JERRY LEWIS
AS A NEW DVD SET OF HIS FILMS COMES OUT, THE COMIC LEGEND’S SON REMEMBERS HIS DAD AS A REAL ‘SOFTIE’
Son Chris Lewis shares intimate memories of his dad’s personal life with Closer as a set of the beloved comedian’s funniest films is released on DVD.
Jerry Lewis is remembered as one of the greatest comedians of all time, but he was serious about his work — until son Chris and five of his siblings came by to visit him on sets. “He stopped everything to give us big hugs and kisses,” Chris tells Closer. “He made us feel like a million bucks.”
The screen icon passed away last year at 91, but Chris, 60, is helping to preserve his memory by collaborating on the new DVD collection, “Jerry Lewis: 10 Films.” “Some of these films have been called masterpieces,” says Chris of classics like The Bellboy, The Stooge and The Nutty Professor. “And I happen to agree.”
Chris says Jerry was just as uproariously funny at home as he was on film. “If we sat down to a family dinner, he would perform for us, and we’d be laughing so hard we couldn’t eat,” says Chris. “My mom [Patti Palmer] would be mad at him — that was the real Jerry Lewis.”
But he was more than just a clown. Jerry raised millions of dollars via his Labor Day telethons for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. “We saw the love and care he had in his heart for so many people who needed help,” says Chris. “He was a very loving father and grandfather to my kids — just a regular softie.”
It was on the 1976 telethon that Jerry reunited with his longestranged ex-partner Dean Martin, and Chris says their friendship was “really a love affair. Dean was like the older brother he never had. They never stopped loving each other.”
Unlike his wacky characters, Jerry was “far from crazy,” Chris says. “He could be in a room with an audience of one, and he would be performing. If he wasn’t making somebody laugh, he wasn’t happy.”
He stayed that way up to the end. “With his energy level, at 91 he was in the hospital making my daughters laugh when they came to see him,” Chris says. “I miss him terribly — I wish I could pick up the phone and call him, but it feels good knowing I’m doing what he would want me to do with his legacy.” — Bruce Fretts,
with reporting by Ilyssa Panitz
“He loved to entertain — he just really enjoyed his craft.” — Jerry’s son Chris