The legendary comedian and Newark native passed away Sunday morning of natural causes at age 91 in Las Vegas with his family by his side.
LAS VEGAS -- Jerry Lewis, the rubber-faced comedian and director whose fundraising telethons became as famous as his hit movies, has died.
Publicist Candi Cazau said the Newark native passed away Sunday morning of natural causes at age 91 in Las Vegas with his family by his side.
Lewis made a career unleashing his inner child, mocking snobs and flouting authority in the process. He leaves behind a list of credits spanning back to the Depression era, along with a legacy of debate among audiences.
For younger generations, Lewis was best known as tearful telethon host but turn the cultural clock back to the mid-20th century and Lewis was everywhere. He first won fame teamed with singer Dean Martin and later launched a prolific solo career. Lewis made art of incompetence, serving as a mascot for social dysfunction in an era of stifling conformity.
The iconic performer once said, "Comedy is a man in trouble and comedians react to it in different ways. Chaplin was a ballet dancer. He's danced through trouble. Keaton became part of a well-oiled machine. He'd slip easily through a small opening. I'd have my arms outstretched and get stuck."
Lewis tended to garner strong love/hate reactions, which is reflective of a life and career filled with contrasts and contradictions. He played disorderly characters on screen while behind the camera he took total control as auteur.
His populist films were embraced by French intellectuals. He raised more than $1.4 billion for muscular dystrophy research yet his charity work earned equal amounts of praise and scorn. His zany shtick sprang from painful emotions, anxiety and self-doubt that plagued him from childhood. Lewis once proclaimed himself Hollywood's "most prominent and highly intelligent idiot."
It's fitting that his seminal movie is "The Nutty Professor," a Jekyll/Hyde farce about a nebbish who mixes a potion that transforms him into a suave ladykiller.
Commenting on his comedic persona in the 1982 autobiography, "Jerry Lewis: In Person," the star wrote, "I've always played my idiot character as I see life, a big dark storm that once in awhile is brightened by a rainbow of laughter."
Things were often dark and stormy for Lewis. He battled suicidal depression and addiction to painkillers, which he developed after suffering a back injury in 1965. His hostile breakup with Martin was tabloid fodder, as was his 1980 divorce from his first wife to marry a dancer two decades younger than him. His health problems included heart disease, prostate cancer, diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis.
His hostile breakup with Martin was tabloid fodder, as was his 1980 divorce from his first wife to marry a dancer two decades younger than him. His health problems included heart disease, prostate cancer, diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis.
Jerry Lewis was born on March 16, 1926, the son of Jewish vaudeville entertainers. His birth name was Joseph Levitch, according to most sources (the biography, "King of Comedy," by Shawn Levy claims his first name was actually Jerome).
He honed his craft in the Catskills and was barely out of his teens when he started playing nightclubs with Martin. Paired as smooth crooner and whiny klutz, the two dressed like grooms and capered like kids, developing an anarchic act fueled by their yin-yang dynamic. The team dominated showbiz for a decade, with hit movies, TV specials, albums and concert tours.
In Lewis' bestselling 2005 autobiography, "Dean & Me (A Love Story)" he discussed how timing was key to their success.
"The years just after (WWII) were uncertain ones. There was a lot of unease and rebellion under the country's placid surface. And so the sight of two grown men in a nightclub squirting water at each other and making silly jokes was a very welcome one."
After the duo split in 1956, Lewis reinvented himself sans partner, evolving into an ambitious director who worked independently within the studio system. He wrote, directed and starred in a series of comedies including "The Bellboy" and "The Ladies Man."
Lewis' most enduring role may be as philanthropist. In 1966, he hosted his first Labor Day Telethon, a 21-hour broadcast that aired on a single station, WNEW in New York to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA). The host welcomed guests like Joan Crawford, Henny Youngman and Chubby Checker while making earnest pleas for donations. Viewers responded with a surprising $1 million in pledges and a TV institution was born.
A throwback to the medium's early variety shows, the telethon goaded audiences to open their wallets with a mix of star power and unapologetic sentimentality. There were laughs and tears, as Lewis cut up with celebrity visitors and openly wept when he took the stage with young victims of the disease, dubbed "Jerry's kids."
Even as total donations climbed, the telethon was scrutinized by advocates for the disabled, who condemned the show as tacky and criticized Lewis for making such remarks as "God goofed" while standing next to children in wheelchairs. Despite the controversy, the basic format of the show remained the same and despite declining health, Lewis never missed a year.
Lewis' popularity with American audiences crested during the mid-1960's but as his star dimmed in the United States, he found a following overseas. He has a famously passionate fan base in France, where he was presented with the Legion of Honor medal in 1984, an award usually reserved for world leaders. French director Jean-Luc Godard once said, "Jerry Lewis is the only American director who has made progressive films. He is much better than Chaplin and Keaton."
His most ardent enthusiasts in the States have been fellow actors and filmmakers. Lewis' freewheeling delivery and bizarre body language influenced generations of comics, from Steve Martin and Chevy Chase to Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy (who remade "The Nutty Professor," plus a sequel).
Directors such as Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and David Cronenberg were among those who looked up to Lewis as a guiding spirit. They were inspired by his technical sophistication as well as his ability to make films autonomously in Hollywood.
Another famous admirer, Martin Scorsese coaxed an impressive dramatic performance from Lewis in "The King of Comedy," casting him as a bitter talk show host stalked by a fan (Robert De Niro) who hopes to inherit the throne.
Lewis' projects grew more diverse after the Scorsese gig. In 1989, he guest-starred on five episodes of the crime show, "Wiseguy," playing a garment manufacturer connected to the mob. The 1993 indie, "Arizona Dream," teamed him with Johnny Depp as eccentric uncle and nephew. In 1995, Lewis bowed on Broadway, starring as the devil in "Damn Yankees."
His final major role came in the 2013 drama "Max Rose," playing an aging jazz pianist.
In many ways, his serious efforts were more evocative of his personality than his comedies. No matter how much popularity he attained, he always felt underappreciated, often lashing out at dismissive film and TV critics. He once stated, "Don't say swell stuff over my grave."
His need for approval rooted back to a lonely childhood. Growing up in Irvington, he lacked a stable home environment. His parents would often be away on tour for months at a time, leaving him to stay with scattered relatives.
There was a sense of dread every time the phone rang. "I'd hold my breath, hoping it wouldn't be dad's agent calling him away on another road trip," Lewis recalled in his autobiography. "What I felt then, as much as anything, was the difference between me and the other kids, the need to know what a mother and a father surrounded by children was all about."
Still, he credited his father with teaching him the tools of the vaudeville trade, "the things that were made up in sweet songs and a tip of the old straw hat and a cane," he wrote in his autobiography.
Anti-Semitism was a looming ghost from his past. During the 1930's, North Jersey was home to a pro-Nazi group called the German-American Bund. Lewis witnessed one of their parades down Chancellor Ave. in Irvington. "I stood curbside, gaping at a tangle of stars and stripes and the swastika. I started to walk away, faster and faster to pull free of the sound."
He encountered prejudice at school from both students and faculty. His fifth-grade teacher scolded him for not participating in a singalong of Christmas carols. An incident with the principal at Irvington High School got him expelled. Chiding Lewis for misbehaving in class, the administrator started a sentence, "Why is it that only the Jews..."
Lewis smacked him in the mouth before he could complete his thought, according to "In Person." Showbiz lured him because, "I sensed the sad reality of my own life. I felt like I'd rather live in a world of make-believe, where I could be anyone I wish."
Lewis made his stage debut when he was five years old, singing "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" at the President Hotel in the Catskills. Later, while working in the dining room of the Arthur Resort in Lakewood, he clowned around serving tea to guests, developing skits with his coworkers based on Marx Brothers movies and westerns.
The first place he played was a burger joint, the Cozy Corner on the Jersey Shore, where he mimed "Figaro" wearing a pink wig and torn coat. He got paid $5 at the end of the night.
An agent booked him a series of shows at Loews theaters in the Garden State and within a year, he was traveling the country, Victrola in tow. At a tour stop in Detroit, he met a singer, Patti Palmer whom he married three months later at age 18. The couple had six sons, including pop star, Gary Lewis. (In 1992, Lewis adopted a daughter with his second wife, SanDee Pitnick.)
A year after marrying Patti, Lewis had another chance encounter that changed his life. He met Dean Martin on the street in New York, introduced to the singer by a mutual friend. Circumstance, rather than careful planning, made them partners.
During a stint at the 500 Club in Atlantic City, Lewis needed someone to replace the singer he'd been paired with, so he recruited Martin to fill in. On July 25, 1946, the Jewish funnyman and the Italian heartthrob ad-libbed an epic set in a sparsely populated room.
It was instant alchemy, according to "Dean & Me." "Martin's own natural comic instincts dovetailed perfectly with mine and made the sum of one and one into two million."
The perfect partnership devolved into bitter rivalry, a clash of egos that led the two to call it quits after ten years together. Dishing about the breakup, gossip columnist Harriet Van Horne wrote, "I'm willing to bet that the first shattered atom split more sedately than Martin and Lewis."
Although the duo never officially reunited, Martin made a surprise appearance on the 1976 telethon, a one-time meet-up facilitated by Frank Sinatra. Lewis jokingly asked his former partner, "So, you working?"
In the aftermath of the duo's split, Lewis kept himself busy. His first solo film, "The Delicate Delinquent," was released the following year. Soon after, there was "The Geisha Boy," helmed by Frank Tashlin, a charismatic mentor who also directed "The Disorderly Orderly" and "Cinderfella."
When Lewis began working behind the camera -- becoming the first comic to direct himself since the silent movie era -- he drew upon all he'd learned observing Tashlin and other filmmakers, as well as his love of spectacle, absurdity and experimentation.
His 1960 debut, "The Bellboy," was an unconventional farce, a series of surreal misadventures rather than a linear story. Lewis' character, an accident prone hotel employee, doesn't speak until the closing moments.
While shooting the film, he developed a piece of technology that is still used by directors today. In order to work more efficiently, he mounted a video camera on the film camera, enabling him to watch takes on a closed circuit TV monitor. The device became known as "video assist."
A box office hit, "The Bellboy" earned Lewis the clout to continue pushing the envelope. With his sophomore project, "The Ladies Man," he oversaw construction of the largest set in Hollywood history, a four-story house with cutaway walls so the camera could pull back to reveal all the activity inside the building. Lewis portrayed heartbroken guy who takes a job in an all-girl residence populated by dozens of beautiful women.
Released in 1963, "The Nutty Professor" was a departure from earlier efforts. Lewis essentially played two lead roles, a gawky chemistry professor and his alter-ego, a lounge lizard with a mean streak. The movie contained virtuoso technical flourishes, including a memorable point-of-view shot of the newly transformed hipster strutting into a nightclub, and it also was more psychologically complex than anything Lewis had created prior, as he portrayed good and evil with equal credibility.
After the triumph of "Nutty Professor," the star began to falter. His heavily-hyped primetime series, "The Jerry Lewis Show," tanked soon after debuting in 1963. The following year, his "Pygmalion" update, "The Patsy" flopped in theaters. The social upheaval of the decade made his antics seem increasingly quaint.
Lewis tried to branch out. In 1972, he began work as director and star of a Holocaust film, "The Day the Clown Cried," about a Jewish circus entertainer interned at a concentration camp, where he leads children to the gas chamber. Production was halted after funding fell through and the unfinished movie has never been screened in public.
Writing about the project in his autobiography, the comic acknowledged he had doubts going in but ultimately was lured by the challenge of playing such a character.
"I knew the loneliness in him, the fear, the desperation that lay deep in his soul. I knew that to play him would be no casual affair, but the greatest artistic wrench of my life. I thought (the film) would be a way to show that we don't have to tremble and give up in the darkness."
Even though Lewis never rebounded from his film failures, he had success in other areas. The "Damn Yankees" revival was a hot ticket, telethon proceeds increased yearly and his "Dean & Me" memoir made the bestseller list.
In the book, he described the duality that drove him, the mix of joy and melancholy he infused for laughs.
"Great comedy, in my mind, always goes hand in hand with great sadness. You can be funny without tapping into strong emotion, but the humor is more superficial. Funny without pathos is a pie in the face. And a pie in the face is funny, but I wanted more."
NJ Advance Media reporter Lisa Rose contributed to this report.
