{"id":187113,"date":"2026-03-12T11:42:56","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T09:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/?p=187113"},"modified":"2026-03-14T18:25:28","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T16:25:28","slug":"jerry_lewis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blognli2026.moonsite.co.il\/en\/jerry_lewis\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cHey, Jerry!” – Remembering Jerry Lewis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jerry Lewis once was known as The King of Comedy, but, to be fair, not everyone was enamored of him. The actor-comedian\u2019s breakup with performing partner Dean Martin reportedly was so acrimonious that the duo did not speak for about 20 years. Lewis\u2019s relationship with several of his children was strained. His film characters\u2019 physical contortions, facial expressions and high-pitched yelps \u2014 Lewis\u2019s \u201cHey, lady!\u201d remains his most famous line \u2014 cracked up some viewers; others, not so much. \u201cI saw nothing funny about him,\u201d said Israel resident Stan Fischler, a teenager in Brooklyn when Lewis burst onto the scene with Martin on radio and then television shows in the late 1940s.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Lewis
Dean Martin (left) and Jerry Lewis (right), 1950, Public Domain<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

But ask his fans about Lewis, who died at 91 in 2017, and warm memories flood forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnytime he was on TV, we\u2019d make sure to watch it. We loved his slapstickness. He wasn\u2019t afraid to make a silly face or move like a jerk. He influenced us in a silly, wonderful way. We couldn\u2019t get enough of Jerry Lewis,\u201d said Lydia Wilen, harking back to her and her late sister Joan\u2019s childhood in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Criticism
Not everyone was a fan. Excerpt from an article in the May 26, 1966 edition of The Sentinel<\/em><\/a>, the Historical Jewish Press Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Ana Maria Vazquez, of Buenos Aires, Argentina, offered this: \u201cI always admired the property of gesticulation. He talked a lot with his body. His characters were full of innocence and even clumsiness that made him so lovable. He did his best to make people laugh. \u2026 He was a complete artist. He danced and sang and had a very beautiful voice despite the one he always used to do for his characters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark Eisler said he was \u201chooked\u201d on Lewis\u2019s comedy from age 5, when his parents took him in 1963 to a drive-in movie theater to watch The Nutty Professor<\/em>. \u201cIt sounds so simple, but the man just made me laugh,\u201d said Eisler, a South Carolinian by way of the Bronx.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"The
Jerry Lewis and Stella Stevens in a publicity photo for The Nutty Professor<\/em>, 1963, Public Domain<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Even Lee Levinson\u2019s German shepherd, Heidi, was a fan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the late 1970s or so, Levinson was walking Heidi near a hotel by Manhattan\u2019s Central Park when Lewis left the building, entered a limousine and rolled down the window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHi, sweetheart. Want to come home with me?\u201d Lewis called out to the dog, who Levinson remembered \u201cbounced for joy\u201d at the stranger\u2019s interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe had smelled Jerry\u2019s cologne,\u201d said Levinson, who, like Eisler, mentioned liking Lewis after watching The Nutty Professor<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"In
Jerry Lewis performing in Israel, from the May 3, 1981 edition of The Jewish Week<\/em><\/a>, the Historical Jewish Press Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

With the approach of the centennial of Lewis\u2019s birth on March 16, fans\u2019 memories will naturally gravitate to his decade-long partnership with Martin through the mid-1950s, Lewis\u2019s solo career in movies after the pair split, his nightclub act in Las Vegas and his nearly half-century of emceeing a telethon every Labor Day weekend that raised hundreds of millions of dollars to benefit children with muscular disorders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some fans and other intrigued parties have taken a scholarly approach to Lewis\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One, Steven Shaviro, wrote in a 2013 essay that Lewis deserves recognition \u201cas one of the great artists of world cinema.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is so because Lewis\u2019s comedy often went beyond being \u201cinfantile,\u201d Shaviro, a retired professor at Detroit\u2019s Wayne State University, said in an interview for this article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe humor wouldn\u2019t be funny without all the superstructure in it. Individual gags would be silly in a stupid way. At the same time, there\u2019s the context all around it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shaviro cited Lewis, playing the title character in The Nutty Professor<\/em>, taking pills that turned him into a nasty person. In a different scene, he sought to persuade another professor to appear in a campus performance, simultaneously praising and mocking him. In one of Lewis\u2019s last films, Cracking Up<\/em>, his character attempted through convoluted means to kill himself and failed each time; he then saw a psychiatrist, who cured him by hypnosis, but the psychiatrist in the process became a hopeless wreck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was an extremely physical comedian, but it was the combination of going low and, at the same time, he could have a sophisticated way of presenting it,\u201d Shaviro said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very weird space to be in, and I think it\u2019s what [made him] pretty unique.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another professor, Kathleen Newman, who teaches in the English department of Pittsburgh\u2019s Carnegie Mellon University and authored an article titled \u201cJewish Comedy Writers of the 1950s and 1960s,\u201d<\/a> said that Lewis is notable as a Jewish figure \u2014 including a \u201ckind of a Jewish intellectual nerd\u201d in The Nutty Professor<\/em> \u2014 in an era of burgeoning ethnic diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lewis\u2019s parents, Daniel and Rachael Levitch, were Jewish immigrants from Russia who worked in New York\u2019s entertainment industry.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Enfant\"
Enfant Terrible! – Jerry Lewis in American Film<\/a><\/em>, edited by Murray Pomerance, New York: New York University Press, 2002, the National Library of Israel collections<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cTV had an openness for that kind of goofiness,\u201d Newman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In research for this article, interviewees responding to questions about their fondness for Lewis cited the power of their personal encounters with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dave Jackson, who worked as Lewis\u2019s personal assistant from 2007 to 2012, called his boss \u201cgenerous \u2026 to a fault.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was a misconception that he was not nice to people,\u201d Jackson said from his home in Florida, thinking back to a Saturday morning in Wabash, Indiana, when diners at a breakfast place gave Lewis a standing ovation upon recognizing him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lewis saw several women staring at him and invited them to pull up a  chair. They gabbed and he gave them tickets to bring their husbands to his performance that night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was fun to be out with in public,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May 2001, Eisler went to the 92nd Street Y, a noted center of Jewish life in Manhattan, to attend an event in which Lewis was interviewed on stage. During a question-and-answer session with the audience, Eisler mentioned seeing Lewis perform 10 times<\/em> in the Broadway stage version of Damn Yankees<\/em>. Eisler said he dreamt of being photographed with Lewis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c \u2018Mark, get the hell up here now,\u2019 \u201d Eisler remembered Lewis telling him. \u201cI thought I was hearing things. I went up. I was trembling.\u201d Afterwards, Lewis summoned Eisler to his dressing room, where they chatted some more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a dream come true,\u201d Eisler said. \u201cI was up all night.\u201d Two weeks later, the photographs arrived at Eisler\u2019s New Jersey home.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"February
From the February 12, 1999 edition of The Australian Jewish News<\/em> (Melbourne)<\/a>, the Historical Jewish Press Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

From Argentina, Vazquez had to travel much further to see Lewis \u2014 Los Angeles in 2014 and New York in 2016 \u2014 where he spoke about his career against a  backdrop of slides from his films.

\u201cMy heart never beat as hard as the first time I saw him and heard his voice live. I had succeeded!\u201d she said of attending the Los Angeles event. As a nine-year-old in Buenos Aires, Vazquez first saw Lewis star in The Geisha Boy<\/em>. She liked him in Fight for Life<\/em>, Arizona Dream<\/em>, Max Rose<\/em> and The King of Comedy<\/em>. Her favorite remains Rock-A-Bye Baby<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSeeing him so close, that Jerry Lewis that I saw for years in black and white, as a young man, and then in technicolor with his histrionic characters, the one who made me learn by heart the dialogues of his movies, his songs, the one who made me laugh and cry was also there, in front of my eyes!\u201d she wrote in an e-mail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWithout a doubt,\u201d she continued, those were \u201ctwo of the best moments of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler may be reached at <\/em>hk@HillelTheScribeCommunications.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Jewish-American comedian directed and acted in numerous films starring zany characters. A century after his birth, fans and scholars recall the performer whose manic energy, inventive filmmaking, and decades of philanthropy left an indelible mark on popular culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":450,"featured_media":187115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[1737,234,1536],"tags2":[2784,2686,3067,2651],"class_list":["post-187113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diaspora","tag-american-jewry","tag-diaspora","tag-jewish-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cHey, Jerry!" - Remembering Jerry Lewis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Jewish-American comedian directed and acted in numerous films starring zany characters. 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