Jerry Lewis

Born in Newark, New Jersey, on March 16, 1926, Joseph Levitch (later known as Jerry Lewis) comes from a Jewish family that made a living in theatrical shows. The boy spent a lot of time on tour, and he was already singing on stage when he was five years old. Determined to earn a living as an actor, following in the footsteps of his parents, he did not finish his studies at the institute. According to his own account, he left the center because the director offended him with an anti-Semitic comment.

The young Lewis was making a living with his comedy shows in Atlantic City, when he noticed that the singer Dean Martin was also triumphing in other places . He decided to invite him to share the stage, which caused a sensation. They decided to unite and mix laughter and music in numbers that had a great acceptance throughout the country. The two appeared together on NBC’s radio show “The Martin and Lewis Show.”

Savvy producer Hal Wallis decided to capitalize on his popularity and led to the duo’s feature film debut in My Friend Irma , about a girl who meddles in her roommate’s romantic relationships. It had a sequel titled My Friend Irma Goes West . In both, Lewis and Martin were secondary, but they were the most attention-grabbing.

Throughout the 1950s, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin starred in 17 films together, all of them very similar in plot, but all of them were very popular. Notable are Artists and Models and Crazy About Anita , both directed by Frank Tashlin . They also shot six films with Norman Taurog , such as Together in Danger or What a Pair of Sluts , and a few more with other directors.

Despite the success, Lewis and Martin ended up facing each other in real life. They got along so badly that in the end they didn’t even speak, so they decided to put an end to their professional association, after a gala that celebrated their tenth anniversary.

The two stopped seeing each other for twenty years, until Sammy Davis Jr. , a great friend of the two, interceded for them to meet again on the Jerry Lewis “Telethon”, a charity television program to raise funds, with which he has helped for years to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Without Martin, Lewis continued to succeed, especially in the films where he once again placed himself under the command of Frank Tashlin: I am the father and the mother , You, Kimy and I , Cinderella , What do I care about money , Mess in the big Warehouses and Clinical case in the clinic . In addition, he discovered his facet as a comedian and director. His debut, The Bellboy , was praised by Charles Chaplin himself . He directed many other films, such as Jerry Calamity , Family Jewels , Where’s the Front? and especially The Nutty Professor, hilarious parody of “The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson . He played the university professor of chemistry Julius Kelp, who, since he is socially rejected, invents a formula that turns him into Buddy Love, an attractive and arrogant individual who becomes very popular. It doesn’t seem by chance that Buddy Love has a lot in common with his former partner Dean Martin.

Although at first, Lewis was considered by critics to be a histrionic actor, he was vindicated by the writers of the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, who considered him one of the great authors of the comic genre.

His films stopped making money in the 1970s. After the failure of The Day the Clown Cried , from 1972, also directed by himself, he decided to leave the cinema and in fact was absent from the screens throughout the entire decade. He went to television, where he triumphed above all with the aforementioned telethon.

In the 80s, he returned to the cinema. Martin Scorsese paid him a heartfelt tribute in the extraordinary film The King of Comedy , where he played Jerry Langford, a character very similar to himself. An aspiring comedian played by Robert De Niro kidnaps him to force the television station where he works to allow him to replace him for one night. Despite being a great movie, it was the loudest flop for Scorsese and De Niro, misunderstood by critics. Nor did The Crazy World of Jerry have much of an impact , directed by Lewis himself, who played a suicide bomber.

Divorced from his wife, Patti Palmer, who was by his side for four decades, and with whom he had five children, he joined SanDee Pitnick in 1983, which gave him another offspring.

From time to time, Lewis has been brought back by the odd director. He starred in The Arizona Dream , with Johnny Depp , one of Emir Kusturica ‘s least accomplished films . He especially singled out Peter Chelsom ‘s The Comedians (1995) , where he played a legendary comedian who dwarfed the success of his own son.

Although he was never nominated for an Oscar, in 2009 Jerry Lewis received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Hollywood Academy for his charitable work.