Jerry Lewis, R.I.P.

A top comedy writer just e-mailed me the following message: "When I saw the headline, I actually sighed to myself, out loud: 'Finally!' Does that make me a bad person?"

No. In fact, the few times I was around Jerry, I witnessed the great anger and death wishes he had for others he felt had somehow wronged him. He was a volatile, oft-furious man and that doesn't make him a bad person, either. To discuss him, it's necessary to hold two distinct thoughts in mind…

  1. He was often paranoid, controversial, almost criminally self-indulgent, and "mad" in several senses of that word. That was his way for most, maybe all of his professional life, though it was easier to ignore or rationalize when he was also making funny movies or was truly funny on stage or screen or his loyalists could blame it on the Percodan.
  2. Few people in the field of entertainment have ever made so many human beings laugh, and also raised so much money for people in need. He is also justly hailed as an important filmmaker in many technical senses and as a teacher of same.

The better films and the stage act — especially with Dean — lost their sparkle for some of us a long time ago and Jerry became two things. One was that he was one of the few remaining relics of a certain era of show business and/or a fond memory of our childhoods. Neither of those is a small matter. For the last few decades, one of his true pleasures was to make appearances around the country where he'd so some bits of his old act (especially the Typewriter Song) and answer questions from the audience. The shows were nearly always packed with folks over 40 and the questions were nearly always, "I just want to say how much we love you and you're a genius, Jerry!"

If you're under 40, I can't imagine why you'd think this person was so beloved by some. Most of the movies don't stand up all that well, either. The one that gets singled out — The Nutty Professor — strikes me as a masterpiece only in comparison to the other 50-60, depending on how you count. In today's New York Times in a pretty good obit, Dave Kehr writes…

The Nutty Professor, a study in split personality that is as disturbing as it is hilarious, is probably the most honored and analyzed of Mr. Lewis's films. (It was also his personal favorite.) For some critics, the opposition between the helpless, infantile Professor Julius Kelp and the coldly manipulative lounge singer Buddy Love represented a spiteful revision of the old Martin-and-Lewis dynamic. But Buddy seems more pertinently a projection of Mr. Lewis's darkest fears about himself: a version of the distant, unloving father whom Mr. Lewis had never managed to please as a child, and whom he both despised and desperately wanted to be.

I buy the latter interpretation and I would make it even simpler. Every time I was around Jerry, including the one time I worked with him, I saw a distinct Jekyll/Hyde dynamic. Every time, he would be very nice and human and compassionate to someone…and then, almost like someone had thrown a switch, he would be yelling and furious about some minor or even imaginary slight. You could not have predicted what would set him off but something always would.

Eventually, his fame was not as a brilliant comedian but as someone some said had been a brilliant comedian, though without a lot of evidence to back that up. Instead, he was famous for the outbursts, the intemperate quotes (Did you know no woman was ever truly funny?), the feuds and the tirades. So many tuned in his Muscular Dystrophy Telethons not for the entertainment but to wait for those moments when a sleep-deprived Jerry would devolve into self-pity and/or rage at his critics, the dollar figure on the tote board, the lack of appreciation of his friends and show people in general, etc.

The film his fans talk about the most is the one they've never seen, The Day the Clown Cried and they don't crave to see it because it's unavailable. Hundreds of movies are unavailable and no one cares about them. They aren't yearning to view it because they expect a masterpiece. They want to see it because they expect it to stink in a highly entertaining way.

Just before Christmas last year, I wrote a piece here about how Jerry's angry statements and odder philosophical ramblings had stopped being funny to me. I ended it by saying…

I always wanted to like Jerry Lewis but he's made it too difficult. Too difficult. I'm going to stop trying to convince myself or anyone that he was a great comedian and that his tirades are anything other than the ramblings of a bitter, angry man. If you want to continue to see him as someone to be admired, don't let me stop you…because he needs all the love he can get.

But you know what? No matter how much there has been — and he's been loved more than most people on this planet get to be loved — it has never been enough.

This is one time I really mean the "Rest in Peace" part of "R.I.P." He deserves a lot of peace and all the accolades he ever truly earned. I just was never able to be a real fan, no matter how hard I tried.