Here's a remarkable bit of video. In 1963, Jerry Lewis launched a new, vastly oversold prime time talk/variety series for ABC. It was on Saturday nights for two hours and it was done live from what had been the El Capitan Theater on Vine Street in Hollywood. For the new program, it was completely refurbished and renamed the Jerry Lewis Theater.
Some (but not all) of the problems The Jerry Lewis Show had resulted from the newly-remodelled theater not being quite finished when the first telecast had to be done on September 21, 1963. Monitors didn't work, microphones didn't work, technical cues were missed, etc. A decade or two ago, I discussed that first, legendary episode with a man named John Dorsey, who directed it. Mr. Dorsey was a fine director. In the seventies and eighties, he did most of the Chuck Barris shows, and regardless of their taste or lack thereof, those were not easy to direct. Still, he had facial tics and icy chills when he recalled debut night of the Lewis program…the most important TV broadcast of his life and there he was, unable to communicate with the headsets of the stage manager, cameramen or just about anyone.
Amazingly, all that was only part of the problem. The premise of the show was that Jerry didn't need to prepare or rehearse; that he could work on his movies all week and then on Saturday evenings, he could just show up at his theater and ad-lib something very entertaining. Opening night, ABC and America discovered that he could not. Dick Cavett, who was among the show's writers, felt that the basic problem was that Jerry's brilliance only worked when he was a guest and not the kind of authority figure you have to be to host a TV show, especially one with everyone in tuxedos. (And Jerry insisted that everyone — even the stagehands — be so attired.) Later on, his ex-partner had considerably more success doing a weekly TV series without rehearsing.
That first episode, which I have on a DVD here somewhere, was just a fiasco…almost painful to watch unless you enjoy flop sweat, and I don't. There were genuine surprise guests and one of them was Steve Allen, who was then hosting a competing talk show for syndication. On his next program, Allen did a parody of Jerry's opening night with every possible disaster occurring, and later said that in all his years of broadcasting, he'd never seen such a mess. Subsequent Lewis shows were somewhat better but the damage was done, and Jerry never managed to look like he was really enjoying his own show. The series was terminated after thirteen episodes.
Someone has posted Show #11 in ten parts on YouTube. It aired on 12/7/1963, by which time the cancellation was known and Jerry actually seemed more relaxed about things. The guests included Sam Cooke, Muhammad Ali (who was then still going by the name, Cassius Clay), Patrice Munsel, Señor Wences and the Marquis Chimps, plus the usual surprise guests. I made up a playlist which will play one part after another. You probably won't want to sit through the whole thing but it's all there if you want it.
