Jerry Lewis turns 90 today. I have trouble explaining even to myself why I've ever been interested in this man. It may have a lot to do with the fact that we have so few "Comedy Legends" who survive so long. And Comedy Legend though he may be, I never found the guy particularly funny, even when I was at the age where you stand the best chance of finding Jerry Lewis funny. I guess I'm mainly impressed with his longevity and how he always seems to be involved in some controversy of his own making.
My few personal encounters with him were not very pleasant for very long. He always seemed volatile…like any second, he could suddenly morph from Professor Julius F. Kelp to Buddy Love or worse. And all it might take was some stray comment or maybe nothing at all. A few years ago at a Paley Center event, I watched him being interviewed by Leonard Maltin and it was a strange, surreal evening. Leonard asked very good questions without a trace of hostility or challenge. Jerry gave long, rambling answers that didn't remotely match up with the questions and he bounced back and forth between being philosophical in a professorial way and being on the defensive as if under some kind of implied attack.
The audience was full of celebrities who rose to tell Jerry and the world how much they loved him and worshiped him and thought he was the greatest comedian ever…and you'd think a man would be humbled and happy. But then one little imagined slight set him off and he began screaming at the folks who'd arranged the event, furious over essentially nothing. Lewis's emotional excesses were always kind of fascinating and funny on the telethons, especially at 3 AM when he'd shift into self-pity mode and start rambling on about how hurtful people could be towards his efforts. I think his tirade at the Paley event caused me to stop viewing his outbursts as amusing.
One thing you can't take away from the guy is his body of work. You probably don't like all of it, maybe even any of it but it's there. Another is his endurance. Apart from Doris Day, I can't think of anyone else who was a major motion picture star of the fifties who's still alive…and she hasn't appeared anywhere for decades. Jerry is still around, still appearing in front of audiences, still visible. Somewhere at this moment, he's probably telling someone that the musical version of The Nutty Professor is definitely going to open on Broadway later this year, just as it was definitely going to open there in 2015 and before that in 2014 and 2013 and 2012.
I'm not going to link to a Jerry Lewis clip today. Instead, we have a short video from Jeff Hoover, who does funny stuff on WGN TV in Chicago. Since the passing of Sammy Petrillo, I consider Mr. Hoover to be the best Jerry Lewis imitator in the business, not counting Marco Rubio's concession speech last night. Here's an example of his early work in this highly competitive field and and here he is doing a Clutch Cargo version of today's birthday boy. Ignore the commercial you may have to sit through…