Jerry Lewis entertained us for decades, but we never really knew him. "I never tell an audience what they can expect," the entertainer told an interviewer in 2008. "I never have and I never will."
The mercurial, rubber-faced actor, funnyman and film director, who rose to fame as the zany counterpart to the straight-man singer Dean Martin in the 1940s, died on Sunday of natural causes. He was 91.
Growing up in the 1970s, the old Martin and Lewis movies were unavoidable on weekend afternoons. I would watch such black-and-white romps as Sailor Beware, with Mr. Lewis doing his slapstick-and-squawky-voiced shtick while the suave Mr. Martin reacted with double-takes, encouragement and, only occasionally, mild exasperation.
Jerry Lewis in the 1963 film The Nutty Professor.
Paramount Pictures via The New York Times
In 1952's Sailor Beware, Mr. Lewis's hapless U.S. Navy seaman character takes part in a boxing match. At one point, he runs around his much superior opponent seven or eight times, circling to the point of exhausting himself and those watching him, too. In the same vein, in 1961's The Ladies Man (made after his split with Mr. Martin), Mr. Lewis's character was so agitated that he split into five and ran up flights of stairs after himself.
His comedy was manic and wearing; he set a mean, absurdist pace. If he couldn't catch up with himself, who could?
Of course, anyone who watched The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon every year knew of Mr. Lewis's indefatigable nature. As national chairman of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, he was host of the event from 1966 to 2010.
Jerry Lewis did pratfalls when called for; he played the loon when need be.
Josh Anderson/The New York Times
As I watched the marathon telecasts, I would struggle to reconcile the crew-cut lunatic of the Martin and Lewis movies with the older, much more stable version of the comedian. Occasionally, he would blurt out something in the spastic style of his youth. Otherwise, he was laid-back, with a sincere sense of desperation when it came to charitable cause.
In the 1963 comedy The Nutty Professor, Mr. Lewis played the dual role of the nerdy, buck-toothed Professor Julius F. Kelp and his alter-ego Buddy Love, a jazzy ladies man. We also saw the Jekyll-and-Hyde unpredictability of Mr. Lewis when he appeared on late-night talk shows. In 1984, Johnny Carson introduced Mr. Lewis as a guest by listing off his accomplishments and prestigious awards (including induction into France's l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres). Following Mr. Carson's respectful lead-up, Mr. Lewis, nearly 60 years old, bounded out in screwball manner – skipping, pretending to trip and generally doing his madcap thing.
Jerry Lewis was not known to be a likable guy. Critics, except for the French ones, didn’t take his comedy seriously.
Dan Steinberg/Invision/AP
Mr. Carson questioned Mr. Lewis's nuttiness, after such a "distinguished introduction," in his words. Mr. Lewis replied that after a previous appearance on the show, he had received letters of complaints from fans, who said they were confused when he presented himself as cool and suave, because they were "used to the craziness," and that when he spoke "regular," it was like he was another person. (He pronounced "person" as "poyson," a throwback to his cartoonish New Jerseyite persona.)
Often sour and blunt in print interviews – Mr. Lewis suffered no journalist fools gladly – the comedian was always game when the cameras were on. He did pratfalls when called for; he played the loon when need be. He did it for the laughs, even if in doing so he appeared graceless.
Jerry Lewis’s comedy was manic and wearing.
Regis Duvignau/Reuters
Mr. Lewis was not known to be a likable guy. Critics, except for the French ones, didn't take his comedy seriously. He was, however, universally praised for his role in Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy, starring Robert De Niro as a wannabe comedian who kidnaps his idol, Jerry Langford, a television talk-show host played with brilliant seriousness by Mr. Lewis.
One scene in the 1982 film has Mr. Lewis's character on a New York street, where a woman asks for an autograph. He signs a piece of paper for her, but when she then asks for something more, he politely declines. "You should only get cancer," the woman turns on him instantly, screeching. "I hope you get cancer." Mr. Lewis's character calmly walks away from the nastiness, expressionless and not looking back. The scene was based on an actual incident involving Mr. Lewis. That was him: He couldn't win, but he had accepted his lot and went about his business – which was show business.