Jerry Lewis: The Total Film-Maker

please explain

There is a Dutch video discussing and showing the filming of The Day the Clown Cried and Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin are on set. Can't find right this second.

apparently they were just visiting

Still

Jerry made some home productions w/ his famous friends; there's scuttle butt about trying to get some shown publicly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAFNo_rq7rc

Watched Jerry's hourlong 1959 TV remake of The Jazz Singer, which is primarily a fascinating piece of psychohistory, and of course ends with him singing "Kol Nidre" in a tallis and clown nose.
(He also does a funny bit with a trumpet at the start.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBe0qy5k8vk

Watched that a few years ago; fascinating indeed. And it's the first appearance of Serious/Angry Jerry, right?

first? not sure

you all have been remiss

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/tag/A%20MUBI%20Jerrython

my friend Steve wrote this about JL's 'record act' and subsequent mimicry

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/jerry-lewis-satirical-impressions-in-pantomimicry

talking at U of C, 1971

The things that I do, of course, are terribly lowbrow. I’m not talking about reviews now. I’m talking about general consensus, that comedy is lowbrow. But you take someone like Stan Laurel, who had the greatest dignity and the most influence of any man I’ve ever know. And he was just chucked under the rug. I finally found out the reason for it: most people fear comedy. Because the truth of it is like a bone coming through the skin. Comedy is nothing more than a mirror we hold up to life. And people don’t want that.

I did an exhibition one night for my class, but they didn’t understand why I felt that way. I told them about a party that I went to in New York—the Jet Set. It was the only night I ever vomited for an hour straight. I never saw anything like it in my life. Just a breed of people that I just can’t begin to tell you about. I didn’t dislike them—I couldn't understand them. Someone would say, “Hello, and how are you,” and turn away, and walk, and you can’t say, “How are you” yet. “How are you”—and I’m about to say—I never got “fine” out. And they’re leaving and they’re shaking hands and leaving…but—I watched this one woman who had a dress on—and it looked like it was painted on her. And there was a terribly funny man there—Jonathan Winters, who’s truly a genius. Hysterical. And this woman fought the laughter back because it would in fact either split the dress—or it would have to bend. And she was getting convulsed. (Laughter.) Her face was still red. But she wasn’t going to budge in that goddamn dress. She was not about to enjoy. And that’s terribly sad. And I showed the students exactly how she stood.

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/an-afternoon-with-jerry-lewis

I think CinemaScope and Panavision were made for a rabbi and 7,000 sheep in a desert.

1980 interview by Cahiers:

CAHIERS: We've wondered here if a clown character would work on television?

JERRY LEWIS: I don't believe so. Television... the simple view of television... Look at this box (he points out a sumptuous tv set in the room and opens it). To communicate, you need concentration. Listen, Absorb. Maintain a thought. Look at this set. It's off. Yet I see a table, a couch, a statue with bare breasts. My training was a darkened theater where there's concentration, larger than life. That (vengeful gesture towards tv), is smaller than life. Just this information, unconsciously and psychologically, makes you look at tiny characters, dwarves. Remember when you were a child and you tried to measure with your fingers the distance between two stars? It's la meme chose. For me. If I go to the cinema... WAW!, it takes me, and there is a place for me, for you and you and you. We can all communicate between each other; that's why when we're in a cinema and the movie is bad, it's really bad. For me it's, (hateful gesture), it's about news and sports. Because in sports there is nothing to communicate but who wins and who loses. If you watch a football match and a player scores a goal... (he applauds) The image of a little man is fine, it doesn't have to be larger than life. But if you want to touch people, their hearts and minds, you can't be distracted. You've all seen that in Hollywood (he holds his hand out while looking the other way): "Hello! Nice to see you..." Bullshit. Distraction. And I say let's take these people and put them in a dark empty room with just a little light on them and they will shake hands and yes, they will meet!

CAHIERS: On French television not long ago we saw A KING IN NEW YORK by Chaplin. It was surprising to see how, as he aged, Chaplin became bitter. Most comedians judge others and society more and more as they age, and are morally more and more demanding. Their films become tougher. Do you think this could apply to you?

JERRY LEWIS: If they do to me what they did to Chaplin, yes. I don't think it's as inevitable as all that. There is nothing that I should be bitter about. Chaplin had many reasons to be bitter. Sometimes this hardness is just the expression of a job less well done. The artist realizes it and tries to force things. But Chaplin, they broke his heart. They were unfair to him. Today, can anyone tell me if Chaplin was a communist? And if he had been, what does that have to do with his work? As long as his work makes people happy... There are certainly people doing good work today who may be communists, but I don't care, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone . The last time I was in Paris, I did a series of interviews and I didn't know that one of the journalists I was speaking to was a communist. So what? I was initially worried and then I wondered why: they were good people, they printed what I said, which is not always the case... Nobody comes and explains to me what a communist is. My children asked me this question, I answered: I'll tell you, I'm going to Europe to find out. But I agree with you about A KING IN NEW YORK. What a film!

CAHIERS: One last question: what do you think of the new generation of American filmmakers?

JERRY LEWIS: I like them. But you have to watch them. Spielberg is a good filmmaker. But we should've never let him make 1941 (1979). He's not a comic filmmaker. When you have success in a field, you mustn't change. The man who's very good at repairing the phone, should he also be a brain surgeon? No. If you don't watch the young filmmakers, they'll be eaten alive by the money-men. Spielberg, Lucas, Bogdanovich, Randy Kleiser, they were all my students. They risk disappearing either because they cannot master their success, or because the money-men will steal their talent, turn it on their heads, and not know what to do with it. It's like wine, if you open it too early, it's vinegar. We can't speed up the creative process. We don't do in a year what takes twenty-five years to grow. Hemingway did not begin by writing THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. We learn from what we've done, not from what others tell us. And we are our best judges. Because we know what we did. When we're young we get our heads together, we figure out that what we do is good. But great works come from big mistakes, not great successes. I don't like it, but that's how it is. And the young American filmmakers you're talking about, they've learned their craft but haven't learned patience. We are all impatient in a way, but if you are too impatient, you won't last long. Then there are those who make mistakes, can't stand it and slink away.

https://kinoslang.blogspot.de/2018/02/maybe-we-can-get-it-weaved-no-2.html

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DctFAK4W4AcvB4b.jpg:large

i open bidding on Stan Laurel's studio pass, which I saw JL pull out of his wallet in 2012

i've only seen the episode of the Seinfeld Coffee series with Garry Shandling, but I'm going to have to catch the one in the new season with Lewis at some point. JL orders breakfast: “I’m gonna have three fried eggs up, and a large order of very very very stiff bacon.”

haha

That series is pretty hit-or-miss, but Jer will be reliably cantankerous and/or hilarious.

The @believermag has made its archive available for free online, include probably the most essential essay on Jerry Lewis, B. Kite's 2-part "The Jerriad": https://t.co/EAds0EZRWx + https://t.co/NYteyav5Hg pic.twitter.com/vLZ13amGvH

— Notebook (@NotebookMUBI) July 27, 2018

As good as writing on Lewis gets!

"I am THE dichotomy."

The Unknown Jerry: Home Movies
and More from the Jerry Lewis
Collection at the Library of Congress

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5019?locale=en

Maybe Jerry's last NYC public appearance, a Q&A after a screening of Max Rose in which he's by turns clownish, sentimental and testy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm9v8yFrQic

MoMA is currently showing, along with the home movies, The Nutty Professor storyboards

https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5020?locale=en

You must see Jerry's screen test of Sophie Tucker at some point.

also Milton Berle, for JL's sadism

about those home movies...

Attempting to deliver a “Jewish Sunset Boulevard,” (itself helmed by German-Jewish émigré Billy Wilder and co-starring his countryman Erich von Stroheim), “Fairfax Avenue” boasts a sense of humor perhaps too overtly Jewish for Hollywood proper, with Tony Curtis playing a delicatessen delivery boy who finds himself acting as the factotum for an aging actress. Gamely played by Janet Leigh (Curtis’s wife at the time), the diva is a veteran of the Yiddish stage, known for her work at the Second Avenue Theatre and in the process of writing her memoirs for — who else? — the Jewish Daily Forward. The film boasts yet another unusually Jewish turn from a less-than-Semitic actor in the form of Dean Martin liberally peppering Yiddish into a musical number, smoothly crooning, “I can get it for you wholesale down on Fairfax Avenue.”

“The Re-inforcer” and “Fairfax Avenue” do show Lewis experimenting with the medium-specific formal humor that he would master with his later features. Both films trade on his signature self-reflexivity and overt artifice, wielding their own cheapness in the same manner that he later work would employ the nearly magical largesse of the studio system. “Fairfax Avenue” has a running bit in which Curtis leaves the frame by miming descending stairs where clearly none could exist. In “The Re-inforcer,” Lewis fashions an extended gag involving a flagrantly fake dummy, winning laughs by having the man-shaped-sack emit something resembling a Wilhelm scream. In the same film, Lewis uses the famed Kuleshov effect to set up a fake movie called “The Great Caruso” starring himself, framed from the neck up as an all-but-disembodied (and mustachioed) head, hammily lip syncing along to an operatic show-stopper.

Read more: https://forward.com/culture/411863/could-jerry-lewis-have-become-the-jewish-andy-warhol/

https://forward.com/culture/411863/could-jerry-lewis-have-become-the-jewish-andy-warhol/

Let’s commemorate the birthday of Jerry Lewis with a celebration of Jerry Lewis Cinema - not his motion pictures but his actual theaters. They popped up everywhere in the early 70s and disappeared about 2 years later. Here are a lot of optimistic Grand Openings: pic.twitter.com/tvtG7hlEjv

— Larry Karaszewski (@Karaszewski) March 16, 2019

From tweet thread:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bysxs05IMAAXsG4.jpg

Alsao some interesting factoids from Glenn Kenny about what happened to some of those theatres.

I have an ad somewhere from an Esquire from when they were franchising.

anybody recall seeing Jerry in "Wiseguy" (the Ken Wahl tv show)?

Yep he was great, and even squeezed in "Very good, one in a row!"

would've been 94 today, and I bet he's glad he's not here

have Dean & Jerry in Pardners in the house, might watch that later

"You should only get COVID! I hope you get COVID."

https://assets.mubi.com/images/notebook/post_images/24936/images-w1400.jpg

<3

Pardners is unusual in that Dean Martin gets to be funny for a few bits, almost unique in their movies (vs clubs and TV). He also seems like he's auditioning for his solo career.

Agnes Moorehead (v briefly) plays Jerry's WIFE and MOTHER! JL and Dean have dual roles.

They also address the audience directly at the end to tamp down breakup rumors (utterly misleading).

https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/2024/01/05/jerry-lewis/

Were any ILXorz besides Morbius waiting for the donor restrictions on The Day the Clown Cried to expire? Rob Stone (LOC) on Facebook has been WTF? about this article, and as of now there are no plans for an open-to-the-public screening at LOC's Culpeper location.

Another LOC employee told me that starting at some point in 2024, the TDtCC material will be viewable by appointment at LOC premises in DC. If anyone is coming to DC to see this let me know.

I mean, I've been hoping to see it in my lifetime, yes

BTW, I know I fired this poll off in extreme bad faith against ILX, but zero votes for The Patsy is abominable

I think all of the 1960-1964 films are great in slightly different ways so The Patsy just kind of gets lost in the vote splitting among them.

True, tho I'd extend the streak to at least Three on a Couch

(If there's a weak one in there, it's The Family Jewels)

I think i slightly prefer The Family Jewels to Three on a Couch but I can definitely see how after 1964 it gets a bit more subjective. I actually kind of like The Big Mouth too but I’m not gonna run around recommending it.

Same with me with Hardly Working and Cracking Up

I was skimming around this thread and came across this, proffered seriously from an ilxor back in 2011:

that's precisely why we go to the movies (or listen to, I don't know, Morrissey): to witness a gargantuan, out of control ego as a way to measure the contours of our own steady paths.

Uh, no. That's a load of bollocks wrapped in high-flown rhetoric, trying to sound profound

Hardly Working is weirdly hard to see. I’ve only seen bits of it on TV and would like to see the whole thing, especially because it was filmed in the area I grew up in.

xp KJB does have his blind spots, but he knows more about movies than any current member of ILX in my book

OK, "as much"

I like KJB's post even if I think saying Lewis is greater than Tati is utter madness

We disagree on good Joan Crawford movies.

otoh I introduced him to the negroni and that's all we drink when I visit him.

Cold water continues to be thrown on the idea that there exists a complete print of TDTCC.

There seems to be a lot of buzz about that article on the unreleased Jerry Lewis film THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED saying it's finally been screened, don't believe it! For what I heard all the LOC has is 13 cans (about 90') of unedited camera rushes without sound, that's all! Also: pic.twitter.com/umoxq6Yi9H

— Jon W. (@rarefilmm) January 8, 2024