Jerry Lewis: The slapstick clown who raised billions for muscular dystrophy

Jerry Lewis’s fellow performer Steve Allen called him “the funniest comedian since Charlie Chaplin’’. Others found his simian infantilism wearisome, with Groucho Marx dismissing him as mere “puller of faces’’. Woody Allen called him “the greatest comedian’s director around’’, and such intellectual film journals as Cahiers du Cinema and Positif called him “Le Roi du Crazy’’, proclaiming his genius as an auteur. He was even awarded the Legion d’Honneur, prompting the comedian Joey Adams to comment, “Jerry is very hot in France these days but so was Joan of Arc, and how long did that last?’’

Lewis made his performing debut at the age of five, in one of the Jewish summer resorts in the Catskills mountains where his comedian father and pianist mother entertained. He sang: “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” in a tuxedo, and was a hit. “How can you fail?’’, Lewis asked John Walsh in a 1979 interview in The Independent. “A five-year-old in a tux?’’

At 14, he took a job at Brown’s Hotel, another Catskills resort, where, in addition to waiting on tables, he honed his comic skills. In 1942, after working as a cinema usher, bellboy, soda jerk and shipping clerk, he made his theatrical debut at a burlesque theatre in Buffalo, New York, miming frenziedly to records by Danny Kaye, Frank Sinatra, Deanna Durbin, Groucho Marx, and the opera singers Grace Moore and Igor Gorin. He was still doing this act four years later when he accepted a booking at Atlantic City’s 500 Club.

On the same bill was a Crosby-esque singer, nine years Lewis’s senior, called Dean Martin, and one night they appeared together in an impromptu act. It was so successful, they kept it impromptu; they did impersonations, threw in any gag they knew, insulted the band, insulted the customers, cut off their ties, drank their drinks, broke dishes and tried to break each other up. “We always knew how to get onstage,’’ Martin later said. “But we never knew how we were going to get off.’’

The imperturbable Dean was the perfect foil for the manic Jerry, who invariably said: “He was my catcher – the greatest straight man in the history of show business. His sense of timing was flawless, so infinite and so fragile it almost looked as if he didn’t do anything at all. The truth is, I would never have done so well with anyone else.’’

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By 1949 Martin and Lewis were earning an annual $750,000 in nightclubs, personal appearances, radio and television. That year the film producer Hal B Wallis signed them to a contract with Paramount Pictures, and cast them in supporting roles in My Friend lrma (1949), based on a popular radio series. To show them at their best, they were given a nightclub scene, in which Martin sang “The Donkey Serenade” while Lewis desperately tried to provide the hoofbeat accompaniment with his mouth. It was the funniest scene in the film.

After My Friend Irma Goes West (1950), it was decided to star the team. A decade earlier, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello had also made their joint film debut in supporting roles. Clearly, the astute Wallis patterned Martin and Lewis’s screen career after theirs.

Bud and Lou’s first starring film had been Buck Privates (1941) – Dean and Jerry’s was At War With the Army (1951). Bud and Lou made In the Navy (1941) – Dean and Jerry made Sailor Beware (1982). Bud and Lou made Keep ‘Em Flying (1941) – Dean and Jerry played paratroopers in Jumping Jacks (1952). Bud and Lou made Hold That Ghost (1941) – Dean and Jerry made Scared Stiff (1953). Bud and Lou made Ride ‘Em Cowboy (1942) – Dean and Jerry made Pardners (1956). Bud and Lou filmed a Damon Runyon racetrack story called It Ain’t Hay (1943, UK title, Money for Jam) – Dean and Jerry filmed a Damon Runyon racetrack, story called Money From Home (1954). Martin and Lewis’s answer to Abbott and Costello in Hollywood (1945) was Hollywood or Bust (1956).

Martin often said in later years: “There were two great turning points in my life. First, meeting Jerry Lewis. Second, leaving Jerry Lewis.’’ Signs of that break-up began during the making of their twelfth film, 3 Ring Circus (1954), when Martin complained that all he had to do in the story was sing “It’s a Big Wide Wonderful World” to an elephant. Two years and four movies later came the team’s inevitable, acrimonious split.

On his own, Lewis continued to triumph, playing in such money-makers as The Delicate Delinquent (1957), The Sad Sack, Rock-a-Bye Baby, The Geisha Boy (all 1958) and Don’t Give Up the Ship (1959). Remembering his early bellhopping days, he turned star-writer-director-producer with The Bellboy (1960). The Ladies Man, The Errand Boy (both 1961), The Nutty Professor (1963), The Patsy (1964) and The Family Jewels (1965) were produced and directed by Lewis and written with Bill Richmond. Of these films, The Nutty Professor (in which the odious singer Buddy Love was obviously based on Dean Martin) is unquestionably the best. “The Nutty Professor is too long and repetitive,’’ wrote Pauline Kael, “but Jerry Lewis has some scenes that hold their own with the silent classics.’’

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Lewis left Paramount after the unprofitable Boeing-Boeing (1965), and between 1966 and 1970 made films for Warner Brothers, Columbia and 20th Century-Fox which proved to be even less profitable. In 1976 he attempted to make his Broadway debut in an updated revival of the vaudeville-style revue Hellzapoppin’. The original 1938 production had run for a record-breaking 1,404 performances, but the new version never even reached New York.

The troubles started when the director Abe Burrows resigned during rehearsals. During the out-of-town tryouts, Lewis’s ego took a beating when his co-star Lynn Redgrave received the lion’s share of praise from the critics, and he refused to do numbers with her. More hell popped when he insisted on Jill Choder, his 27-year-old protégée, being given more to do in the show. After Hellzapoppin’ closed in Boston (losing $1.25m), its producer brought a lawsuit against Lewis.

He played an unemployed circus clown in Hardly Working (1979), which 20th Century-Fox didn’t bother to release until 1981. The following year he got his best break in decades when Johnny Carson turned down the role of a kidnapped chat-show host in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy. Writing about Lewis and his co-star Robert De Niro, the Sunday Telegraph’s Neil Sinyard declared: “The combination is remarkable.’’ Lewis’s effective straight performance led to the role of a ruthless rag-trade mogul in TV’s Wiseguy (1988-9) and such films as Mr Saturday Night (1992), Arizona Dream (1995) and the British-made Funny Bones (1995), which starred Lee Evans, who regards Lewis as his idol. Lewis was also executive producer of Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor films.

In 1995 he finally appeared on the Broadway stage in a revival of the Faustian 1955 musical Damn Yankees. The production went on to play in more than 50 American states, as well as in London, Canada, New Zealand and Japan. His performance as the Devil, alias Mr Applegate, was curiously muted, except for a second-act stand-up routine, in which, for a quarter of an hour, he batted out a lightning medley of jokes which were already whiskery when he first sang “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” in a miniature tuxedo.

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For more than 40 years, he appeared on television, raising over $2.6bn through a series of annual telethons for the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation, of which he was national chairman and spokesman until 2011. (Millions of viewers would like to forget the squirm-inducing moment when Lewis indicated a child with muscular dystrophy and told the camera, “God goofed!’’.) His own health problems were legion; they included a heart attack, diabetes, an ulcer condition, pulmonary fibrosis, prostate cancer and an addiction to pain-killing drugs.

In 2009, Lewis announced that he would return to the screen in the title role of the film Max Rose – which premiered at Cannes in 2013, and subsequently had a limited US release. The same year, his telethon work earned him the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2010, he parted company with the charity.

His 1944 marriage to Esther Calonico, a big-band singer known as Patti Palmer, ended in divorce in 1980. Among the survivors are his wife SanDee “Sam” Pitnick, whom he married in 1983; five sons from the first marriage, including the musician Gary Lewis; and a daughter from the second marriage. A son from his first marriage, Joseph, died in 2009 of an apparent drug overdose.

Jerry Lewis, comedian, actor and film-maker: born 16 March 1926; died 20 August 2017

Dick Vosburgh died in April 2007