The Chris Moeller Archives

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Cinemaphiles in France famously believe Jerry Lewis to have been a genius upon the screen, a second-coming of Charlie Chaplin. I don't know if they're right. I haven't seen several of the critical movies on his resume, but take a look only at The Bellboy and you're liable to believe that the frogs are on to something.

Like those of Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and the French auteur Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle), The Bellboy is a pantomime comedy. It's Lewis' first as a director and it was famously shot in less than a month at the Fontainebleau Hotel on the beach in Miami in 1960, where the movie's story also takes place. Lewis' character, whom he has named Stanley after Stan Laurel, is mute almost for the entire film. The movie is a series of vignettes, and stars of the era and the location, Milton Berle and Walter Winchell, have cameos. As ridiculous as it may be to believe, Lewis shot the movie in only 28 days at the hotel, without a script-- while also performing every night on stage in the hotel's main theater. He put nearly a million dollars of his own money into the movie after Paramount said it didn't want to fund a silent movie. This is the stuff of legend.

Of course Jerry was also great when Scorsese directed him in The King of Comedy in 1982. That movie is in my top 50. Along with Hugo, it's an underrated Marty masterpiece. Lewis plays the role that was offered to Johnny Carson that would have essentially had Carson playing himself, and Robert DeNiro plays Rupert Pupkin, the would-be comedian that takes his big break on a nationally-televised late night talk show, and whose name now represents a certain type of person in the larger culture. Jerry's character is understated and played to perfection. He's also called "Jerry" (Langford, in this case) because, during a scene in which Jerry is filmed actually walking the streets of New York, real Big Apple residents can be reasonably expected to call out his name, and several of them do in the final cut of the movie-- "Hey, Jerry!"

Jerry Lewis may have raised more money for charity than any entertainer in American history, and of course, I'm about to skip quickly over facts about him and periods of his life, which are individually, enough to have made him famous if any of them were all he had ever done-- the Colgate Comedy Hour and his nightclub partnership with Dean Martin, which some consider to be the greatest stage act in show business history, the extraordinary run of comedy films he directed, wrote, and starred in during the 1960s, his revolutionary invention of a video playback machine for film directors, and his several decades as host of the Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon. He is as synonymous to the Labor Day holiday in America as George Washington is to President's Day.

I saw Jerry Lewis on stage in Ames, Iowa in 1993, and holy Jesus, I'm glad I did that. I was in college and I went by myself because I had not met any Jerry Lewis fans during my first two months on campus. (I can't confirm that I ever did.) I don't remember much about the night except that he chatted with us, he did some bits, he sang in front of a large orchestra, and at one point, he brought his infant daughter, Danielle, out on stage with him. For comedic purposes, he handed the girl back to her caretaker using only one hand and making us all fearful, on purpose, that he was going to drop her. That was part of the show. Funny what a guy remembers. Jerry is one of six Oscar hosts (in 1956, 1957, 1959) that I've seen perform on stage. The others are Frank Sinatra (1963, 1975), Diana Ross (1974), David Letterman (1995), Steve Martin (2001, 2010), and Chris Rock (2005, 2016). I consider Jerry my greatest "get." I still have the ticket stub. It's a pretty great boast to own for the rest of my life for the price of only $12.50.

Lewis died at the age of 91 yesterday at his home in Las Vegas. The cause, they're saying, was ischemic cardiomyopathy. This heart-related death took place 57 years after the comedian's first heart attack in 1960 during the filming of Cinderfella. He had previously survived prostate cancer, diabetes, pulmonary fibrosis, viral meningitis, and a prescription drug addiction. That list adds to the disbelief that he has died.

posted by CM @ 8:44 PM