(16 March 1926 - 20 August 2017)
The American actor Jerry Lewis, who has died aged 91 following a urinary tract infection, was born to Russian-Jewish parents, Daniel and Rachel Levitch. His father was in vaudeville, while his mother was a radio pianist, and Jerry started performing as a child with them. It was in 1945 that the comedian Lewis met the singer Dean Martin (1917-1995) in a New York club. They teamed up as an act and eventually moved to radio and then became television hosts on The Colgate Comedy Hour. This led to a contract with Paramount Pictures as supporting players in the film version of the radio show My Friend Irma (1949) which was quickly followed by My Friend Irma Goes West. Their first starring movie was At War With the Army and they went on to make many more films for Paramount including That’s My Boy, Jumping Jacks, The Caddy, Living It Up, Artists and Models and Hollywood or Bust. They then split up to make solo careers out of entertaining in Las Vegas, but at separate hotels.
Lewis graduated to theatre and TV work and then returned to Paramount to make his own films, sometimes acting and directing. These included The Sad Sack, Rock-a-Bye Baby, The Geisha Boy, Visit to a Small Planet, Cinderfella and The Bellboy. All his films had elements of slapstick humour which now seems far too over the top. However, it didn’t stop the films coming, including The Ladies Man, The Errand Boy, It’s Only Money and The Nutty Professor, the last a take on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He also appeared in films by other hands, including Three Ring Circus, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Boeing Boeing and he directed One More Time, but eventually his own films (including Three on a Couch, Way… Way Out, The Big Mouth and Don’t Raise the Drawbridge, Lower the River) were not good and fared badly at the box office, while The Day the Clown Died (1972) was never even released.
Martin Scorsese managed to tame Lewis for The King of Comedy (1983, a Bafta nomination) with Robert De Niro and he made several appearances in television series and movies. His Broadway debut was a production of Damn Yankees (1995) which also came to London, but only for two months or so. One of Lewis’s last films was Peter Chelsom’s Funny Bones (1995) with Lee Evans. If his films were not always worth the candle, Jerry Lewis’s tireless work for charity was exceptional. He particularly supported the Muscular Dystrophy Association, raising over two billion dollars through his annual telethons. He was married first to Patti Palmer and then SanDee Pitnick. He had seven children including an adopted son and an adopted daughter.
MICHAEL DARVELL
