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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Here’s a funny little reel of outtakes from ‘The Patsy’, a 1964 Jerry Lewis vehicle starring and directed by Buddy Love–er, Jerry. This film, along with ‘The Bellboy’, ‘The Errand Boy’ and ‘The Ladies Man’ mark for me the peak of Jerry’s solo career as a comic and director. After
Here’s a six minute reel of outtakes from ‘The Disorderly Orderly’, a 1964 Jerry Lewis vehicle written and directed by Frank Tashlin. Some of them–most of them?–are self-imposed goofs, things Jerry does on purpose to make the crew and other cast members laugh. Why would he waste time doing this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3smUviG1G_s My friend Marc Myers of JazzWax sent me this terrific guest appearance by Jerry Lewis on ‘The Tonight Show’ from 1984. Unlike many of Jerry’s appearances which were often fraught with tension and humorous banter with Carson that had a curious edge of unease, this one is straight-up delightful.