soul
of blessed memory
Jewish Funnyman Jerry Lewis Dies
JORDAN HOFFMAN TIMES OF ISRAEL
J
ewish-American actor, comedian,
director, inventor, philanthropist
and one of the last links to vaude-
ville Jerry Lewis has died at the age of
91. The world just got a little less funny.
Lewis, born Joseph Levitch in
Newark, N.J., grew up in a show busi-
ness family. His father, Daniel Levitch,
was a vaudeville entertainer and his
mother, Rae, was a pianist who worked
for the (still existent) WOR Radio.
At the age of 5, so the legend goes, he
made his stage debut singing “Brother,
Can You Spare a Dime?” and acciden-
tally kicked out one of the footlights.
His surprised reaction got the audience
to laugh, and this set him on his path
toward comedy.
By age 15, he had dropped out of
high school and was honing his stage
act. His best-known routine was a bit
in which he’d put a phonograph on
and give an exaggerated lip synch.
Sounds simple, but if you’ve seen the
way Jerry Lewis could contort his
face, you can understand why this
would become popular. He worked the
Jewish “Borscht Belt” in the Catskills
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August 24 • 2017
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Jerry Lewis
Mountains and, in 1945, at the age of
19, he hooked up with Dean Martin.
The handsome Italian-American
singer (born Dino Crocetti) was the
perfect straight man to Lewis’ zany,
anarchic man-child persona. Their
stage show was built on improvisation
in which Lewis would bring mayhem
to an otherwise smooth Martin vocal
performance. Martin and Lewis quickly
became successful as a nightclub act,
on radio, the early days of television
and eventually in Hollywood in feature
films. Their first movie appearances
were as part of an ensemble (1949’s My
Friend Irma) but very quickly they were
the stars.
They made 15 films during the 1950s
and were one of the most profitable
acts in Hollywood. They even had a DC
comic book based on them. But Lewis’
antics so upstaged Dean Martin that
it became inevitable the pair would
split. But before the partnership ended
in June 1956, they made “Artists and
Models,” and “Hollywood or Bust.” That’s
where Jerry Lewis met his second great
collaborator, Frank Tashlin.
Tashlin was a former Looney Toons
animator and fellow New Jersey trans-
plant to Hollywood. Once he began
working with Tashlin, Lewis really did
start creating extraordinary pieces of
cinema, not just nightclub shtick.
After a number of films with Tashlin,
Lewis began directing his own movies.
His first was The Bellboy, which he shot
at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami
as, essentially, a side project. (He was
booked there at the nightclub.) During
the days he shot this essentially plot-
free collection of skits in which his
character (a goofy bellboy) had virtually
no dialogue.
Next came Lewis’ first masterpiece:
The Ladies Man. Shot in big, bright
colors, Lewis’ infantile persona is set
against a rooming house filled with
young women. In 1963 came Lewis’ big-
gest hit of all, The Nutty Professor.
Throughout the 1960s, Lewis con-
stantly appeared on television chat
shows and hosted the Muscular
Dystrophy Association telethon. This
became a Labor Day weekend tradition
from 1966 all the way through 2010. The
term “Jerry’s Kids” was used to describe
children aided by the program.
Lewis first visited Israel in 1981,
though claimed he had bought a plane
ticket in 1967 but the Six-Day War had
broken out. His work was rarely explic-
itly Jewish but, like the Marx Brothers, is
easily read that way. His awards include
an Honorary Oscar, France’s Legion of
Honor medal and an induction into the
New Jersey Hall of Fame. He is survived
by his wife, SanDee, and their daughter
Danielle and five sons (including Gary
Lewis of Gary Lewis and the Playboys)
from a previous marriage. •