Jerry
About Jerry Lewis
Stand-up comic whose floundering career was boosted when he paired with straight man Dean Martin in 1946. The pair’s hit nightclub routine was first transferred to film in 1949, with Lewis and Martin going on to star in (and occasionally co-write) a total of 16 films, all based on the same formula: suave, good-natured Dino is undermined by the goofy antics of the impossibly nerdy Jerry. The team acrimoniously broke up in 1956, with Lewis going on to star in, write and direct, his own vehicles.
Since a cabal of French cineastes “unmasked” the comic genius lurking beneath his sophomoric antics, Lewis has cultivated his image as an auteur, pompously holding forth in books and on talk shows. Although his film roles have been intermittent of late, Lewis received critical acclaim for his dramatic performances as a kidnapped arrogant talk show host in Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” (1983) and as a clothing merchant tempted by mob influence on a special five-episode story on TV’s “Wiseguy” (CBS, 1990).
He has, of course, also kept in the public eye via his annual TV telethons to raise money to help fight muscular dystrophy. Lewis made a long overdue Broadway debut in 1995 portraying the Devil in the revival of “Damn Yankees”. His son, musician Gary Lewis, enjoyed a number of hit songs in the 1960s, the best remembered of which is probably “This Diamond Ring”.