Tribute: Jerry Lewis

Tribute: Jerry Lewis

Posted on August 20, 2017 at 7:36 pm

We mourn the loss of one of the great figures of 20th century entertainment, Jerry Lewis, a performer who was at the top in nightclubs, movies, radio, and television. He was a successful and innovative director of film as well.

He was an extraordinarily gifted physical comedian.

He liked to describe his act with Dean Martin as “the handsome man and the monkey.”

After Martin left him, Lewis was devastated. In one of his most successful solo films, “The Nutty Professor,” a sort of reverse Jeckyll and Hyde story, he essentially played both roles.

Lewis became a director who learned every technical aspect of filmmaking, down to loading the camera. He invented the instant video feedback system that is now standard.

He was also a superb dramatic actor, most notably in Martin Scorsese’s “King of Comedy,” playing a kidnapped talk show host, opposite Robert de Niro.

He was also a tireless, if sometimes controversial, fundraiser for muscular dystrophy with annual Labor Day telethons.

Shawn Levy’s insightful book, King of Comedy: The Life and Art Of Jerry Lewis, has the best description I’ve seen of the complicated relationship between Lewis and his audience. His talent could be overwhelmed by his voracious need for attention and his barely hidden hostility. He had a rare combination of ferocious commitment to entertaining, putting everything he had into it, but holding a great deal back, never showing us who he really was, as any truly great entertainer should do.
But at his best, with Martin and working with director Frank Tashlin, he was as good as it gets.

May his memory be a blessing.

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Max Rose

Max Rose

Posted on September 1, 2016 at 5:51 pm

B
Lowest Recommended Age: High School
MPAA Rating: Not rated
Profanity: Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs: Drinking, prescription drugs
Violence/ Scariness: Sad death
Diversity Issues: None
Date Released to Theaters: September 2, 2016
Copyright 2016 Paladin
Copyright 2016 Paladin

Jerry Lewis is back, playing the title character in “Max Rose,” a longtime jazz musician rocked to discover that his late wife might have been unfaithful. This 2013 film arrives in theaters in 2016, with Lewis giving a performance that is best described with a word not usually thought of for him: subdued. Lewis, then age 86, has learned to trust himself and the audience. He does not have to be big, loud, and needy. He can be quiet, subtle, and patient. The script is under-written, but it is a pleasure to watch Lewis in this mode, along with a bunch of other familiar octogenarian co-stars who bring their decades of experience to the under-written script.

Writer/director Daniel Noah locates us very quickly: some hospital paperwork, a clock ticking, a sympathetic voice asking, “Grandpa, can I get you anything?”

Max was married to Eva (Claire Bloom, lovely and warm in flashbacks), and he believed they were the great loves of each other’s lives. After a lifetime together, he does not know how to begin to live without her. Max has a tense relationship with his son, Christopher (Kevin Pollak). But he is very close to his granddaughter Annie (Kerry Bishé), who is spending much of her time with him, making sure that he eats and trying to make sure he takes his medicine. We see Max outsmarting her on that one. Max hands Annie Eva’s compact, and she smiles in recognition of one of her grandmother’s favorite treasures. But then Max shows Annie the inscription, and while she tries to reassure him that it might not be evidence that she had another relationship, they both know that is its implication.

Max is badly shaken. He questions everything he thought he knew about Eva, their relationship, and the choices he made. How can he reconcile the relationship he thought he had with the idea that Eva’s favorite compact reminded her of someone else every time she looked in the mirror to check her make-up? “I failed my wife, I failed my family, I failed myself.” And yet, he cannot forgive Christopher, now in the midst of his second divorce, for what Max considers Christopher’s own failures as a husband and father.

The story is thin and unconvincing, but it is a pleasure to see Lewis in the role. And in brief appearances, veterans Rance Howard, Dean Stockwell, and Fred Willard make us wish the whole movie was these guys sitting around talking.

Parents should know that the movie has mature material including strong language and sexual references.

Family discussion: What did Max want from his confrontation with the man who gave Eva the compact? Why was he so hard on Christopher?

If you like this, try: “The King of Comedy” and “45 Years”

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Jerry Lewis Donates Archive to the Library of Congress

Jerry Lewis Donates Archive to the Library of Congress

Posted on September 15, 2015 at 8:00 am

Jerry Lewis has donated a large collection of movies and memorabilia to the Library of Congress, where it will be available for researchers, historians, and critics.

Copyright Jerry Lewis 1960
Copyright Jerry Lewis 1960

“The Geisha Boy,” “The Bellboy,” “Cinderfella,” and “The Nutty Professor” are all among the many motion pictures that personify the comedic genius of Jerry Lewis. The Library of Congress announced today that it has acquired a trove of documents, films and other media that provide a unique window into the world of a man who has spent more than 70 years making people laugh.

In celebration of the materials arriving at the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution, Lewis will perform at 8 p.m., Friday, Oct. 9, at the historic State Theatre in Culpeper, Virginia in cooperation with the Library of Congress. “An Evening with Jerry Lewis” is a ticketed event. For more information, visit the State Theatre’s website (www.culpepertheatre.org) or call (540) 829-0292.

Before the concert, Lewis will tour the Library of Congress Packard Campus in Culpeper to see where his collection will be stored and preserved as part of the nation’s artistic and cultural patrimony. The collection will complement the Library’s existing collections of iconic humorists, including Bob Hope, Groucho Marx, Danny Kaye, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Sid Caesar and Johnny Carson.

“Many of us know Jerry Lewis through his comedy, in film and onstage, or for his humanitarian work,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. “Lewis is one of the few comic auteurs. This collection will give the world a more complete picture of his life as a performer, director, producer, writer, recording artist, author, educator and philanthropist. He is one of America’s funniest men, who has demonstrated that comedy as a medium for laughter is one of humanity’s greatest gifts.”

“For more than seven decades I’ve been dedicated to making people laugh. If I get more than three people in a room, I do a number,” Lewis joked. “Knowing that the Library of Congress was interested in acquiring my life’s work was one of the biggest thrills of my life. It is comforting to know that this small piece of the world of comedy will be preserved and available to future generations.” Lewis donated portions of the collection; the rest was acquired via purchase.

The Jerry Lewis Collection contains more than 1,000 moving image materials and paper documentation that cover the entire span of his remarkable career—from an early screen test made years before his movie debut to extensive amounts of test footage, outtakes and bloopers from his self-produced and often self-directed Hollywood productions.

The collection also chronicles his television career, including his appearances with his onetime partner Dean Martin on the “Colgate Comedy Hour” (NBC, 1950-1955), full runs of his various variety series and guest appearances on programs like “The Tonight Show.” Lewis received copies of virtually every television appearance he ever made, including “Tonight” show episodes, that don’t exist anywhere else. Other now-obscure programs such as “Broadway Open House” are also in the collection.

In addition, there are home movies, films given to Lewis as gifts (such as the 35 mm print of “Modern Times,” which was given to him by Charles Chaplin), videos of his lectures given while instructing at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, filmed nightclub appearances both with and without Martin, and footage from his legendary work on the Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon.

Collection highlights include:

35 mm prints and pre-prints of many of Lewis’ most popular films including “The Bellboy,” “The Errand Boy” and “The Family Jewels.”
A rare autographed picture of famous silent comedian Edgar Kennedy.
Test footage—of costumes, make-up, camera and actor screen tests—from some of Lewis’ leading films, including a complete one-reel silent comedy filmed on the set of “The Patsy.
Home movies of Lewis at work and play, featuring such notables as his rock-star son Gary Lewis, comedian Milton Berle at Disneyland in 1955 and Lewis and Dean Martin on the set of “Pardners.”
Fully scripted motion pictures produced by Lewis at home, which often starred Lewis’ neighbors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. Titles include “Fairfax Avenue” (spoofing “Sunset Boulevard”) “Come Back Little Shiksa” and “The Re-Enforcer,” starring Dean Martin.
Rare footage of Martin and Lewis doing their nightclub act.

The Jerry Lewis Collection will be available to qualified researchers in the Library’s Motion Picture and Television Reading Room in Washington, D.C. Processing of the collection continues, but much of it is currently available to researchers. A small portion of the collection, however, will be restricted for 10 years.

Lewis was born Joseph Levitch in Newark, New Jersey on March 16, 1926. Born into a vaudeville family, Lewis started performing at the age of five. In 1945, he met crooner Dean Martin and a year later, they formed the comedy team Martin and Lewis. The famous duo became an instant hit in nightclubs, film, radio and television. After performing with Martin for more than a decade, Lewis became a successful solo actor and director and Martin embarked on a singing-acting career.

Lewis also turned his talents toward teaching and charitable work. He received several lifetime achievement and humanitarian awards. He has been honored by The American Comedy Awards, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He received the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors’ highest Emmy Award, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for his humanitarian efforts and received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 2009 Academy Awards.

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Trailer: When Comedy Went to School

Posted on July 29, 2013 at 8:00 am

This documentary is a portrait of the generation of the mid-century Jewish comics that includes Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Jackie Mason, Mort Sahl, and Jerry Stiller, who appear telling jokes and telling their stories. And it is the story of the culture that produced them, starting in upstate New York’s Catskill Mountains, aka the Borscht Belt (think “Dirty Dancing”), where Jewish immigrants transformed lush farmland into the 20th century’s largest resort complex. Those Catskill hotels and bungalow colonies provided the setting for a remarkable group of young Jewish-American comedians to hone their craft and become worldwide legends.

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Jerry Lewis is Back (in France) With a New Movie — A Drama

Posted on May 20, 2013 at 3:41 pm

They really do love Jerry Lewis in France, so where better to premiere his first movie in 23 years than Cannes?  The 87-year-old legendary funny man appears in a drama called “Max Rose,” about an elderly widower, co-starring with Claire Bloom.  The Hollywood Reporter has an exclusive clip.

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