I’m just gone. Also make sure to see It Happened to Jane with Doris Day, in which Lemmon wears Boy Scout shorts through half the picture. (It has at least three alternate titles.)
Which for some reason, I don’t see. 
I see the quotes but not the post the quotes come from.
Anyway the cartoonist in that film is based upon James Thurber, who also wrote The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I just read a book writted by Thurber and EB White (Charlotte’s Web) that was a spoof on the sex/psychology books coming out in the late '20s. *Is Sex Necessary * is hysterically funny and I frequently imagined Jack Lemmon’s voice reading it.