‘ EYES TELL THE STORY’ OF THE CUCKOO BIRDS
Actor- comedian- filmmaker Jerry Lewis, who died Sunday at 91, met with Roger Ebert at the 1983 Cannes International Film Festival, where he was promoting “The King of Comedy.” Ebert’s three- star review a week later called it “an odd, stimulating, unsatisfying movie.”
CANNES, France — “I had left,” Jerry Lewis was explaining. “I was gone for about two minutes. The heart goes into what they call v- tach.” He demonstrated, clenching his fist. “It gets halfway closed and it freezes. I was dead and this lovely black nurse came and hit me a Larry Holmes shot to the chest and brought me back. Then I went into a state of fear.”
Up here in his corner suite at the Carlton Hotel, Jerry Lewis was chewing on little blue candies that had, he said, only seven calories each. He looked tanned and fit, with that jet- black hair still slicked back like some kid from the class of 1956 going out on his first date. We were talking about his openheart surgery last December.
“See this incision? That’s a vein,” he said, showing me his right leg, bare all the way up to his tennis shorts. “Scar goes all the way up the leg, all the way up the chest, all the way up the shoulder, and over the shoulder and halfway up the guy in the next room. After the operation you have a 5- year- old heart. I hope so. I was working 20 hours a day. I felt great. I have been smoking three packs of cigarettes a day for 43 years. I felt great, and then ...
“The irony is, [ renowned cardiac surgeon] Michael De Bakey is a good friend of mine. But he couldn’t get to Las Vegas in time to do the operation because, frankly, I didn’t have five minutes to spare. And I’ve seen the operation. I’ve scrubbed with De Bakey. In Vegas, the doctor was leaning over me and I knew everything he was going to tell me about. The Black and Decker electric saw I knew about, varroom to cut you open; the retractor they screw to open up your sternum, I knew all about that.”
Isn’t it sort of strange, I asked, that you’re here in a film about a star who is kidnapped and almost killed by his fans? And now here you are in Cannes, where the photographers and TV crews and fans are going to be rioting when you walk up the steps of the Festival Palace.
“The adulation,” he said. “I love it in France. Over here, they get only this close, and no closer.” He held his hand out at arm’s length. “In America, they get closer. They come up on top of you and over your back. They want to touch you. ”
Lewis looked down at the coffee table between us, where a tape recorder was quietly recording our conversation. It was his tape recorder. It had been on since I entered the room.
“Why don’t you use a tape recorder?” he asked.
I guess I just never have, I said.
“If you use the tape recorder,” he said, “you could look in the other person’s eyes. And the eyes tell the story. In a threatening crowd, you can always tell the dangerous ones by their eyes.
“To the fanatics — and they’re out there — he wants to get inside of you and spend some time there, looking through your eyes. You can spot those waving cuckoo birds, and you’ve gotta watch out for them. They love you so much they can kill you. That’s what ‘ The King of Comedy’ is about.
“I’ll give you an example. Years ago, I was playing the Chicago Theater. Dean Martin and I were doing our act. Backstage after the show, I saw this woman. She had eyes that looked like Michael Landon’s eyes when he did ‘ Teenage Werewolf.’ I saw her, and I forgot her.
“The next night, Dean and I were doing a benefit for Kup’s Harvest Moon Ball. There was this same woman. There were 10,000 people there, and Dean and I were protected by 30 or 40 cops, but she got to me. She screamed, ‘ Jerry, I love you!’ She grabbed me like this.” Lewis grabbed me by the neck. “Twenty of those cops couldn’t get her off of me. My face was the color of your jeans. I’m choking. I hit her a shot in the stomach as hard as I could. I hit her so hard that I swear that lady is still walking around Chicago with some kind of residue from that experience.”
And yet, I mused, you say you don’t mind the adulation. “The King of Comedy” paints a chilling portrait of fans who are fanatics, and here you are in Cannes to take the cheers for playing their victim. Strange.
“I love it when it’s intended as a compliment,” Lewis said. “Let’s face it. There must be a lot of guys around who would love for all of that to be happening to them.”