Tweet Love Him or Loathe Him Lewis

I'm in the "loathe him" camp. Nevertheless, I am curious why Jerry Lewis has never followed up with a second volume of his "Ultimate Collection". Was he humiliated by low sales of the first volume. or otherwise disgruntled by its production/promotion? Or were the sales so great, he has delusions of making a comeback and is holding back on releasing a second volume until then? Has he been distracted by his health issues? Or has he just lost interest?

(Yes, I did buy volume 1. Turned out the only films I liked were the ones the critics all said were his worst: Delicate Delinquent, Cinderfella, and I forget the third one... And yes, I would buy the second volume. I'm a compulsive completist!)


Jim

I find Jerry Lewis to be very funny- in clips. I can't sit through any of his films, with the exception of "Rock a Bye Baby"- it has a coherent storyline and Frank Tashlin's direction keeps him under control. (Plus there's "The White Virgin of the Nile")

UGH... even as a kid I didn't like him. I always found him to be embarrassing....

Generally speaking, loathe....but he is magnificent as the awful father in Peter Chelsom's masterpiece, Funny Bones.

[Mike Gebert]

Maybe this will finally attract Jim Neibaur... anyway, I think there's a small shelf, okay, part of a shelf, of good Jerry Lewis movies: Artists & Models, The Ladies Man, The Nutty Professor, Boeing Boeing, etc. (but not too et cetera). The overbearing, heavyhanded Lewis probably wiped out memories of his earlier self even more effectively than 90 years of Bob Hope Specials did for him, but as with Hope, there's a core of early films where he's a young, agile comedian with beautiful timing, and how the world can regard Jim Carrey as a comic genius and still despise Lewis is preposterous to me.

THE BELLBOY: No good can come of trying to explain [his] considerable virtues as a filmmaker (the precision of his shots is uncanny) to those who simply do not like him... which... must include most of humanity.
THE FAMILY JEWELS: The film drowns in a sea of empty virtuosity.
Reviews by Steven H Scheuer

For me it's love some, loathe some. When Jerry's completely over the top, funny is not happening, but he's quite good in serious, or low key, parts and I don't think anyone could argue against his better-than-competence as a director, though I don't think he's necessarily the best director of his own material. He really ought to have been nominated for The King of Comedy; do you know of anyone who could have played that role better?

When I was a kid, I idolized him -- I saw most everything between Don't Give Up the Ship to Which Way to the Front? As I got older, I figured out why some people couldn't stand him, and I started to not stand him real well myself, but I make an exception for Rock-a-Bye-Baby; that's still a great comedy, and he's great in it. Also, I can't watch him in love scenes; he really doesn't know what to do there.

His personal conduct is so reprehensible at times that it colors his achievements and worth. Jerry is a very complex and not terribly happy guy. Yet some of the Jerry properties officially condemned have some worthwhile stuff in them. I have a VHS of Slapstick (of Another Kind) that I use to blow peoples minds; he's so good as the a-hole Dad, even though the film overall is not so good, and I can't even watch its ending. He might have done a better job directing it than Steven Paul, whose own directing talents clearly fall short of his abilities as a producer and talent agent.

I'd love to see How to Smuggle a Hernia Across the Border, or The Singing Filipina or The Day the Clown Cried. Jerry's genius is both hard to find and the most obvious thing about him; he represents the toughest challenge to critic anyone can imagine. I detested The Cable Guy, but a lot of the kids who did see it said that they enjoyed the challenge of a comedy that had such edgy, serious stuff in it and regarded it as something new. This, ironically, was the kind of vehicle that Jerry strived his whole career to make. Did he manage to pull something like that together in a way that distinguishes him? I don't know now, and don't expect to know while he still lives. That's okay, I guess -- to offer a compliment to him isn't likely to impress him anyway.

spadeneal

I neither love nor loathe him, and remain rather indifferent to his movies which I don't find very funny for the most part, except for a few directed by Frank Tashlin. As a child I always hailed for Dean Martin, because he was better looking and the far cooler guy to me.

Still he has written one of the best and most entertaining books about film-making, THE TOTAL FILM-MAKER, which meant more to me than any of his films.

I also found him the perfect choice for the arrogant, stone-faced, misanthropic star comedian in Scorsese's KING OF COMEDY. It's really eerie to see the nice guy of so many slapstick comedies in such a bitter and unsympathethic part, and I like to think he is like that in real life.

Another thing about him that fascinates me in a way is the tragic decline of his career. He disappeared for almost a decade after the spectacular artistic failure of the semi-legendary Holocaust comedy THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED, which just a few people have seen and which has a reputation of being among the awfullest films ever made. He surfaced in the 80s with some really really bad flicks, some of them made in France for some reason. That failed comeback happened now almost thirty, twenty-five years ago, and the guy is still around as one of the last survivors of the silver screen, while his peak dates back to, say, 1963's NUTTY PROFESSOR. That's a Hollywood style Decline & Fall that never failed to catch my interest.

I'm a fan of Lewis', and frankly I don't think his films need defending. They're memorable for the most part, and in recent years getting the critical response that they deserve.

I seriously doubt anybody who claims to have seen THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED. Lewis never finished the picture and it is NOT a comedy. I have seen an hour-long special that was shot in Germany during the filming of the movie that has extended takes from the picture, and it's hardly the kind of thing meant to be laughed at.

[Mike Gebert]

Here's my favorite Lewis moment-- go to about 4 minutes in. It's a perfect distillation of Tashlin's style, in that he's both making a genuine Hollywood musical number and the Bugs Bunny sendup of one at the same time, while Lewis does little echoes of Chaplin and Harpo and even Keaton (the implacability of his attempts to go up the stairs, even when he knows what's coming) throughout.

Artists and Models: Innamorata

It's pretty much perfect, although did any major female ingenue ever have an odder shaped body than Shirley Maclaine? She's built like a spatula, but adorable nonetheless.

[Christopher Jacobs]

I'm one of those who can find Lewis funny in small doses but often find it hard to get through an entire feature that he's the star of (THE NUTTY PROFESSOR is one of the exceptions, possibly since it's essentially a dual role). I think he was at his best when teamed with Dean Martin, as he needed a good straightman to make the most of his humor. However, I never really thought Martin and Lewis were quite up to Abbott and Costello doing similar material (although there were often at least a few entertaining songs by Martin). The M&L comedies were usually pleasant with occasional funny gags, whereas most of the A&C comedies were genuinely funny much of the time and occasionally hysterically so.

--Christopher Jacobs
http://hpr1.com/film
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs

Here's my favorite Lewis moment-- go to about 4 minutes in. It's a perfect distillation of Tashlin's style, in that he's both making a genuine Hollywood musical number and the Bugs Bunny sendup of one at the same time, while Lewis does little echoes of Chaplin and Harpo and even Keaton (the implacability of his attempts to go up the stairs, even when he knows what's coming) throughout.

Artists and Models: Innamorata

It's pretty much perfect, although did any major female ingenue ever have an odder shaped body than Shirley Maclaine? She's built like a spatula, but adorable nonetheless.

Maybe Jerry('s character.) liked spatula shaped female bodies. They were both quirky, probably why it works.

Lewis never finished the picture and it is NOT a comedy. I have seen an hour-long special that was shot in Germany during the filming of the movie that has extended takes from the picture, and it's hardly the kind of thing meant to be laughed at.

I dont know, it seems to me he had tried something equally loathsome as LA VITA È BELLA. In any case, the Chaplin post-MODERN-TIMES-syndrome hit hard here: he had tried to do something more "serious" and "deep" than his usual fare and failed miserably.

Enjoyable comments, guys (note that not one female has contributed to this thread yet...) but nobody has addressed my reason for starting this thread: how come 5 years have passed with no whisper of a second volume of Lewis' Ultimate Collection?

There are at least 10 more Lewis films out there, whose rights he controls himself and which are well-known among aficionados. So the problem isn't getting the rights, or putting out unknown titles, or not having decent source materials.

I'm sure Jim Neibuhr (I'm sorry, I can never remember how to spell his surname) would have an answer, but as Mike mentioned, he doesn't seem to participate in the greatest website in Internet history. This one, dummy. So, lacking Jim N., does anyone have any ideas?

Jim

There's a great story about Jerry Lewis when he was co-hosting the Oscars and the show ran SHORT. Desperate to fill in the live minutes, NBC had Lewis do some schtick that was so bad, the network pulled the plug on him and played some industrial short or something. All the winners were assembled onstage. Lewis almost destroyed Susan Hayward's great night for winning the Oscar for I Want to Live by calling for her to come out on stage 10 or 15 minutes after she had won with a "let's have another hand for the little girl." Hayward, certainly one of the least maudlin actresses in town stood there stunned while Lewis went manic. The plug got pulled.

Dorothy Kilgallen (for those who remember her) wrote the next day that she was appalled and zeroed in on "his cheap give-the-little-girl-another-hand treatment of Susan Hayward , who scaracely needed an assist from an egg-laying comedian in her hour of triumph."

[Mike Gebert]

Thank God nobody ever gave Lewis a format where he had hours of live television to fill, then...

Enjoyable comments, guys (note that not one female has contributed to this thread yet...)

There has been a female contributor, Silentscreen.

I dont know, it seems to me he had tried something equally loathsome as LA VITA È BELLA. In any case, the Chaplin post-MODERN-TIMES-syndrome hit hard here: he had tried to do something more "serious" and "deep" than his usual fare and failed miserably.

I can't argue a point with people who *want* to actively dislike something, but without seeing the film, how can you possibly label it an artistic failure? The reasons that he never finished the film were legal in nature.

I'll give Lewis credit for participating in a great Saturday Night Live lampoon of his "Popular in France" persona. He is led into a studio to meet the man who provides his voice for French dubs, they are about to do a dramatic scene from "King of Comedy". The actor steps to the mic - and spouts French in a grotesque and totally inappropriate over the top parody of Lewis's nasal, whining and spastic delivery. It turns out that he does that voice for any Lewis picture, no matter what the scene or dialogue, and that's what the French find funny.

I can't argue a point with people who *want* to actively dislike something, but without seeing the film, how can you possibly label it an artistic failure? The reasons that he never finished the film were legal in nature.

The available script reads painfully awful, and eyewitnesses confirm it. So I am assuming that the film was an artistic failure.

There is a reason that Mike cites that clip from "Artists & Models" as being one of his favorites - it's because Jerry doesn't speak in it. Lewis was basically a visual comedian. But living in a Bob Hope-postwar era a comic had to be verbally witty to succeed. Lewis could occassionally come up with some humorous lines but the funniest aspect of his character verbally was his high-pitched nasally delivery. Jerry yelling is much funnier than Jerry performing a joke laden sketch for he was essentially a kinetic comedian. Watching Jerry in motion was always a cinematic delight, be it hitting the dance floor performing a wild jitterbug, his myriad of routines involving his love of big band swing as he mimes to it or his body actions when he is being chased as arms and legs flail all over as he mugs and yells all at the same time.

But the problem is he was he own worst editor. He had a tendency to milk an already milked-out gag. And how would he fill in the onscreen time? By talking....and talking....and muttering while he talked - until one wanted to reach into the screen and violently shake him until he would SHUT UP!!!

When he was partnered with Martin his most gregarious actions could be reined in by Dean (who had an innate sense of comedy) before he went too overboard. He did fine work with Tashlin who brought out a sense of style and direction to his manic man-child but Jerry longed to be his own 'enfant terrible' and there would be no holding him back - excesses and all. But before he went completely overboard he made a series of interesting comedies specializing in spot gag sight-gags that limited his verbal speech beginning with "The Bell Boy" in 1960 and that showcases his best appeal as a screen comedian.

Gary J.

Good remark about Lewis' visual comedy. Here is another well-known one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7ySmnxy29Q

You Tube is filled with the musical moments from his films. He dances to Harry James in "The Ladies Man" (1961) and Les Brown in "The Nutty Professor" (1963) while he conducts Count Basie's orchestra in "Cinderfella" (1960) and a string orchestra in "The Bellboy" (1960).

When it comes to his films the parts are greater than the sum of the whole. His attempts at pathos are always maudlin. When he introduces the hand puppets in "The Errand Boy" he almosts sinks the entire film. It was mentioned here earlier that Lewis is great in clips and I agree. He is instantly recognizable and his broad antics come across great in short spurts, just like the Three Stooges. I can always find a spot to showcase any of his antics in my clip shows.

http://www.youtube.com/user/LowbrowProd ... rWlE40VZDg

Gary J.

Good remark about Lewis' visual comedy. Here is another well-known one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7ySmnxy29Q

And yet....that sketch/sequence displays exactly the reasons why, generally speaking, I'm in the loathe category. Good comedic mime, and yet...the looks to just off-camera, the gurning expressions, all scream "Look at Me, Comedian Being Funny Here!!!" rather than let the mime tell its own story, have its own punchline, as it were. He oversells it, as if he doesn't trust the material. British contemporary Norman Wisdom did the same, and I loathe his work too. None of the great silent era comedians fell into that trap, and neither did such as French contemporary Jacques Tati; they didn't feel the need to show themselves off; they let themselves be absorbed into the film. Even when Laurel or Hardy looked at the audience via the camera, it was to express "Oh Sh*t" or "See what I have to put up with" not "Aren't I clever"

Moving on; I mentioned Funny Bones earlier....where JL plays a character not a million miles away from his role in King Of Comedy; did it make any impact in the US, and has anyone else here on Nitrateville seen it??

Opening Weekend: $26,946

And yet....that sketch/sequence displays exactly the reasons why, generally speaking, I'm in the loathe category. Good comedic mime, and yet...the looks to just off-camera, the gurning expressions, all scream "Look at Me, Comedian Being Funny Here!!!"

It's called mugging. He always excelled at it.

Gary J.

About 15 years ago, shortly after we began The Vitaphone Project, I heard from Bob Furmanek. He and his brother were working with Lewis to catalog alot of his accumulated materials. They found a stack of 16 inch diameter discs --- mainly recordings made by Paramount in the Westwood theatre to measure audience reaction as the Martin & Lewis films were screened. But intermixed in the stack were two Vitaphone soundtrack discs. We suspect these belonged to the theatre from their initial showing and came along for the ride when Lewis got them. One was for TRIXIE FRIGANZA IN 'MY BAG O' TRIX (1929) which many of you have seen in THE JAZZ SINGER set or on TCM. The disc enabled Bob Gitt at UCLA to restore it despite the first minute of nitrate being gone. The other Vitaphone disc was for JACK HALEY AND FLO McFADDEN IN 'HALEYISMS' (1927). This was a Burns & Allen-like cross talk vaudeville short. At the time of the discovery, Jack Haley Jr. and his mom, Flo (of this short) were still alive. She was around 99. We were able to send him a dub of the disc to play for Flo, which was nice to be able to do. Both were gone a year or two later.

Moving on; I mentioned Funny Bones earlier....where JL plays a character not a million miles away from his role in King Of Comedy; did it make any impact in the US, and has anyone else here on Nitrateville seen it??

One of the finest films of the '90s, and the only time in my adult life I ever wanted to write a fan letter: "Dear Mr. Chelsom, you are a f------ genius. Kindest regards..." If you haven't seen it, Netflix it immediately. Bonus: Appearances by Leslie Caron and Harold Nicholas (sadly, his last).

Mike S.

[Mike Gebert]

"But you f*** one genius..."

(Makes sense if you've seen the movie.)

Moving on; I mentioned Funny Bones earlier....where JL plays a character not a million miles away from his role in King Of Comedy; did it make any impact in the US, and has anyone else here on Nitrateville seen it??

One of the finest films of the '90s, and the only time in my adult life I ever wanted to write a fan letter: "Dear Mr. Chelsom, you are a f------ genius. Kindest regards..." If you haven't seen it, Netflix it immediately. Bonus: Appearances by Leslie Caron and Harold Nicholas (sadly, his last).

Mike S.

My thoughts precisely. And now he's stuck making Hannah Montana flicks. Pays the rent I suppose. Also not to be missed; routines from George Carl and Freddie Davies, and a blinder from Lee Evans. And don't be put off by the worst DVD cover in history.....