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RIP Jerry Lewis LAS VEGAS–Jerry Lewis, whose irrepressible zaniness and frantic creativity vaulted him to stardom as a comic movie star who wielded unparalleled green-light power at Paramount in the 1960s, died at his home here Aug. 20. He was 91.
On MST3K, he was mentioned in host segments in episode 304- GAMERA VS. BARUGON and 311- IT CONQUERED THE WORLD. 32 Replies to “RIP Jerry Lewis”Commenting at Satellite News
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He might have been mentioned by name in only two episodes, but his comedy permeated the entire show. Think of how many riffs were delivered in his voice and/or style – and still are. A legend both in comedy and in charity. RIP.
He was also mentioned in the “Emotional Scientist” sketch during “King Dinosaur”.
While he was very funny in the movies, I think he was even better on early live TV, where he and Dean had a lot more room to improvise. Fortunately, several of those sketches were preserved and are on YouTube and DVD.
I think MonkeyPretzel said it best — how many times has “Oh..LADY!” been referenced on our beloved show? He was silly, he was a kid (as an actor) and he was an insufferable egotist (in real life, as shown clearly by his own autobiography as well as the one he collaborated on) but he was incredibly talented and has left us with some great performances (“The Nutty Professor” is truly a comedic masterpiece — and shows both sides of this troubled soul, so much that he wouldn’t let his kids watch the movie).
R.I.P, our great kid clown.
Some interesting comments about him in Patton Oswalt’s book “Silver Screen Fiend.” I wonder if now Lewis’s film “The Day the Clown Cried” will see the light of day? Btw, if you like audio books, Oswalt reads SSF himself and I loved it.
Earlier today, Frank wrote on Twitter that it would be a race between the Relaunch, RT and the Mads to see who gets to riff that movie. My guess is Jerry set up so many legal roadblocks to such a thing that we’ll see the Susan Hart Four officially released before it happens.
now that i would like to see. for those who don’t know:
https://consequenceofsound.net/2017/08/the-day-the-clown-cried-the-unseen-movie-that-refuses-to-die/
Unfortunately, Jerry Lewis was a nasty person in real life. He labeled all Syrian refugees terrorists and said something like “Women shouldn’t be comedians.”
I can’t truly see RT or the Mads riffing on a movie about children in a concentration camp. Nope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewrPTl5jHK8
i know, but it is like Manos (maybe worst)
I hate to say that I was never a fan of Jerry Lewis. He seemed to be trying way too hard to be the center of attention always. Dean Martin himself recognized that Jerry HAD to get the laugh. If Martin ad libbed something during a rehearsal, it would be Jerry who screamed the line on the air so that Jerry got the laugh from the audience. Given total control by the studio, he had virtual carte blanche to do anything he wanted. Which turned every project he worked on his own into a virtual vanity project. I don’t know what his infamous “The Day the Clown Cried” will be like if we ever get to see it, but it probably embodied all of his faults, and I am certainly not interested in seeing the film.
That said, you have to honor the artist, the performer, the director, the man in control. Lewis accomplished a lot, and he should be respected for that. He inspired a lot of comedians and performers to be what they could be (even if he hated it when people did his shtick back to him).
But for one who must always be the center of attention and resented being number two in anything, he made it very hard to like the man. I saw him as a very nasty, very racist, very sexist man who, after a time, no longer gave a damn what anyone thought of him. It made the MDA Telethons ultimately unwatchable because he always made it about HIM.
So, this might be a nasty little post, but, in the end, it’s about a very nasty little man. RIP, Jerry. You may have earned it, but it’s hard to give you the love you so desperately needed.
I seem to be the only one that loved Josh on the show and part of that was his Dean Martin impressions. Which of course often involved Jerry Lewis.
Particularly during Aztec Mummy vs Robot, where one of the actors looks like a Mexican Jerry Lewis.
Yet they do riff movies where children are kept as sex slaves (Manos).
You mean, just counting the S1 ad-libbed strings of “Oh-hhh, Di-nooo!” and “Heyyy, Jerry!”‘s as the Robot Vs. the Aztec Mummy characters run through the graveyard?
“The Ladies Man”, and its early TV Wheel-like experiment in filming a whole life-size soundstage “house” of gag-segments was also imaginative https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7atXlvllyrM , but Jerry still didn’t understand the concepts of “Subtle” or “Self-effacing”.
That was the problem with still trying to play a gawky Jersey teen into his forties.
Even the idea of the Telethon, and all it invented, seemed to grab the easy “Orphans’ hospital” route to public-charity sympathy that heavily-Vegas’ed 50’s/60’s entertainers usually traveled without having to commit themselves too personally to a cause.
Danny Thomas might have had his own reasons for supporting the Shriners’ hospital, but after a while, even real MD activists (which I sympathize with, having lost a mom to ALS) started publicly protesting the crocodile tears with which Jerry would sob over poor little “helpless” waifs in wheelchairs.
I’m actually one of his “kids,” though at 54 I’m one of the older ones now.
He will be missed.
I always wondered who did the dead-on impressions of Dean and Jerry in Aztec Mummy. They were fantastic. Any idea who did Jerry? Was that Trace?
Yeah, well, I can’t deny what he is and was.
Always sad when anyone dies- but, I have never gotten Jerry Lewis and the obsession (not just MST, but The Simpsons) with him. There are so many more comedians funnier than him- The Marx Brothers for one.
Oh, you do not hate to say any such thing, you liar.
Bit of a (cough)nt, aren’t you?
Wait! Do I detect the odorous scent of a Love Connection?
You and EricJ should get together and make some hate babies.
Oh, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry……
Was there EVER an entertainer with SO MUCH comedic talent, that had so many others who found it difficult, if not impossible, to ’embrace’ the human being underneath the grease paint?
Wonder if Dean IMMEDIATELY headed for the golf course, the minute he heard that his ex-partner was coming to stay…..
I hope Frank and Trace would tackle it on the Movie Sign with The Mads podcast.
Actually, I understand they’d fully reconciled after Dean’s son was killed in a plane crash.
His work was certainly polarizing, but folks here who say they could never enjoy anything he did because of his personality in real life must not watch much media nowadays (because almost everyone in Hollywood is the most poisonous, inane bunch of idiots I’ve ever seen, and the drivel that comes out of their mouths when they aren’t actually singing or performing is even worse than actual ****). Artists, in general, aren’t very nice people, and only enjoying the output of those who are decent people means you will be VERY limited in what art you can actually enjoy.
Lewis was certainly polarizing to be sure. The first thing I think about when thinking about Jerry Lewis is Martin Short’s marvelous impersonation of him from SCTV in the “Martin Scorsese’s Jerry Lewis: Live On The Champs Elysees” sketch. Short so embodies Lewis in that moment, it is a treat to watch.
Speaking of Scorsese, the other thing I also remember is the great performance Lewis gave in “The King of Comedy”. There was actual acting there not just the regular shtick that Lewis had in every other movie. I’d say the performance Jerry Lewis gave in that movie was as close as anything to seeing the real life Jerry Lewis. And De Niro as Rupert Pupkin is fantastic.
“Actually, I understand they’d fully reconciled after Dean’s son was killed in a plane crash.”
NICE !!! I had not heard that……..thank you very much for posting!
Dean & Jerry on the “Colgate Comedy Hour”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaaZIMiQnS8
And I can’t resist adding this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC6YPQY0_28
After years of “None of your business!” Jerry did finally speak out, very concisely, four years ago about why DtCC “disappeared” and whether we’d ever see it someday–
He says quite plainly he was, quote, “embarrassed” by it, it wasn’t what he wanted it to be, and he reportedly requested the Library of Congress not make their archive print public until 2025, or until ten years after his death, which we can start counting now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD-BYt8KiwA
This, in response to some leaked rumors and documentary clips of footage, and some viewers bragging to have seen a copy and saying it wasn’t horrendously tasteless or screen-meltingly bad, just too flat, overly-earnest, and ill-advised for the wrong ego, the way some people (not me, but YMMV) feel about Roberto Benigni and “Life is Beautiful”.
With the exception that at least Benigni managed to keep his “saintly” Holocaust dramedy on more of a firmly disciplined tone than you know Jerry ever could if he WANTED to.
So, if you’re waiting for RiffTrax’s “Overinflated Bad-Movie Cult Reputation” jackals to leap on it like, um….jackals, their lawyers will have a long wait.
Maybe they can do the Paul Lynde Halloween Special in the meantime, and tie into the Star Wars one again.
(And “Hardly Working” and the Kurt Vonnegut “Slapstick of Another Kind” I wouldn’t even submit MK&B to, even if they COULD recognize a bad movie if it bit them in the hinder…The latter is a unique high-grade blend of industrial nightmare fuel.)
Well, I know that Frank Sinatra brought Dean onto the MDA telethon one year, and Dean and Jerry hugged, but they never really addressed their differences until many years later.
What is purported to be the full script for The Day the Clown Cried is available online (I say “purported” because I’ve seen a couple of different versions already) at DailyScript dot com and other script sites.
“More than simply misguided, this makes you question your own tolerence for cinematic swill.” — Shock Cinema Magazine’s review of the script
So, because Kali is female, and politely explained why she disliked Jerry Lewis, it’s okay to impolitely and somewhat deceptively call her a c#nt, and romantically link her with the longtime resident misanthrope?
That’d be like me calling you a racist based on the amount of white male privilege your post displayed, and telling you to join the KKK at their next rally. Or is just all women that are inferior sex objects, Capt. Howdy?
No, oh bearer of poor logic.
Why are you so threatened by a dead, 90+ year old comedian?
I DETEST those religious zealots who attended the funerals of dead gays, so that they might gloat to the mourners about their loved ones now burning in hell. Surely you don’t defend those jackasses, do you? Try that logic on.
Kali is barely a niche above those…
Cram it, you lightweight, redirecting, self-absorbed nitwit. Your debating skills are sorely lacking and inferior.
EricJ was the closest match I could come up with it, and I stand by my opinion that they would make BEAUTFIUL hate babies together!
You’re so clueless, you don’t even glean what offended me MOST! (you must be a journalist)
Prefacing her post with passive aggressive doublespeak, you dunderhead.
Similar to “Connie” above, beginning with “Unfortunately,”….
Makes me vomit.
Who the hell died and made you God? Throwing tomatoes in an obituary/tribute is pathetic and in this particular COMDEDIC-based site amounts to NOTHING but trolling.
Bash Lewis somewhere else… or if you’re triggered enough, lightweight, find a statue of Jerry and deface it.
GET OVER YOURSELF.