Jerry Lewis

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Jerry Lewis (1995)Jerry Lewis signature.svg

Jerry Lewis (born March 16, 1926 as Joseph Levitch in Newark , New Jersey , † August 20, 2017 in Las Vegas , Nevada ) was an American comedian , actor , singer , producer , screenwriter and director . He became known worldwide after the Second World War through a ten-year collaboration with the singer and entertainer Dean Martin . The duo Martin & Lewisbecame one of the most successful comedy teams of the post-war period. After the team split up, Lewis developed a career of its own.

biography

Lewis was an only child. His ancestors were Jews who had emigrated from Russia . His father Daniel Levitch was a singer and vaudeville actor, his mother Rachel Levitch (née Brodsky) a pianist for a radio station. Lewis has performed the Record Act since 1939, also known as "Pantomimicry" , in which he played records by well-known artists and while pulling faces, pretended to be singing. The Record Act was a common number at the time among comedians who didn't have their own material. The number was primarily a pause filler.

Martin & Lewis

Lewis made the breakthrough with joint appearances with Dean Martin, which began in 1946 at Club 500 in Atlantic City . Their improvised appearances were a sensation: "The boys poke each other on, cut each other ruthlessly, cut the wildest grimaces and turn the hall into a madhouse" ( Billboard ). Martin & Lewis developed into the "hottest number in show business", guaranteeing promoters and producers high profits. From 1947 they played in the most famous nightclubs in the USA, and in a short time their weekly fees multiplied from 750 US dollars (late 1946) to 15,000 dollars (1949). After a short time, the duo received their own radio and television shows. From 1950 to 1955 they appeared together for NBC in 189 episodes of the Colgate Comedy Hour . From 1949 Paramount Pictures finally transferred the Martin & Lewis format to the feature film medium. By 1956, 16 full-length films were made under the production of Hal Wallis . Since 1953 there have been tensions between Martin and Lewis, which were mainly due to the different weighting and perception of roles. Martin felt increasingly underrepresented and feared for his independence as an artist. In 1955 the dispute escalated. During the shooting of the last two films together, Martin and Lewis stopped speaking to each other. On June 18, 1956, they announced the breakup of the team. The last joint performance took place exactly ten years to the week after their debut on July 24, 1956 at the 500 Club .

Contemporary critics praised Lewis and his special slapstick, while Martin was seen as a mere interchangeable keyword maker (straight man) . Lewis contradicted the decade later and characterized his relationship with Martin as a love affair. Today the success of the team is justified by the peculiarity of the roles of Martin and Lewis and their relationship to one another, which was novel in this form. Martin & Lewis was then a unique combination of sex and slapstick. After two decades of mutual dislike, Martin & Lewis made a brief joint appearance in 1976 on a telethon broadcast live on television .

The collaboration and separation of the comedian duo Lewis-Martin was later, in a strongly fictionalized form, the subject of the 2005 film True Lies .

Solo artist

Jerry Lewis (2005)

While Martin first turned to stage work after the separation in 1956 and became the most successful entertainer in Las Vegas, Lewis concentrated on the further development of his own film work and show career. The first film with Lewis as sole lead actor was Frank Tashlin's 1957 The Hero of Brooklyn (The Delicate Delinquent) . Lewis began writing scripts at this time and also took on the production management and directing. His first film made this way was Hello, Page! ( The Bellboy , 1960), which was intended as a tribute to Stan Laurel . During the production, Lewis first decided to use the then still new medium " video " in order to be able to control the resulting recordings immediately - a procedure that later became the standard in film productions. The Jerry Lewis Show was televised from 1957 to 1959 . His sketch "The Typewriter" (The Typewriter), based on the music of Leroy Anderson , which he included in his standard repertoire and then repeatedly incorporated into television and stage shows (first in his film Der Ladenhüter 1963 and also in German television in 1974 in the Klimbim show). In addition, Lewis appeared in 1956, 1957 and 1959 as the host of the Academy Awards .

Despite his often squawking voice, Jerry Lewis had a chart hit in 1950 with the interpretation of the song Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody , previously made famous by Al Jolson and Judy Garland . The long-playing record Jerry Lewis Just Sings even ranked among the top 20 of the US charts in 1956.

Lewis himself directed and played the leading role in the following films I'm Still Up for Sale ( The Ladies Man , 1961), Der Bürotrottel ( The Errand Boy , 1961) and The Crazy Professor ( The Nutty Professor , 1963). From the mid-1960s, the success of his films declined, and he instead became involved with the Muscle Waste Foundation in television programs that have aired on Labor Day in the United States since the 1950s, with around $ 30 million in donations annually were taken.

In 1972 Lewis produced The Day the Clown Cried , a grotesque film in which he directed and starred. The film is about a clown who is abducted to a Nazi concentration camp after parodying Hitler . He remains true to his role there and even accompanies the children of the concentration camp as a clown into the gas chambers at the end. However, the film never hit theaters, Lewis abruptly stopped filming 3 days before it was finished and kept the footage under lock and key. Apart from him, only a handful of people saw the film. While he had previously reacted very irritably to questions from journalists about it, he said in an interview in January 2013 that he was ashamed of the film, which was just bad, and that he would never publish it in the future either. Many of those involved at the time, however, expressed themselves differently and praised the film as a masterpiece. In February 2016, some scenes were shown on German television as part of a television documentary.

After the fiasco, Lewis initially withdrew from the public. It was only after an eight-year absence from the big screen that Lewis brought out the film Alles in Handarbeit (Hardly Working) as a director and lead actor in 1980 , with which, however, he could no longer build on his earlier successes. A year later he appeared as the kidnapped showmaster in Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy (1983) alongside Robert De Niro . After filming, Lewis suffered a severe heart attack and was briefly clinically dead. After that, he largely withdrew from the film business, but occasionally appeared in Broadway shows, including as "Devil" in the revival of the musical Damn Yankees .

In 1988 and 1989 Lewis played in five episodes of the crime series Fight Against the Mafia produced by Stephen J. Cannell (original title: Wiseguy ) an industrialist. The role was very remarkable for him because it was devoid of any comedy. Even in old age, Lewis appeared again and again with stage and film appearances. In 1995 he played an aging entertainer in the tragic comedy Funny Bones . Lewis took his last film role in 2016 as the father of the corrupt cop Jim Stone, played by Nicolas Cage , in the thriller The Trust . Two stars are dedicated to Lewis on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at addresses 6150 and 6821 Hollywood Boulevard.

Lewis at the 2013 Cannes International Film Festival

For years, his German voice actor was Horst Gentzen († 1985), who also lent his voice to the frog Kermit from the Muppet Show .

The characters that Lewis played in various films were featured in the animated series Will The Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down? parodied, which the American broadcaster ABC produced from 1970 to 1972 with the participation of Jerry Lewis.

Private life

Jerry Lewis was married to former singer Patti Palmer from 1944 to 1980 and since 1983 with Las Vegas dancer SanDee Pitnick. He had five biological sons, an adopted son and an adopted daughter. His eldest son Gary had some success in a band called Gary Lewis & the Playboys in the 1960s . Another son, Joseph Christopher Lewis (1964–2009), died of a drug overdose. Lewis had seven grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

In March 1965, Jerry Lewis contracted a vertebral fracture while playing a failed piano role at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas . For several decades since then, he suffered from considerable back pain that even made him think of suicide. It was only through the implantation of a newly developed device that this pain could be alleviated. For years Lewis was addicted to the narcotic drug Percodan , which he had been introduced to by Dean Martin's assistant, Mack Gray .

Jerry Lewis died on August 20, 2017 at the age of 91 with his family of vascular heart failure .

Charity

Jerry Lewis organized every year from 1966 called telethon on the US Labor Day for the Muscular Dystrophy Association ( muscular dystrophy -Verein). They lasted between 19 and 21.5 hours. In total, over two billion US dollars were raised there. In 1985 Lewis was awarded the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service for his work, and in 2005 he received the Governor's Award of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for the Telethons .

The telethons typically featured a large number of show stars, including some as co-presenters (e.g. Ed McMahon and Casey Kasem ). At the Fortieth Telethon 2005, collections were made for the Salvation Army for the benefit of Hurricane Katrina victims . The 42nd Telethon 2007 donated nearly $ 64 million, and the 43rd Telethon 2008 donated a record $ 65 million to the Muscular Dystrophy Association .

On February 22, 2009, Lewis received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy Awards for his humanitarian service.

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Lewis' star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Phonograms

  • 1956 - Jerry Lewis Just Sings
  • EMI Comedy: Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis
  • Jerry Lewis: The Capitol Collector's Series
  • Jerry Lewis: Phoney Phone Calls 1959-1972

Fonts

  • Jerry Lewis, Rainer Gansera: How I make films. (OT: The Total Film-Maker. ) Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1976, ISBN 3-499-11927-7 .
  • Jerry Lewis, James Kaplan: Dean and Me - A Love Story. Random House, 2005, ISBN 0-7679-2086-4 .

literature

  • Klaus Stawecki: Jerry Lewis. His life, his films. Trescher, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-928409-39-5 .
  • Jerry Lewis: How I Make Films - The Total Film Maker . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1976, ISBN 3-499-11927-7 .

Television documentary

Web links

Commons : Jerry Lewis  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kliph Nesterhoff: The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy , Grove / Atlantic, Inc., 2015, ISBN 978-0-8021-9086-4 , p. 163.
  2. ↑ Michael Althen: Dean Martin. His films - his life. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munich, 1997, ISBN 3-453-13676-4 , p. 27 f.
  3. ↑ Frank Krutnik: Sex and Slapstick. The Martin & Lewis Phenomenon In: Murray Pomerance (Ed.): Enfant Terrible !: Jerry Lewis in American Film , NYU Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-8147-6705-4 , p. 110.
  4. ↑ Benjamin K. Uhrish: Dean Martin . In: Ray Broadus Browne, Pat Browne: The Guide to United States Popular Culture , Popular Press, 2001, ISBN 978-0-87972-821-2 , p. 516.
  5. ↑ Nick Tosches: Dino. Rat-Pack, the Mafia and the big dream of happiness . Heyne Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-453-40367-3 , pp. 194, 200, 218, 219, 290.
  6. ↑ Details about the Colgate Comedy Hour on the website www.imdb.com (accessed on March 4, 2016.).
  7. ↑ RM Reed, MK Reed: The Encyclopedia of Television, Cable, and Video , Springer Science & Business Media, 2012, ISBN 978-1-4684-6521-1 , p. 336.
  8. ^ Ricci Martin, Christopher Smith: That's Amore. A Son Remembers Dean Martin , Taylor Trade Publications, 2004, ISBN 978-1-58979-140-4 , p. 31 f.
  9. ↑ Michael Althen: Dean Martin. His films - his life . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munich, 1997, ISBN 3-453-13676-4 , p. 46.
  10. ↑ Nick Tosches: Dino. Rat-Pack, the Mafia and the big dream of happiness . Heyne Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-453-40367-3 , p. 326.
  11. ↑ Lewis titled his 2006 book Dean And Me: A Love Story (Pan Macmillan, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4472-0482-4 ).
  12. ↑ Frank Krutnik: Sex and Slapstick. The Martin & Lewis Phenomenon In: Murray Pomerance (Ed.): Enfant Terrible !: Jerry Lewis in American Film , NYU Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-8147-6705-4 , p. 109.
  13. ↑ Michael Althen: Dean Martin. His films - his life . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munich, 1997, ISBN 3-453-13676-4 , p. 92.
  14. ↑ Interview 2013
  15. ^ Fritz Göttler: The invisible clown , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 29, 2015, p. 59
  16. ↑ Christian Buß : Documentary about concentration camp film by Jerry Lewis: With the kind support of SS Der Spiegel , February 1, 2016
  17. ↑ Full cast and crew for "Fight Against the Mafia" (1987)
  18. ↑ Jerry Lewis tells it like it is - and was . usatoday.com. Retrieved February 4, 2016.
  19. ↑ Nick Tosches: Dino. Rat-Pack, the Mafia and the big dream of happiness . Heyne Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-453-40367-3 , pp. 354, 576.
  20. ↑ US comedian Jerry Lewis is dead . In: sueddeutsche.de . August 20, 2017, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed August 20, 2017]).
  21. ↑ KEN RITTER, Associated Press: Coroner: Jerry Lewis death was from end-stage heart disease . In: msn.com . August 21, 2017 ( msn.com [accessed August 22, 2017]). Coroner: Jerry Lewis death was from end-stage heart disease ( Memento of the original from August 22, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.msn.com
personal data
SURNAME Lewis, Jerry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Levitch, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American entertainer, producer, actor, and singer
BIRTH DATE March 16, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Newark , New Jersey , United States
DATE OF DEATH 20th August 2017
PLACE OF DEATH Las Vegas , Nevada , United States