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Jerry Lewis: Ready for his Labor Day Job...
 When you’re a Jewish kid born in New Jersey to vaudeville performers, you could easily have a tendency to be funny. At least that’s what happened to Joseph Levitch, who became part of his parent’s comedy routines at age five.
That was in 1931. Today, some 79 years later, Levitch is as funny as ever; a showbiz legend with a true heart of gold who has given to so many without asking anything in return.
For the past 60 years on Labor Day weekend, Levtich, who changed his name to Jerry Lewis along the way, has been the Pied Piper for the Muscular Dystrophy Association with the children afflicted with MDA becoming known as “Jerry’s Kids.”
 It was a couple of weeks before the annual telethon, being hosted this year at the South Point Hotel and airing on Sunday, Sept. 5, starting at 6 p.m. for 21 hours. The production office was a huge ballroom and in the corner was the maestro’s massive desk.
Lewis looked sensational; thin, relaxed and able to sit vertical without any discomfort.
Following some idle chit chat, and while he was reading a letter from the mother of MDA’s National Goodwill Ambassador Abby Umali, I reminded him about the first time we shared an interview some 40-plus years ago in a hotel dressing room and we both had tape recorders. Mine was small for the time; his big, old-fashioned reel-to-reel.
“I taped all my interviews because the press was always misquoting me and I wanted to know what I really said,” I reminded Lewis of what he told me.
There was a laugh.
“I’m sure that was me back then, but things have changed,” he said. “There are much more important things now to worry about.”
Lewis stops mid-subject and calls/yells for an assistant to take the Umali letter and print it out in a particular font size.
“Life is good,” he says focusing on me, again. “I’m vertical now instead of horizontal” referring to the painful, life-threatening past seven years he’s been through.
“I wake up each morning and I’m thankful for another day,” he says while thumbing through some hand-written memo cards. “There were many times I thought I wouldn’t make it. Death was at my door…I just wasn’t ready to go. And, with the love and caring of my wife and daughter, I’ve managed to survive.”
“Richard Belzer. Where’s Eddie (Foy III)? Where’s Lou (Miller)? What’s happening with Belzer?
The actor/comedians name was written by Lewis on one of those memo cards and he wanted to make sure that he confirmed for the telethon.
“Those two have been my life-line, along with another handful, through the years,” Lewis notes to me. “Our minds are on the same plain and they understand everything about me.”
Foy and Miller answer the call; explain what’s happening with Belzer and I become Lewis’ attention again while he moves things around his desk.
“We’re going to have a great telethon this year,” he says raising his voice and octave. “Everything feels right; I couldn’t be happier.”
Lewis proudly went down a list of stars that will appear on the show.
“They’re all a perfect fit,” he noted, which led to my obvious question of why younger stars don’t appear on the telethon.
Lewis stopped to read a few more memos, told something to his assistant, and returned to me.
“It’s by choice because the people we have on the show care while the younger generation simply doesn’t,” he says with total conviction. “They’re more interested in their cars, homes, trips and can care less about my kids. The same holds true for the viewer. We skew older, so I want to give them what they will enjoy.”
“I’m not trying to be negative to the young stars. It may be their up bringing. I don’t know. I do know that what we are doing works and I’m not about to change it.”
Following the telethon Lewis is going to bring to fruition to projects he has been working on while “horizontal.” The first is a feature film entitled “Max Rose,” in which he’ll star that will begin production this year. Up next will be the long-awaited Broadway version of “The Nutty Professor,” that he will direct. After that, it’s the 2011 MDA Telethon.
Lewis started performing stand-up comedy at the age of 15.
He was 20 when he met crooner Dean Martin and they formed a song-and-dance act. They meshed almost instantly, and Martin’s playboy and Lewis’s nimrod soon made them very popular. By the late 1940s, they were one of the most successful acts in show biz, earning $5,000 a week at New York's Copacabana Club.
Martin & Lewis had a hit radio show on NBC from 1949-1953, and made 16 movies together, beginning with “My Friend Irma” in 1949 and ending with “Hollywood or Bust” in 1956, by which time they hated each other.
Lewis went on to make many more movies without Martin, and remained a viable movie star for another decade.
Lewis had three different TV series, all called “The Jerry Lewis Show” -- a live two-hour comedy-variety show on ABC in 1963, a conventional one-hour comedy-variety show on NBC from 1984. There was also a Saturday morning cartoon show called “Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down?” in the early 1970s, featuring animated versions of various Lewis characters from his movies. Lewis got the royalties and was credited as executive producer, but David L. Lander did all the 'Jerry Lewis' voices.
The first broadcast of the MDA telethon was Labor Day weekend in 1966 by a lone television station in New York City. The unique event starring Lewis quickly caught the public’s attention and raised more than $1 million in pledges. Now more than 44 years later, the show will be broadcast by MDA’s Love Network stations, assisted by some 250,000 volunteers across the country. Some 20 million people will see the show.
The Telethon derives drama from the ever increasing fundraising total posted on the “tote” board originally operated by hand in 1966 but now done electronically. Lewis’ goal of raising just ‘one more dollar’ than the previous year has been met almost every year.
To-date, Jerry Lewis is the most successful fundraiser in history.
In December 1996, Lewis and MDA were recognized by the American Medical Association with Lifetime Achievement Awards “for significant and lasting contributions to the health and welfare of humanity.” Lewis, only the fifth person in AMA history to receive this award, was honored for his nearly half a century of dedication to MDA. As National Chairman of MDA, Lewis has devoted two-thirds of his lifetime to the effort to eradicate neuromuscular disease.
Best known for his comedic genius, he is considered among the elite in the history of comedy. He has an exceptional sense for comic timing and possesses all the other unique qualities of a great clown.
Lewis’ illustrious career has garnered tremendous accolades not only as an actor, but director, author, humanitarian and successful inventor of the patented video assist, a closed circuit television system to facilitate motion picture and television production.
In France, he holds the prestigious title of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters of the Legion of Honor. In 2009, Jerry received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Oscar Award for his humanitarian efforts that have brought tremendous credits to the motion picture industry.
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