- There are three things that are real.
God, human folly, and laughter.
Since the first two are beyond our comprehension,
we must do the best we can with the third.
Here is our star.
- Who?
♪ Ye ye ye ye
♪ Ya ya ya ya
- Jerry Lewis.
- He's cute.
He's fast.
He's nuts.
- He's scared.
- He's dear.
- He's sweet.
- He's what?
- He's sweet!
- But the question still remains.
Who?
- Who is Jerry Lewis?
- Ay-yi-yi.
- Wow, I,
I wish I could tackle a less complicated question.
- Is he the poor, neurotic kid from Newark, New Jersey
who can't face the public?
Is he the accomplished super star?
Is he this gifted film director?
Who is the real Jerry Lewis?
- Hold it!
Hold it!
♪ Lover when I'm near you
- I was the class clown.
- Ha, ha, ha, ha!
- Ha, ha, ha ha!
Our teachers had gone all crazy.
♪ Lover when I'm near you
- I was a troublemaker.
I'd make people laugh, I'd do anything.
♪ Softly in my ear
♪ You breathe a flame
- It was fun.
♪ Lover when we're dancing
- Mr. Lewis, you are a complete nut.
♪ Ye ye ye ye
♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah
♪ Ye ye ye ye
♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah
- Well, roll it, go on.
♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah
♪ Ye ye ye ye
♪ Yeah yeah yeah yeah
- I was five.
That's never changed, I've always been five.
It's the best age for a kid.
I was born in 1926, Newark, New Jersey.
- Is Jerry Lewis your real name?
- It is now!
It wasn't when I was born, I was born Joseph Levitch.
L, E, V, I, T, C, H.
And I have some other bits of information
that will choke you up.
I'm sure you're not about to come back with,
why did you change it?
♪ When chandeliers start falling ♪
♪ On the heads of the whole ploy ♪
- My father.
♪ Although you may think it's an earthquake. ♪
- Good-looking man.
♪ I know that's my boy
- Wonderful singer, great entertainer.
And funny man, funny.
- His father was a singer and a comic who was very much
influenced by Al Jolson.
And his mother played piano and would often accompany
Danny Lewis on his tours.
His parents came from Eastern Europe,
fleeing the kind of persecutions, they were Jewish.
And they were both show business people as well.
So, in some ways, with Jerry, show business
was in the blood.
One unfortunate consequence of his parents
being entertainers was that they were away from home
quite a lot.
So, he grew up kind of like the only child with a family
but a very lonely child as well without siblings
or without parental contact all the time.
- One time, when his father was performing,
his father motioned to him to come out.
Come out, Joey, Why don't you sing for these folks?
Sing, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
Now, Jerry's five years old.
So, he walks out, all proud and he slips.
Now, his foot hits a foot lamp, it explodes!
He gets his first laugh.
He knows already what he wants to be.
Then, you fast forward, and Jerry's 15 years of age,
devises his own act, he calls it a record act.
And he would have a record player playing behind him.
And he would mime to whatever the record was doing,
whether it be a bit of Caruso, a female opera singer, etc.
He was hilarious.
♪ Be my love for no one else
♪ Can end this yearning
♪ There's need that you and you alone ♪
♪ Create
- He was a very anxious child, but he could overcome
his anxiety by not having to use his own voice.
So, he could purely focus on his body and his face,
and the voices were supplied by others.
♪ Be my love
♪ For no one else can end this yearning ♪
♪ This need that you and you alone create ♪
♪ Just fill my arms the way you've filled my dreams ♪
♪ The dreams that you inspire
♪ With every sweet desire
♪ Be my love
- I went through school and started as a writer,
and I wrote things for comedians.
And when they didn't do it like I wrote it, I did it.
♪ Love
♪ Is almost never ever
♪ The same
- Danny Lewis was almost resentful to Jerry's career.
Jerry's career progressed more in one year than Danny's did
in 25, 30 years.
Jerry Lewis was a household name in 1946.
Now, how would you feel as a dad?
- Here he is, Jerry Lewis!
- Thank you very much, good evening, how are you all?
- His father had an agent, Irving Kaye,
who encouraged Jerry to become a performer.
And Danny was so upset, he fired Irving.
At that point, Jerry hired Irving, and Irving became
Jerry's manager for the next several decades.
- I didn't hear you ma'am.
Where's your father?
- My father went up the river with a sack of cats.
What I would like to say...
I'm only kidding, you like the way the lady yells out
all of a sudden?
We have a two-act, it's a road company now.
♪ See it in your smile I hear it in your sigh ♪
♪ That we have found a feeling higher than high ♪
♪ My own
- And then, I met him.
♪ My only
- What a good day that was.
♪ For you're my Mary
- I was at a bar in Las Vegas, and there was a drunk
at the bar.
He was giving me problems.
And Dean walked over and punched him in the mouth.
- You alright, kid?
- Yeah.
- You sure?
- He never touched me.
♪ Well the wheels
♪ Were rolling down the trail one day ♪
♪ With my doggie at my side
♪ Got my six-gun and my big hat ♪
♪ And
- Jerry was an only child.
Dean was the brother he never had.
He got to be cheeky. He got to look up to somebody.
Who's this incredible, handsome man?
That's the guy I need.
♪ I dare sing a anthem
♪ I don't need it
♪ In writing
- Two and a half hours, unrehearsed.
That audience went nuts.
That was the birth of Dean and Jerry.
- The Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis Show!
The Colgate Comedy Hour!
- Come here!
♪ Everybody knows you love me
- You were mean to me, you abused me and continued
to slap me and just how long do you think I can stand it?
- The concept of the Martin & Lewis performance is basically
a handsome man and his monkey, or the playboy and the putz.
It was about two guys who were very, very different,
who come together.
Martin represented sex, Jerry Lewis represented slapstick.
- And we're gonna be pals, right?
- I would think so, Dad!
- And Lewis was basically the architect of the act.
He never wrote any of the scripts,
but on a kind of sandwich bag, he'd just scribble
a few notes about, OK, we have these two guys doing this,
and they do that.
So, you have a basic structure
which he describes as blueprints.
♪ I'm singing
♪ Singing in the rain
♪ I'm sing in the rain
- I think Jerry saw in Dean everything he wasn't
and vice versa.
Dean saw in himself everything he wasn't through Jerry,
and they fulfilled something in each other.
- You gonna sing the same song!
- Ah!
- Stay right there!
- I don't wanna!
- Yes, you're gonna, you're going to if I can make it!
♪ I'm singing
Oh, not again!
- Jerry made Dean cackle and laugh so hard
through his physical comedy, but then Dean was such a wit.
That made Jerry laugh, and I think that's what bonds anybody
in any partnership.
- He made my life.
I was hoping to be a success, and he made sure I was.
We had so much fun, we had such a good time.
And we'd say to one another,
and they're paying us for that?
We want to thank you!
- We now want to invite you to swim!
- You've been wonderful!
♪ Brush your teeth with hello hello ♪
- They were rock and roll.
They were rock and roll before rock and roll.
They were sexy, they were the missing link
between Frank Sinatra and The Beatles.
♪ We need each other we need each other ♪
♪ We need each other
♪ Brother
♪ Without each other we would be lost ♪
♪ Well as long as we're together pal ♪
♪ All things will weather pal
♪ We'll find when sunshine turns to broad ♪
♪ When the sun on your lips
♪ With your mugger and quips
♪ We'll both get married like
- I want to see the projectionist!
Turn off the film, stop the music!
- During the war, men had actually spent a lot of time
in one another's company.
They'd been away from women, they relied upon on one another
for emotional sustenance, for friendship, for safety.
And I think Martin & Lewis became a way of carrying over
into the post-war period the male bonding that had been
so intense during the World War II years.
- Excuse me, little lady. How about a little drink?
- Please!
♪ Everybody
♪ Needs to care
♪ For somebody
♪ All your dreams weren't meant to share ♪
♪ With somebody
- Dean and Jerry broke up.
They broke up because other outside influences got involved
that shouldn't have.
It was none of their business.
In the likes of, oh, Dean, you don't need that kid,
Oh, Jerry, you're better off without him.
Dean, you could make more money without this kid.
After awhile, that starts to become
your own thought process, almost.
They did their last film in 1956.
They didn't even speak on the set
throughout that whole production.
I don't think the audience, even today, ever got over that.
That was the worst divorce in showbiz history.
- After the split, Jerry appeared in a series
of formula comedies.
They were formulas like they had been
in the Martin & Lewis days, pretty much putting him
in a situation and just letting him run riot.
- One of the most important relationships that develops
in this period is the relationship he has
with film director, Frank Tashlin.
By the time he's actually a solo performer,
he wants to know more and more about how to make movies,
and Tashlin is a great mentor.
He sees Tashlin as a great metteur en scène,
but also as a great director of comedy.
And he learns a lot from Tashlin, and Tashlin takes the time
to tell Jerry how to do it.
- The day I walked on a motion picture set,
the first day, I knew I wanted to learn everything.
And when they wanted me for a scene,
I was in the wardrobe department, or the camera department,
or the make-up department, the technical department,
the miniature department.
They could never get me on the set, I was learning.
I was all over the yard.
And I knew that's what I wanted to do for the rest
of my life.
I was 34 when I directed my first film.
- The Bellboy!
- On January the 28th, I began writing a screenplay
which I completed eight days later.
170-page screenplay.
I sent for a crew of 150 people from Hollywood,
and I was shooting The Bellboy in under two weeks
in the time that I told them I'd give them product.
I closed there after 28 days of shooting,
I opened in Las Vegas, cut the picture in Las Vegas
during the day, and the picture made
over seven million dollars.
- If you think you're gettin' a tip, you're crazy.
I'm using my case money to buy a ticket to see
a bellboy, 'cause I hear it's funny.
And it's got a series of silly sequences,
and I like silly sequences.
And Jerry Lewis is starring in it!
That's right, big J.L. himself!
The tall nut!
Now, get outta here.
You, too!
- I think one of the reasons why he chooses
to make this particular film is he wants to demonstrate
where his allegiances lie.
He's honoring his heroes, Chaplin, Keaton, Stan Laurel,
but also trying to kind of move away from the kind of
formulaic comedies he made with Dean Martin.
This is pure comedy.
- Jerry really wanted Stan Laurel to be in a film with him.
That was his dream.
And Stan agreed to be in this movie.
And just before they went into production,
he felt quite ill and pulled out.
So, if you watch the film today, there's a Stan Laurel
impersonator in the movie doing all the scenes
that Stan should have done.
They became very close.
He almost mentored Jerry in Jerry's earlier career.
♪ One and all in the hall at the ball ♪
- He used to say something to me,
when you go out in front of an audience,
tell them you're gonna do something, then do it,
then tell them it's been done.
He was the genius behind Laurel & Hardy.
They had a real love-in, they loved one another.
They were great friends, just like Dean and I were.
♪ One and all In the hall at the ball ♪
♪ That's all
♪ Some ball
♪ Commence to dancing
- I lived with Charlie in Switzerland for two weeks
at his home.
Incredible!
For two weeks, we were arguing about what was funny
and what was not funny.
- Chaplin was the one that was embraced,
and any comedian who came afterwards,
who wrote and directed his own films,
suffered by comparison.
So, when Jerry came along, Jerry Lewis, of all people,
the loud, crazy kid from the Martin & Lewis films,
decided he wanted to be a filmmaker, well,
I think that's a lot of the backlash, because they thought,
who does this guy think he is, Chaplin?
- No autographs, please.
- He also makes a guest appearance in the film
as Jerry Lewis, the famous movie star.
This is one of the first of many films in which
Jerry Lewis is self-reflexively dealing with
the phenomenon of being Jerry Lewis in the films.
- Stop with the brushing!
Let me have another cigarette please.
I'll smoke it dry, I'll smoke it dry.
- Yes, sir, Mr. Lewis, we're all quite excited
about your appearance at the Fontainebleau.
- Lewis, once he actually starts directing films,
wants his name on the movies.
Very important that his films say, written, produced,
directed by Jerry Lewis, his stamp in the film
with his own marker, with his own signature.
- In the credits, he credits the character Jerry Lewis
to Joseph Levitch.
So, we're working on a few levels here.
Jerry Lewis is not actually a person.
Jerry Lewis is an act.
He's a performance by whoever Joseph Levitch is.
- The mighty director.
Ssh swine, can't you see I'm creating!
Oh, it's you, Mr. Bird, it pleasure to have you on the set.
- Any director that I've ever dealt with
and those that asked me about my direction of the film,
I think we all concur that you have to have a direction
as the director, who is the key factor in the film creation.
You have to have a direction.
Now, in the beginning, you're given the opportunity to start
in creating the comic sequences without a form,
without a pattern or direction because people want
to see where you go.
But once they've established the fact with you
that they are satisfied, that you're capable,
they now want to see growth.
And they want to see a formula and a pattern established
or they won't accept it.
Because without pattern and without form in filmmaking,
then you could always be referred to as a novice.
And people will resent that.
I'm going to work, kids.
Alright, places please!
Alright, let's hear it
for the movie star!
- Hey, stupid!
- Hey!
- Hollywood's biggest, most elaborate,
most expensive studio stage set of all time is constructed
before your eyes, and only one thing is missing
to complete it all, the SuperNut!
And here he is!
- Ah!
- He's got an incredible kind of mise-en-scène
in this movie.
He's constructed this huge dollhouse set,
and the camera cranes up and down around the set
and constructs the film through this very artificial
use of high-resource kind of technology,
if you like.
And the Wellenmellon house where the film is set
becomes a metaphor for the artifices of Hollywood.
And although he's not actually influenced
by the French critics like Godard, Truffaut at this time,
he's doing something very, very similar.
He wants to use film as a way of shaping a perspective
on the world.
And at the same time, his films have been marketed
to juveniles, they're children's films.
So, when he makes a film like The Ladies Man,
which is basically an art film,
critics in America are confounded, my God,
what's he doing here, why isn't he just being funny?
- You felt you had to have a crane?
You had to have practically everything
that Hollywood could give you?
- And more.
- And more, and you feel that you need
everything there is?
- Absolutely, I don't think anyone is good enough
to work within four walls,
and to work with antiquated equipment.
Our business is technology.
- You've even invented a system of shooting.
- Yeah well, in order for me to direct and be in two places,
I had to devise an electronic concept alongside my cameras,
so that I could see what I was doing and see the actors
on monitors, on television monitors.
There wasn't anyone out there I would trust to say that
it was OK, etc.
It's my ball and bat, that's all.
- And you're also able to judge yourself.
I mean, where you've gone wrong yourself.
- Absolutely, I've seen many, many situations where
I wasn't happy with the comedian, and I had to get them
to do it again.
And if you think it's easy talking to me, you're crazy.
- Jerry Lewis was certainly a rebel, but he was sometimes
a rebel in spite of his own maybe desire to be.
I think it has a lot to do with class, too.
People don't often talk about that.
You know, poor boy who becomes a rich boy,
and how you're supposed to behave in relationship
to all of that.
In one of his autobiographical books,
he talks about soon after he made it big in Hollywood,
driving down in his convertible down Hollywood Boulevard
or something, just blasting his horn as loud as possible
just to show how important he was.
It's like, you know, something that you could say
is offensive, but it's exactly what somebody,
who is powerless and has no money and then becomes rich,
is tempted to do.
- He's more a painter maybe than a director.
- Hi, honey.
- Uh!
- He's working with space.
- He's not tracking like those so-called modern movie-makers
and making fancy with their camera.
He's just interested in framing it.
He's a very good framer, like great painters.
He has a lot of sense of geometry.
To be a comic of, to be very capable in geometry.
- It's difficult to make a good picture.
And he knows, and I think he should be supported,
and I am one of his supporters.
- But most people don't go to movies to see
framing and technical.
They want to laugh or be entertained or--
- Yeah, but they receive pictures through that.
- Boy, what an imagination can do for ya!
- Do you also find him funny?
- Very, very.
If not, no, I think it's very funny.
Even when it's not funny, it's more funny,
because it's not funny.
- Robert Benayoun, good friend.
The French want everyone to think that they discovered me.
And that's OK, they don't do that in Italy.
They don't do that in Germany, anywhere in the world.
But the French, Jerry is mine.
I am happy to see you!
- The key champion of Jerry Lewis in France, of course,
is Robert Benayoun, who is fascinated by comedy in general,
by American comedy, The Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields.
He was somebody who saw artistry in this form of comedy
that could transcend reality.
- In the world, we have 10,000 men who can do Hamlet,
"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!"
But we only have these men who can go
Not only because it is difficult
but because it carries a heavy responsibility.
And the 10,000 actors that do Hamlet don't have
to check in with Shakespeare.
But we have to check with them!
They are our responsibility.
Shakespeare didn't even show up today.
Where he is, I don't know.
I used brush!
- When you see someone having an epileptic fit,
a little part of your person is somehow,
sees that as a mirror, a mirror of something
hidden far inside.
And I think that the French spectators
are more comfortable with pathology.
It's true that in the 1900s, deformity was the thing
that made the public laugh the most.
I won't translate that because I was telling that you are
a terribly good director and a fantastic technician.
- The French, in a sense, gave us American cinema.
The post-war critics in France, they hadn't seen
any American films during the German Occupation,
and then all those films flooded to the country at once,
and their appreciation of the films allowed us
to see our pictures in a different way.
But in Jerry Lewis's case, the idea that the French
revered him became a joke in and of itself, and nowadays,
the people who are keeping the joke alive know really
nothing about Jerry Lewis and particularly his films.
And, of course, there's also the fact that he's,
in terms of our culture, considered a mere comedian.
- American society is, by you, examined very deeply,
I don't know if you are aware of it, how deeply it is,
and you also question it as you would in any society
in which you live.
- I try to knock down
people who have
no longer allowed themselves to be just people.
You cannot make fun of throwing a snowball at a man
in a felt hat,
but you can make fun of when you throw
the snowball at a black top hat.
The why of it is because the black top hat
is the man at the bank, a diplomat,
a politician,
or the man who owns the funeral parlor.
- Both The Errand Boy and The Patsy are similar in the sense
that they're Jerry's response to his lack
of critical acceptance and, to a degree,
the way he was treated by the Hollywood bigwigs,
meaning that they just didn't understand why he wasn't
content to turn up the same product
or why he wasn't falling in line,
why he had to be an individual.
- Ah! - Ah!
- Marty!
- I know, I know.
- There are questions that don't get answered there.
But it gives the audience time to think about it,
which is good.
If you get your audience thinking,
you got half of the job done.
- Oh OK, let me start over again.
They just didn't understand why he wasn't content
to turn up the same product or why he wasn't falling
in line, why he had to be an individual.
And tellingly, he did not change his path.
- Ah!
- Do you realize that that screw loose,
imitation of a human being has disrupted
this studio beyond control?
- In a way, it's like a planned culture in America.
But it's a culture that's planned by the studios,
not by critics, not by the government.
In fact, you could almost say the studios
are the government.
- You have to remember that in the United States,
in the 1950s and 60s, the model of the male model,
Jimmy Stewart, of course, comes to mind,
but Jerry Lewis's character somehow evokes
for that audience, the same audience, evokes a problematic
male figure to say the least.
A male figure that is totally unpredictable, for one thing,
can go off on an irrational tangent, is not in control.
He's a dangerous figure for the American ideal
of the proper way to behave.
- Are there any requests?
- Yeah, get off!
- I, thank you!
- As a child, you have no filter, and you don't know
the rules of life or to be human,
so you are much more open to exploring,
and as you grow older, you become self-aware and want
to fit in and you're taught not to be as extroverted.
That's not as accepted.
But then when you're in society, and you go, wait a minute,
I loved being a kid, and I loved doing that.
And you don't lose that?
I think Jerry's never lost that.
And I think it's important for any performer,
to never lose that kind of freedom to just kind of say,
you know, F you, I'm gonna be out and open
and a ball of energy.
And if anybody has a problem with it, it's your problem.
It's not mine.
- How old are you?
- Six years.
- Me, too!
- One of the things that seems to me,
that is the most profound thing that happened in his life
was that his parents failed to turn up for his bar mitzvah
when he was 13.
It seems to me this explains an awful lot about
Jerry Lewis's character because when you're that neglected,
you could never get enough attention.
No matter how much attention you get later in life,
it'll never be enough.
- Jerry Lewis has said that an audience is like
a thousand mommas and poppas patting you on the head
and saying, good boy.
So, that validation and endorsement,
that maybe was absent because the parents were absent,
is provided by an audience and maybe that accounts
for the hunger and the need to perform.
- Hey!
- I think there's something with Jerry Lewis
that might explain his international profile.
He's somebody who plays a little guy who's hard done-by,
who has to win through by virtues of the heart and also
through his efforts to greater acclaim and acceptance.
I don't think he necessarily represents
the American Dream, although he's a very successful figure.
I think he exposes problems within the American Dream
and problems within American social values
in many of his films.
- I think in a very profound way, Jerry Lewis is America.
That's what's so fascinating about him.
And Americans don't like to see themselves
in the mirror when they look like Jerry Lewis.
So, the real interesting phenomena
is not Americans-hate-Jerry-Lewis,
but that they love Jerry Lewis and don't want to admit it.
- I'm just a human being with all of the foibles
and all of the traps.
The show, the pressure, the groupies, the autograph hounds,
the crew, the incompetence.
those behind-the-scenes you think are your friends,
but you're not too sure if they're gonna be there tomorrow
because of their incompetence.
There're wonderful pressures that make everyday a glowing,
radiant day in your life.
It's terrific, OK.
If all of that means nothing?
If I'm wrong in spite of all that, then I apologize.
I'm sorry.
- In 1983, there is a very interesting turn
in Lewis's career.
He appears in a Martin Scorsese film, The King of Comedy,
playing a role that's very unlike the Jerry of old.
He's a talk show host.
He's very sober, very stern, very joyless in this film.
It's a very astonishing performance,
but critics responded to this film as if they've never seen
Jerry Lewis act before.
So, it's almost like the critics don't really have
a framebook for valuing, for understanding
comic performance at all.
It's only when Lewis becomes a serious actor
that somehow he's seen to be credible.
- Oh, Jerry, I love this guy!
Always coming up with these great lines!
I love him, I love him!
- I know he's a great actor., I worked with him
on The King of Comedy.
He played it pretty straight, strong.
After a point, too, he'll look at me at one point and say,
I can't do anymore of this take.
It doesn't matter, you got it, six, seven times, whatever.
I think you can see this though in a lot of pictures
with Dean Martin, The Stooge maybe, The Bellboy,
The Ladies Man, which is visually
one of the greatest, I think.
But you can obviously, it's so obvious
in The Nutty Professor.
I mean the Julius Kelp character is grotesque.
It's like a gargoyle that's come to life.
It's frightening and funny, but the change to Buddy Love
is the real scare.
That's where you see the acting, that tilt-up
when you see who it is, from the shoes to the silk suit,
and he's Buddy Love.
And this is a great performance.
- Professor?
Professor!
- Since I was probably five,
I thought about, one day, I'm going to perform
in a great classic, and then I found it.
Jekyll & Hyde.
Hey, that was terrific!
Hey, did ya hear that, folks, A regular George Bernard Shaw.
Good boy!
And he did it all by himself, you did all by yourself,
and nobody helped you.
That's terrific and with your very own big mouth!
Now, if you don't want this cocktail shaker to be a part
of your gums, mix the drink, shut your mouth
and pay attention, is that clear?
Repeat after me, I'll.
- I'll
- I'll pay. - I'll pay.
- I'll pay attention. - I'll pay attention.
- Alright, let's continue!
- I don't think it's a matter of proving
your skills in drama.
Maybe that's true of comic actors, but that's not Jerry,
I think, I think he's a visual artist,
a visual artist like Chaplin and Keaton.
And he's got his own physical instrument as an actor,
would call it as a key element in the creation of his art.
So in a sense, he was virtually alone in his time.
- I don't know how many years of articles there
has to be written of sad clowns.
I mean, every person who's in the comedy business
has a very serious side, and I love it when people
are shocked to learn that.
It's like how many stories do you have to read
before you realize, yeah, comedy comes from pain.
Any comedy comes from pain.
And so that pain is real, and the pain is also another side
to be explored as an artist.
- When I look at Jerry Lewis, him,
I know him, I know what he can do.
I, therefore, try to steer his characters
and his personalities in the areas where he
is most comfortable, for he is a strange, unique,
neurotic strange, unique, neurotic.
- As soon as I find out what are travel--
- You see, most people look at that and think that
that is total make-up.
I'll tell you something that I've never told anyone.
This is make-up, that's clean.
'Cause if you look at that, he won't hurt anybody.
And he is who I think of all the time.
No more make-up.
No more ghastly one-nighters.
No more squealing brats!
- He raises the enigma of identity to an interesting level.
We can watch Jerry Lewis exploring who Jerry Lewis is
across from film to film and across
various different media articulations.
I think he remains an enigma.
Just when you think you've identified who Jerry Lewis is,
he does something else that challenges that presupposition.
♪ When you walk through a storm ♪
♪ Keep your chin up high
♪ And don't be afraid of the dark ♪
- By the 1970s, Jerry became less active in filmmaking.
A good part of that reason was because he became
more involved with the annual MDA Telethon
which was taking up more of his time and his attention,
but also the fact that he was experiencing health problems,
and they precluded such a physically demanding process
as directing movies.
♪ Of the long
- His fundraising actually began
in the Martin & Lewis days.
The very first MDA Telethon was hosted by Jerry and Dean.
And it just blossomed from there because Jerry
has always been interested in humanitarian causes,
the muscular dystrophy cause being the closest to his heart.
♪ Though your dreams be taut.
- So this is something that Lewis has devoted himself,
body and soul, to for a very, very long time.
In fact, it was very hard to disentangle muscular dystrophy
from Jerry Lewis.
He became such a personification of the cause,
and although that's actually now over, still in America,
most people knew Lewis, as I suspect,
for his humanitarian work rather than for his films.
♪ You'll never walk alone
♪ Walk on walk on
♪ With hope in your heart
♪ And you'll never walk alone
♪ You'll never alone
Thank you and goodnight.
When I went to the circus when I was five or six,
I met a lot of the clowns.
And I met them throughout the years every time
I went to the circus.
Same clowns, older but smart,
very smart.
I was putting on my clown make-up, and I had 24 of them
around my table watching me make up.
And in the mirror, you see 24 different clowns watching me.
It was beautiful.
Oh my God.
This was my first professional picture.
I was 16.
The King!
The King.
Fou.
This was the greatest love of my life, right there.
With her.
Great love affair.
All of my crew would go home after a day,
and I'd take it home with me.
From the time I was a kid, I always wrote about
what I see in the world.
I'm always looking and seeing the world.
And I see it as it is,
but I can tweak it and make it funny.
He was closer to me than a brother, than a father,
than a mother.
He was closer to me than anyone else in my life ever.
And I miss him today like I missed him the day he died.
Doesn't change, everyday, I think about him.
There's my hero.
Nutty, Nutty!
Marty Scorsese.
The American critics are full of shit.
They have no idea what I'm doing.
They never have.
See, they wrote great critiques on The King of Comedy
because it wasn't low-brow, it wasn't taking falls.
It wasn't, ah!
None of that.
And they liked that, Jerry's now working for them.
You don't worry about them, you don't think about them.
Or you're screwing your life.
If you start to do what they say, you'd be finished!
You'd be a critic in a small paper in Rochester, New York.
My writing was to give pleasure.
Every script I've written was for the audience
to have a good time.
I'm nostalgic about everything.
Not in any one thing, but many things.
I've been very lucky, look at all that!
That's a lifetime of wonderful moments.
I'm very lucky, I'm blessed.
I've been given some wonderful abilities that helped me
get through to the public.
And that's the bottom line of all of that, it's love.
If you give love to your audience,
they're gonna give it back.
You can't explain fame.
So, I said it's like a big balloon and a bunch of children
around it with long pins.
And if they buy a ticket, they got the right to do that.
♪ Go marching in ha
♪ Oh when the saints
♪ Go marching ah
♪ Oh ah ha ha ha
♪ Ah
♪ Marching in
- Aw gee, you don't have to get excited about it.
After all, I'm only out here trying to sing a song!
Here we go.
♪ I can smile
♪ Just because I'm young
- Cut.