Comedy’s caring clown
Showbiz titan devoted over-the-top energy to sick kids
He raised more than $2 billion to help fight muscular dystrophy, ending his famed telethons by singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone.’
At the end of a remarkable show business life, Jerry Lewis might be best remembered for “Jerry’s Kids,” children with muscular dystrophy.
The consummate showman, comedian, director and actor became synonymous with throwing his worldwide fame into a career-long battle against the degenerative disease, most notably through The Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, which he hosted from 1966 to 2010.
The prominent and seemingly unstoppable force, who ended each telethon singing You’ll Never Walk Alone, was silenced when Lewis died Sunday morning at age 91, his close friend Nancy Kane and his manager Mark Rozzano confirmed to USA TODAY.
Rozzano said Lewis died at home of natural causes, surrounded by family. “The world has lost one of the most significant human beings of the 20th century,” Rozzano said.
The comedian’s death was first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The international star had worked through highly publicized health problems. In June, Lewis was hospitalized near his Las Vegas home for a urinary tract infection. His publicist Candi Cazau had predicted a complete recovery and a return to the actor’s still-busy schedule; he was about to travel to Toronto for a movie shoot.
Lewis fell ill during an appearance in Sydney in June 2011, moments before he was expected onstage to raise mon-
ey for muscular dystrophy.
He overcame that setback and set his sights on appearing in what was to be his final performance at the 21-hour Labor Day telethon. But MDA chairman R. Rodney Howell thanked Lewis for “more than a half-century of generous service” and pulled the plug on the star’s final show for reasons never fully explained.
Lewis would fall into his legendary grouchiness whenever he declined to talk about the departure — and never disclosed why he had dedicated himself to the cause for so many decades. He remained supremely proud of his efforts to raise about $2.6 billion to fight the disease.
“I don’t know anyone in the world who has ever done anything that represented $2 billion,” Lewis told USA TODAY in 2016.
It would take someone of Lewis’ energy and massive worldwide fame to make it happen.
Born Joseph Levitch on March
16, 1926, in Newark, Lewis started performing at age 5 with his vaudeville entertainer father and piano-playing mother. He changed his professional name to Joey Lewis, then to Jerry to avoid confusion with reigning heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis.
He gained international acclaim for his 1960 directorial debut, The Bellboy, which he wrote, produced and starred in. Three years later, he hit box office and critical gold again with The Nutty Professor, a film he produced, cowrote, directed and starred in.
The Nutty Professor was his most famous screen role: A crosseyed, buck-toothed academic nerd transforms into the smoothtalking Buddy Love thanks to the magic of science. The film was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.
“A lot of people resent that I’ve been in someone’s life for 50 years,” Lewis told USA TODAY in
2002. “Why shouldn’t people have an affection for me and what I’ve done? Didn’t I have to be genuine for them to buy into what I did?”
Lewis was married twice, but his life and career largely were defined by one very public relationship and split: his partnership with Dean Martin. After meeting in 1945, the two quickly became the most sought-after duo in show business as Lewis brought the zany laughter, and singer Martin played the straight man.
In their 11 years working together, Lewis and Martin shared the screen in 16 films. Despite the playful chemistry onscreen, the relationship became strained as Lewis received more of the credit for their success.
On July 25, 1965, more than a decade after their debut, the two took the stage together for one last time and didn’t speak again for another 20 years.
In his memoir Dean & Me (A Love Story), Lewis spoke about the love and respect the two shared before Martin’s death in
1995. They famously reunited on national TV in 1976 during the MDA Telethon, thanks to the efforts of their friend Frank Sinatra.
Lewis showed a moodier side in his widely praised role as latenight talk show host Jerry Langford, kidnapped by Robert De Niro’s aspiring comic in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy. In the ’80s, Lewis married SanDee Pitnick, who would be his partner and caregiver to the end and who helped him through open-heart surgery in 1983 and prostate cancer in the early ’90s.
After leaving the telethon in
2011, he was asked what he still needed to accomplish in his life.
“Get the cure for muscular dystrophy,” Lewis said simply. “Then I’m fine.”
“Why shouldn’t people have an affection for me and what I’ve done?” Jerry Lewis