Movies 'Til Dawn Blog

JERRY LEWIS SAYS: ‘YOU’LL NEVER WALK.”

Let’s close our reconstruction of the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon with the ever popular Jerry anthem, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. Above are two videos–one of Jerry singing it on the 1987 telethon and one of Jerry rehearsing it two years later. Jerry in rehearsal is

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JERRY AND FRANK AND COFFEE!

Here’s a terrific sampling of the 1975 Jerry Lewis MDA telethon, featuring a good deal of Sinatra, some Totie Fields, a little Harry James and some of Jerry’s greasiest, most self-serving moments. This extended highlights reel is best played in the background while you do something better with your time,

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STAY UP WITH JERRY AND WATCH THE PANTS COME OFF!

To those of us of a certain age, Labor Day weekend will always belong to the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon. Jerry was at his most Buddy Love-ish when hosting the show, strutting around in a tux, his hair heavily pomaded, a cigarette clutched between his fingers. He often dressed down

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DEAN & JERRY UNPLUGGED

I’ve never made it through an entire Martin & Lewis movie but their nightclub-style routines are precious to me. They usually closed their ‘Colgate Comedy Hour’ shows with a free-wheeling, mostly unscripted rampage like the above which was performed on a local Los Angeles telethon in 1952. Their untethered energy

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JOAN CRAWFORD, CHRISTINA CRAWFORD AND…JERRY LEWIS?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS7YIC8F2Ec Yes I know, Labor Day is over so let’s be done with Jerry Lewis. Not so fast–because I’ve found a clip that I never knew existed, a rare Jerry Telethon clip in which he’s the least offensive person on stage. It’s 1968 and Joan Crawford makes an appearance, reading

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MDA TELETHON MISHAPS–A JERRY LEWIS MELTDOWN

One of the great pleasures of watching the Labor Day weekend MDA telethon was waiting for the inevitable mistakes,. bloopers, screw-ups etc. that were par for the course during a forty-eight hour marathon broadcast. Indeed, as the years went on and the featured acts got worse (Joey Heatherton began to

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LABOR DAY WEEKEND DOESN’T REALLY EXIST WITHOUT JERRY

From Liberace (see yesterday’s post) to Jerry Lewis, this blog continues to circle the drain of mid-century entertainment. But with good reason; not a Labor Day weekend of my youth passed without hours spent staring glassily at the MDA Telethon, starring Jerry Lewis. So we will eschew The Three Stooges

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MARTIN SHORT/JERRY LEWIS/SCTV/GENIUS

As a long-time SCTV fan (that word barely scratches the surface of my love for and veneration of that long-gone show) I thought I’d seen every last drop of every last SCTV sketch. Somehow though I seem to have missed the above clip, which is quite simply the greatest Martin

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LEWIS AND LEWIS–A PAS DE DEUX DELUXE

Jerry Lewis’s ‘The Ladies Man’ (1961) is one of his most inventive and, simultaneously, unfunny films. Indeed, most of the comedy falls flat because of the films stylistic advances and ideas, which conversely still feel fresh, interesting and even startlingly good. The big deal in this movie is the massive

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JERRY LEWIS REHEARSES AND GETS PISSED OFF

This fascinating footage appears to be Jerry Lewis rehearsing a bit for his nightclub act in front of a live crowd–though they’re not the regular audience but rather a ‘test’ audience. Jerry was known to shoot footage of himself in order to play it back and see what things were

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