Friars honor Lewis’ birthday
At the Friars Club tribute for Jerry Lewis’ 90th birthday, many of the jokes were not about Jerry Lewis.
With speakers Friday night including Richard Belzer, Freddie Roman and Max Alexander, there were wisecracks about Donald Trump, Monica Lewinsky, doctors, sex and growing old. When the subject did turn to Lewis, the kidding around turned to praise. About 200 people squeezed into the first floor dining room as Lewis, whose birthday was last month, sat to the side of the dais, and laughed and cried.
The evening also featured highlight reels from such Lewis movies as “The Nutty Professor” and pre-taped greetings, including Steven Spielberg, Al Pacino and Don Rickles, who urged Lewis “to go to bed early.”
Rare docs in auction
A rare newspaper printing of a journal kept by a young George Washington and a small inscribed Bible carried by an American soldier during the Battle of Bunker Hill are among hundreds of historic documents being auctioned today at Bonhams in Manhattan.
The Washington document is a 1754 publication of the then-22-year-old Virginia surveyor’s journal detailing his failed effort to convince the French to withdraw from the Ohio River Valley. It has a presale price of $60,000 to $90,000.
Also for sale is a pocket King James Bible carried by a Massachusetts soldier who survived Boston’s Bunker Hill battle in 1775. It has a presale price of $50,000 to $80,000.
Burnett on the road
Hosting “The Carol Burnett Show” from 1967 to 1978, the namesake star took time to answer questions from the studio audience in all 279 episodes.
Now Burnett, at 82, is still taking questions from the audience, in a touring show she calls “Laughter and Reflection With Carol Burnett.”
And fans have plenty of topics to choose from: Burnett’s influential show; its ensemble cast, which included Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner; her many movie and TV roles and books; her Broadway experience; her Emmy-winning work on “The Garry Moore Show”; and the slew of awards she has won in the past decade or so, including the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award last year. In Washington alone, Burnett has received a Kennedy Center Honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Reached in Los Angeles, Burnett said, “I open with some clips of my favorite Q&As when I was doing my show to get the audience involved. Then we just throw it open to the audience for 90 minutes.”