US comedian Jerry Lewis, 91

Jerry Lewis, the rubber-faced comedian who starred in many hit films, died yesterday in Las Vegas at the age of 91.

Lewis first became a star in a duo with Dean Martin.

After their split in 1956, he starred in and directed a number of hit films such as The Nutty Professor.

Later generations knew him primarily as the conductor of weekend telethons to raise funds for victims of muscular dystrophy.

Lewis retired from the cinema in 1995 but returned to star in the 2016 drama Max Rose.

His career spanned the history of showbusiness in the 20th Century, beginning in his parents’ vaudeville act at the age of five.

He was just 20 when his pairing with Martin made them international stars.

He went on to make such favourites as The Bellboy, was featured in Martin Scorsese’s The King Of Comedy and appeared as himself in Billy Crystal’s Mr Saturday Night.

In the 1990s, he scored a stage comeback as the devil in the Broadway revival of Damn Yankees.

In his eighties he was still travelling the world, working on a stage version of The Nutty Professor.

A major influence on Jim Carrey and other slapstick performers, Lewis also was known as the ringmaster of the Labour Day Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon in the US, joking and reminiscing and introducing guests, sharing stories about ailing children and concluding with his personal anthem, the ballad You’ll Never Walk Alone.

From the 1960s onwards, the telethons raised more than a billion dollars.

He announced in 2011 that he would step down as host, but would remain chairman of the association he joined 60 years ago.

He was the classic funny man who longed to play Hamlet, crying as hard as he laughed.

He snarled at critics and interviewers who displeased him, pontificated on talk shows, lectured to college students and compiled his thoughts in the 1971 book The Total Film-Maker.

Lewis had teamed up with Martin after the Second World War, and their radio and stage antics delighted audiences.

Lewis described their fledgeling act in his 1982 autobiography, Jerry Lewis In Person: “We juggle and drop a few dishes and try a few handstands.”

But in the mid-1950s, their partnership began to wear as Lewis longed for more than laughs and Martin tired of playing the straight man.

After Martin’s death in 1995, Lewis said the two had again become friendly during his former partner’s final years and he would repeatedly express his admiration for Martin.

Jerry Lewis.