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Jerry Lewis Filmography
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Jerry Lewis, son of a vaudeville performer named Danny Lewis, gained initial fame with the singer
Dean Martin, who served as a straight man to Lewis' manic, zany antics as The Martin and Lewis comedy team. They distinguished themselves for the majority of comedy acts of the 1940's by relying on the interaction of the two comics instead of pre-planned skits. In the late forties, they rose to national prominence, first with their popular nightclub act and then as film stars. Critics often found it difficult to describe their chaotic act beyond the austere "Martin sings and Lewis clowns". They continued to perform in film and on television until their split in 1956.
Lewis returned as a solo act with his debut film The Delicate Delinquent in 1957. Lewis went on to star in five more films before he produced, directed, wrote, and starred in his own movie entitled The Bellboy in 1960. Legend has it that he edited the film by day and performed in Las Vegas at night. During production Lewis decided to use a video camera to tape the scene while he was filming it, allowing him to review the footage instantly. Later, this technique would become an industry standard known as video assist.
Lewis directed several more of his own films including The Ladies Man
, The Errand Boy
, and the iconic film, The Nutty Professor. During this period he was consistently praised by many French critics for his comedy and was awarded the Légion d'honneur, the highest civilian honor in France. Lewis box office appeal waned by the mid sixties. In 1966 he began hosting an annual Labor Day Telethon For The Muscular Dystrophy Association, a charity he had already been publicly associated with for more than ten years
Later, Lewis starred in and directed the unreleased The Day The Clown Cried in 1972. The film was a comedy taking place in a Nazi concentration camp. Lewis has explained why the film hasn't been released by suggesting litigation over post-production financial difficulties. It has been seen by very few select individuals, but those who see it either praise it for comediec genius or the utmost in bad taste.
After an eight year absence from movies, Lewis returned in the early 1980s with Hardly Working, a film he both directed and starred in. He followed this up with a critically acclaimed performance in
Martin Scorsese's 1983 film The King of Comedy in which Lewis plays a late night TV host plagued by an obsessive fan.
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