Jerry Lewis Superstar

It's probably falls into the "Hard to Believe" category to those born after the Baby Boom (whose span of existence we'll circumscribe to the years 1946 to 1960, though generously put, the generation stretches from 1943 to 1964), but Jerry Lewis was one of the top box office stars of all time. From 1951 through 1963, Jerry Lewis made the list of Top 10 Money Making Stars 11 times, either with Dean Martin or solo, failing to make the list only in 1959 and '60 during that period.

(Dino, himself, didn't make the list again until after the ebb tide of Lewis' screen popularity went out. Martin made the Top 10 List of Box Office stars twice as a solo act: Buoyed by the Matt Helm spy spoof series, he cracked the Top 10 in 1967 and '68, ranking #4 & #6, respectively.)

Then again, Jerry Lewis has been such a seminal influence on the post-Boomer generation of man-child comedians such as Adam Sandler and Will Farrell, perhaps it IS believable to the Generation X and the Echo Generation that Jerry Lewis was a superstar. Let this, then, be an introduction, if not a celebration, of the cock-eyed comic's quirky career.

Martin & Lewis

Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis first were voted onto the Top 10 in 1951, debuting at #2, topped only by John Wayne, the all-time champ as a top box office attraction. It was the first of six straight years the team spent on the list. Unlike other "teams" such as Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery and Myrna Loy and William Powell, the dynamic duo of Martin & Lewis were treated as a solo entity when toting up their potency as box office potentates.

Ironically, 1951 was the last year in the Top 10 of Bud Abbott & Lou Costello, another duo treated as a single entity for box office accounting purposes. This is fitting, as show business legend has it that Martin & Lewis were "discovered" by that popular comedic duo.

In fact, the New York Times obituary of Dean Martin declared of Martin & Lewis, "They were direct descendants of the popular 40's duo of Abbott and Costello."

The comedy team of Abbott & Costello, Martin & Lewis' only rivals as a comedy team in terms of box office popularity, had debuted on the list in 1941, the first of four consecutive years in the Top Ten, and were #1 in 1942. They also made the list in 1948, '49 & '50, seven times in total, one more than Martin & Lewis.

However, by the early '50s, they definitely were suffering from over-exposure, and their popularity as movie stars soon tanked. Their career went into eclipse, as Martin & Lewis became America's comic darlings. (In addition to their popularity on the silver screen, Dino & Jerry also were stars on the boob tube, headlining The Colgate Comedy Hour.)

The year after being voted onto the money makers list by theater owners, Martin & Lewis duplicated Abbott & Costello's distinction as the titans of the ticket wicket by being named the #1 Box Office attraction in America. For the next four years, they were ranked #2 two straight years, then #7 and #6. In 1957, Jerry Lewis as a solo act cracked the Top 10 at #9 and was #3 the following year, his best showing without Dino.

Unique

Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis were the last "team" to make the Top Ten List of Money Making Stars. Aside from Martin & Lewis and Abbott & Costello, the only other team to make the Top Ten were Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, who were ranked #4, #3 & #7 in the years 1935, '36 & '37. There were other stars who teamed up successfully, such as Dressler & Beery in the early 1930s and more recently, Paul Newman & Robert Redford, but such teams were not considered official, and those superstars made the Top Ten list as individuals.

In fact Bing Crosby & Bob Hope comprised one of the most famous movie teams in history. Der Bingle & Bob made seven Road to... movies together between 1940 & 1962, but they were never ranked on the Top Ten List together, only separately. (Both were ranked #1, Bing a record-setting five straight times from 1944 to '48 and Hope in 1949.) Hope & Crosby were similar to Martin & Lewis in that Der Bingle played the suave ladies' man (who always got the gal) and Bob played his stooge.

Like Dino, Bing could warble a tune, when need be.

The difference between the two teams was that Hope & Crosby were equals, both in talent and as on-screen personas, though Der Bingle had the added fillip of being the greatest pop singer in history in terms of record sales before the era of The Beatles. In contrast, Dean Martin at the time of his pairing with Jerry Lewis was clearly the second banana. Jerry Lewis' antic persona (which likely was partly borrowed from jazz musician cum clown Ish Kabibble) was clearly the heart and soul of the act.

In fact, Michael J. Hayde reveals in his blog Better Living Through Television, it was Dino's success as a singer that helped undermine the team, as it fed Jerry's insecurities and fueled his fear of losing Dean. In real life, Bob Hope never feared the success of Bing Crosby, although his faux inferiority complex as regards his close friend was the genesis of a slew of jokes between the two and helped give their Road movies their bite.

Jerry always credited Dino as being a full partner and essential to their success, contradicting the opinions of most contemporary critics who saw Lewis as the act, and Martin as just a straight man. The same was said of Budd Abbott & Lou Costello, and Costello -- the comic "genius" -- resented his partner's riding on his coat-tails, unlike Jerry who always professed a love of Dino, even when Martin brutally rejected him on a personal basis as their comedy team was close to dissolving.

As for Dean Martin, he famously was supposed to have derided his partner as a "monkey," as in the probably apocryphal remark that he was tired of playing organ grinder to Jerry's simian on a string.

When Jerry Lewis, close to their breakup, told Dean Martin that he thought their act worked because of the love between them, Dino reportedly snorted, "When I look at you, all I see are dollar signs."

That, too, might just be a show business legend, but it is a powerful one.

Like John Lennon telling Paul McCartney that he needed a "divorce" from him and The Beatles, Dean Martin needed to leave Jerry Lewis to find his own way as an entertainer.

No Respect

"I Don't Get No Respect," comedian Rodney Dangerfield said, "no respect at all." It was not only his punchline, but his comic persona.

Jerry Lewis, in his lifetime, was hailed a great comedian and a true "auteur" (i.e., the film director as "author" of his movies) -- but in France, not the United States. Despite his wildly successful career (he received a $10 million contract from Paramount in 1960, approximately $75 million in 2010 dollars), he got little respect in his homeland. In fact, his adulation in France was turned into a punchline satirizing both Lewis and the French.

Truthfully, he not only was one of the most popular comedians in movie history, he was one of the seminal comics in world cinema. He influenced a whole generation of new comedians, such as Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell, and old properties like his The Nutty Professor (1963) were profitably recycled a generation after being box office hits for Jerry.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has always treated comedy as the red-haired stepchild of cinema. It has never properly honored comedians: It even took Charles Chaplin out of competition in the first Academy Awards of 1927-28 and gave him an honorary Academy Award.

Doris Day, a great comedienne, also happens to be the most popular actress in terms of box office appeal in the history of sound movies. Three times she was the #1 box office star in America. Yet, despite her super comedic skills (she was also a fine dramatic actress), she received only one Oscar nomination in her career.

One would think a career award would be in line, but she has been ignored by the Academy.

Delayed Honors

So, too, was Jerry Lewis ignored for many years: He had been treated as a kind of embarrassment by Hollywood. The failure of his Holocaust comedy, The Day the Clown Cried, has long been used to portray Lewis as some kind of self-deluded, pretentious egomaniac, despite the fact that Roberto Begnini told a similar story in Life is Beautiful and (inexplicably) won a Best Actor Oscar (the film also won Oscars for music and as Best Foreign Film).

In 2009, Jerry Lewis was finally honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, a body that has always disrespected comedians, with the exception of Woody Allen.

The Academy did not recognize Lewis as a movie star, but as a great philanthropist, who helped raise $1.46 billion via the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon to combat muscular dystrophy. He was the recipient of its Jean Hersholt Award for humanitarian works. (Another notable winner famous for his humanitarian work was Paul Newman, who raised over $200 million for charity via his Newman's Own food empire.)

No matter how he got his Oscar statuette, Jerry Lewis had finally got the respect from Hollywood long denied him. Or did he?

Interestingly, at the Academy's official Oscar site, its page for the Hersholt Humanitarian Award features a picture of 2007 award-winner Sherry Lansing, someone unknown outside the ranks of Hollywood insiders, rather than Jerry Lewis, the last winner of the award.

Oh, well: In the words of the French who loved him so, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose"

Sources:

New York Times, "Hey, Laaaaady! It's the King of Comedy"

Special Links:

Here is links to an excellent series on the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis crack up, featured on Michael J. Hayde's blog Better Living Through Television:

I. Martin vs. Lewis, Round One (March 1954)

II. Martin vs. Lewis, Round Two (June-August 1955)

III. Martin vs. Lewis, T.K.O. (June-July 1956)

Note: An earlier version of this article appeared at Examiner.com's Los Angeles site and at the blog Big Hollywood Dynamite