In trying to account for the seven decades of Jerry Lewis’s life—public and private—I relied as frequently on the work of other writers as I did on original research. In a very real sense, this book would have been impossible to write were it not for the writing that went before it. The following citations should be taken as the most cursory of acknowledgments of my deep debts to my journalistic predecessors and peers.
Four libraries provided materials that were absolutely essential to my work.
The Cinema-Television Library at the University of Southern California is home to the papers of Jerry Lewis Productions, a vast collection presided over by the genial and resourceful Ned Comstock, who also directed me toward valuable materials in the Hal Humphrey Collection that I would not have otherwise found.
The Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences houses the Hal Wallis papers, a Sargasso Sea of documents I never could have navigated without the selfless help of Sam Gill and Howard Prouty. Additionally, I availed myself of the library’s excellent clippings files, its defensive sets of periodicals, and diverse materials from the Hedda Hopper collection.
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts is home to the most astoundingly complete collection of clippings, photos, and publicity materials I’ve ever seen. I literally gave myself cramps transcribing all the crucial information I gathered there.
And if it weren’t for the equally amazing resources of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York, I would have written this book without the benefit of having seen some truly crucial performances and occasions.
Additionally, I depended upon the resources of some less specialized libraries. I’d especially like to mention the Irvington Public Library in New Jersey; the Millar Library at Portland State University; the Multnomah County Library, the Washington County Library, and the Astoria Public Library, all in Oregon; and the library at the University of California, Irvine. Powell’s City of Books in Portland might not be a library, but it’s bigger than many, and it’s bailed me out of more than one jam.
Three books proved invaluable for obvious reasons: The Total Film-Maker (Random House, 1971) and Jerry Lewis in Person (Atheneum, 1982), both by Jerry himself, and I Laffed Till I Cried: Thirty-Six Years of Marriage to Jerry Lewis (WRS Publishing, 1993) by Patti Lewis.
I repeatedly consulted the troika of earlier Jerry Lewis biographies: That Kid (Avon, 1964) by Richard Gehman, Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime (Especially Himself) (Hawthorn, 1973) by Arthur Marx, and, from among several French books, Bonjour, Monsieur Lewis (Eric Losfeld, 1972) by Robert Benayoun.
Two books stood out as being especially useful for specific periods of Jerry’s life: Pieces of Time: Peter Bogdanovich on the Movies (Arbor House, 1973) and the magnificent Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams (Doubleday, 1992) by Nick Tosches, without reference to which no one can say a sensible word about Dean Martin. A lengthy and sensitive interview with Patti Lewis appears in Are You Anybody? Conversations with Wives of Celebrities (Dial Press, 1979) by Marilyn Funt. I learned almost everything I know about Abbey Greshler from The Deal Makers: The Men Who Took Over Hollywood, an unpublished manuscript by Mark Christensen and Cameron Stauth.
Another set of books contained briefer but equally important passages on Jerry’s life or work. These include More Funny People (Stein and Day, 1982) by Steve Allen; Has Corinne Been a Good Girl? (St. Martin’s Press, 1983) by Corinne Calvet; Cavett (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974) by Dick Cavett and Christopher Porterfield; American Directors, Volume II (McGraw-Hill, 1983) by Jean-Pierre Coursodon with Pierre Sauvage; The Early Film Criticism of Francois Truffaut (Indiana University Press, 1993) by Wheeler Winston Dixon; My Story (Grove Press, 1977) by Judith Exner with Ovid Demaris; Vulgar Modernism: Writing on Movies and Other Media (Temple University Press, 1991) by J. Hoberman; Martin Scorsese: A Journey (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991) by Mary Pat Kelly; There Really Was a Hollywood (Doubleday, 1984) by Janet Leigh; Boxed In (third edition, Northwestern University Press, 1989) by Mark Crispin Miller; The Jerry Lewis Films (McFarland, 1995) by James L. Neibaur and Ted Okuda; Heartland (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976) by Mort Sahl; The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968 (E. P. Dutton & Company, 1968) by Andrew Sarris; Comedian Comedy: A Tradition in Hollywood Film (UMI Research Press, 1981) by Steve Seidman; The Cinematic Body (University of Minnesota Press, 1993) by Steven Shaviro; The Palace (Atheneum, 1969) by Marian Spitzer; Scorsese on Scorsese (Faber and Faber, 1989), edited by David Thompson and Ian Christie; World Film Directors, Volume II (1945–1985) (H. W. Wilson & Company, 1988), edited by John Wakeman; Starmaker (Macmillan, 1980) by Hal Wallis with Charles Higham; The Great Comedians Talk About Comedy (Citadel, 1968) by Larry Wilde; and The Show Business Nobody Knows (Cowles Book Company, 1971) by Earl Wilson.
From another set of books, I gleaned a great deal of information about the cultural background of Jerry’s life and art. They include American Humor in France (Iowa State University Press, 1978) by James C. Austin; What’s the Joke?: A Study of Jewish Humor Through the Ages (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986) by Chaim Bermant; Farce: A History from Aristophenes to Woody Allen (Simon and Schuster, 1982) by Albert Bermel; A Thousand Sundays: The Story of the Ed Sullivan Show (Putnum, 1980) by Jerry Bowles; A Clinician’s View of Neuromuscular Diseases (Williams and Wilkins, 1977) by Michael H. Brooke, M.D.; The Crazy Mirror: Hollywood Comedy and the American Image (Horizon Press, 1969) by Raymond Durgnat; Jolson: The Legend Come to Life (Oxford University Press, 1988) by Herbert G. Goldman; World of Our Fathers (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976) by Irving Howe; What Made Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (Columbia University Press, 1992) by Henry Jenkins; A Summer World: The Attempt to Build a Jewish Eden in the Catskills. … (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989) by Stefan Kanfer; Give! Who Gets Your Charity Dollar? (Doubleday, 1974) by Harvey Katz; The Charity Racket (Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1977) by Robert A. Liston; The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies (second edition, University of Chicago Press, 1979) by Gerald Mast; The Joys of Yiddish (Pocket, 1968) by Leo Rosten; and The American Burlesque Show (Hawthorn, 1967) by Irving Zeidman.
Finally, from among the literally dozens of film, television, popular music, and show-business reference works I consulted, these half-dozen essentials: The Paramount Story (Crown, 1985) by John Douglas Eames; The Film Encyclopedia (all-new edition, Harper Perennial, 1994) by Ephraim Katz; Leonard Maltin’s Movie and Video Guide, 1994(Signet, 1994), edited by Leonard Maltin; Motion Picture Players’ Credits: Worldwide Performers of 1967 Through 1980 with Filmographies. … (McFarland and Company, 1991) by Jeffrey Oliviero; A Biographical Dictionary of Film (second edition, William Morrow & Co., 1981) by David Thompson; and Halliwell’s Film Guide (eighth edition, Harper Collins, 1991) edited by John Walker.
If I relied upon hundreds of books in researching this book, I used literally thousands of articles. Many of these were used strictly to confirm minute—but vital—details. Others gave more general, but equally valuable insights into the way in which Jerry was perceived by his public at various stages of his career. Still others were useful simply because they gave me a feeling of confidence in summing up such a busy man’s life.
I have chosen to cite the following articles as especially useful because I found myself compelled to turn to them again and again while thinking and writing about Jerry’s life and work. They tend to be long and wide-reaching, and they stand, in my mind, as true milestones in Jerry’s lifelong love-hate relationship with the press.
By citing these articles alone, I don’t mean to slight the authors of the great many others that I found invaluable. Film reviews, spot news reports, uncredited items from Associated Press, United Press International, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter, obituaries, opinion columns, even passing mentions in articles about other subjects were crucial to shaping my understanding of Jerry Lewis. To the writers of those stories, my thanks; I literally could not have done it without you.
Alpert, Hollis, “‘Le Roi du Crazy,’” The New York Times Magazine, February 27, 1966.
Alpert, Hollis, “Dialogue on Film,” American Film, September 1977.
Angeli, Michael, “God’s Biggest Goof,” Esquire, February 1991.
Bennetts, Leslie, “Jerry Vs. the Kids,” Vanity Fair, September 1993.
Bogdanovich, Peter, “Sinatra and Company,” Esquire, February 1977.
Davidson, Bill (with Jerry Lewis), “I’ve Always Been Scared,” Look, February 5, 1957.
Delson, James, “Penthouse Interview: Jerry Lewis,” Penthouse, May 1984.
Driscoll, O’Connell, “Jerry Lewis, Birthday Boy,” Playboy, January 1974.
Gehman, Richard, “The Zany Thinker,” The American Weekly, May 20, 1962.
Handy, Bruce, “Jerry Goes to Death Camp!” Spy, May 1992.
Higham, Charles, “Jerry Isn’t Just Clowning Around Now,” The New York Times, July 30, 1972.
Hirschberg, Lynn, “What’s So Funny About Jerry Lewis?” Rolling Stone, October 28, 1982.
Jahr, Cliff, “Hellzafloppin: Is This the End of Jerry Lewis?” New York, February 7, 1977.
Jackson, Nancy Beth, “Jerry Lewis Tries a Comeback Film,” The New York Times, April 29, 1979.
Jerome, Jim (with Doris Klein Bacon), “After Open-Heart Surgery, King of Comedy Jerry Lewis Bounces Back with a Bride-to-Be,” People, February 7, 1983.
Krutnik, Frank, “Jerry Lewis: The Deformation of the Comic,” Film Quarterly, Fall 1994.
Linn, Edward, “The Search for Jerry Lewis,” The Saturday Evening Post, October 12, 1963.
Madsen, Axel, “America’s Uncle,” Cahiers du Cinema #4 (U.S.), 1968.
McGilligan, Patrick, “Recycling Jerry Lewis,” American Film, September 1979.
Peploe, Mark, and Hercules Bellville, “Comedy Is a Man in Trouble,” Sunday Times (London), November 16, 1969.
Rader, Dotson, “And Sometimes He Cries,” Parade, April 22, 1984.
Rutt, Todd, “Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo: Those Two Fireballs of Fun,” Psychotronic Film and Video, Fall 1991.
Shindler, Merrill, “Jerry’s Revenge,” Los Angeles, August 1980.
Shearer, Harry, “Telethon,” Film Comment, May/June 1979.
Taves, Isabella, “Always in a Crowd—Always Alone,” Look, December 23, 1958.
Tolkin, Michael, “Jerry Lewis Is a 50-Year-Old Kid,” The Village Voice, September 27, 1976.
Williams, Brian, and Neal Hitchens, “Jerry Lewis Beat and Viciously Whipped His Kids,” National Enquirer, May 9, 1989.