Jerry Lewis

An icon of comedy, 91 year old Jerry Lewis, has died of natural causes. A part of laughter surely departs with him. As a child I grew up loving those wacky Jerry Lewis movies so the death of one of the last great old style comics hurts a little. I can't image many people not knowing who Jerry Lewis is or having never seen one of his many classic movies, made mostly in the 50's and 60's. They were slapstick, what some people say is crude comedy. But comedians say that doing that kind of physical comedy is the most difficult thing a comic can do, and Lewis did it better than any human who ever lived.

The critics always hated Lewis. But most people loved his work. It was old fashioned funny without ever getting cheap laughs with jokes about sex or violence. Maybe the most damaging thing done to disparage Jerry Lewis was that the nation of France presented him with a Merit of Legion  award for his comedy. The French and I agree on only one thing, that Jerry Lewis is one of the funniest people to ever appear before a camera. Here is clip of a scene from 'The Bell Boy', which shows Jerry Lewis' timing and brilliance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK_jXwP8M_s&ytbChannel=VintageComedyClips

This is not eulogy. Lewis is still with us in his films that will run incessantly I always said that when Jerry Lewis when he does die, I will be impacted. I was right. My childhood was filled with many Jerry Lewis movies. I remember them vividly, and I remember how I laughed then and still laugh now when one appears on TV and I happen to see it.

But Jerry Lewis will be remembered as well for those MD telethons in which he raised over 2 billion dollars for research. Lewis always said that the one thing that would make his life complete was finding a cure for muscular dystrophy. I think his attempts to help find that cure made his life more complete than he realized.