Joseph Levitch

Sooner or later, all the greats have to go.  Earlier this year, it was Chuck Berry.  And now Jerry Lewis is gone.

He was a mainstay in comedy for decades, and maybe the last great clown in film.  There have been other funny people since, but no one who created such a deathless character.

He had a meteoric rise in show biz.  Born in a trunk, as a teenager he had an act pantomiming to records.  He was always good at making funny faces.  He was working at a club in Atlantic City when the singer dropped out of the program.  A friend, Dean Martin, was called in with Jerry promising they had a dynamite double act.

On the first show, they just did their individual acts and the owner told them they better make with the funny or they'd be through.  They got together and figured out a few basic bits and found they had a natural rhythm that left the audience in stitches.  Word got around and before the week was out, there were lines round the block and a phenomenon had been born.

Martin and Lewis conquered every aspect of show biz--night clubs, records, TV, movies.  And you have to realize it started when Lewis was 20.  He was essentially a superstar his entire adult life.  People who saw them at the time say they never topped their live act.  Occasionally, they'd do bits of their act on TV, and you can get a glimpse of what these people mean, though it's not quite the same as being there, I'm sure.

The team lasted from 1946 to 1956.  Martin was getting tired of Lewis getting all the credit.  Jerry, by all accounts (mostly his) loved Dean, but also seemed to be an egomaniac who needed the limelight.  In any case, they split up and both remained huge stars.

Jerry loved filmmaking and started writing and directing some of his own features. (While he and Dean were together, Jerry had made a lot of amateur movies featuring his Hollywood friends.) He put out two films a year, and at least up until the mid-60s remained a top movie star.

People often mock Lewis's popularity in Europe, especially France, where they awarded him the Legion d'Honneur, their highest order of merit.  How could they take seriously this slapstick clown who usually played some version of an idiot child?  But the people who find him a witless farceur are being unfair.

Yes, Lewis had problems with his comic persona.  He could have used an editor.  He didn't know that enough was enough, and had questionable taste, not to mention was weak on plot.  But then, it's rare that a great clown operates at top level for long periods.  If we only get flashes of greatness, that can be enough.

And the truth is he created a persona that was original and, at his best, quite funny.  He was also a surprisingly creative director. And I don't mean because he did things like create video-assist.  If you look at the films he directed like The Bellboy, The Ladies Man, The Errand Boy, The Nutty Professor and The Patsy, you'll see the work of someone with a style and an eye unlike any other.

By the late 60s, Lewis was a star on the wane.  It's hard playing a child when you hit your 40s.  He also had problems with painkillers, which he started taking after he hurt himself in a fall. (I suppose I should mention he devoted himself to fighting muscular dystrophy--this is in the headlines of many Jerry Lewis obits, but if he's remembered in the future, it'll be for his comedy.)

In later years, he starred in a couple comeback films, and played supporting roles--often in straight drama--that showed he could act.  But it was the comic persona he created--wild, childlike, almost unhinged--that made him great.  There's a line of classic movie clowns that goes from Chaplin to Keaton to Fields to Groucho to Jerry Lewis.  Time will sort out his standing, but for now we can say he was a phenomenon the likes of which we may never see again.

PS  I once saw him live, performing as the Devil in Damn Yankees.  The character has his big Vaudeville number in the second act.  He stopped it to tell some jokes, and cracked up at a certain point.  I had a friend in the show and asked her if he cracked up at that moment every night.  Yep, she said.

He was an old school show biz guy who'd do whatever necessary to get his effect.  He once told Sammy Davis Jr. to try to make it look hard to jump up on the piano. If it looks too easy, the audience doesn't appreciate it.  I'm not putting him down for this.  He came up the hard way, when you had to do whatever you could to get the audience's attention.  And that he certainly did.