Hollywood Legend Jerry Lewis Passes Away in His Las Vegas Mansion at 91

Jerry Lewis born Jewish, in New Jersey in 1926, rose to stardom after World War II, in the beginning anyway, with his stand-up comedy act with fellow comedian and lifelong pal Dean Martin. His many genres of comedy, ranging from stand-up comedy to Broadway to the big screen; to writing many screenplays for his own movies he starred in; to directing and producing; and even telethon hosting for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Jerry Lewis was even an inventor as well, inventing a device that allowed directors to replay movie takes right there on set, attached to the camera, still in use today.
But what he will be remembered for most was his brutally honest, politically incorrect take on life to the point of being comical, and sometimes downright insulting. Kind of like the forefather of Sasha Baren Cohen or even Kathy Griffin, so outlandish and outspoken, sometimes insulting in their acts, they even get sued.

Both of his parents were in the entertainment business, his dad a song-and-dance man, and his mom played the piano professionally, so it was easy for Jerry Lewis to continue on in the same line of work. In the fifties and sixties, Jerry Lewis starred in slapstick comedy movies that were being pumped out at a rate of two or three per year, spanning over two decades.
By the seventies, he was already writing screen plays for his own movies he starred in. Whilst conducting research on this legend of monumental proportions right up there with Ronald Reagan and Woody Allen, I came across one movie Jerry Lewis wrote and starred in that was never released for public viewing. It was a fictional movie concerning World War II: The Day the Clown Cried.
The Day the Clown Cried is an unreleased 1972 American drama film directed by and starring Jerry Lewis. The film was met with controversy regarding its premise and content, which features a circus clown who is imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. Lewis repeatedly insisted that The Day the Clown Cried would never be released because it is an embarrassingly “bad work” of which he was ashamed.
In reality, it was a very accurate movie encompassing the atrocities of the World War II era expressed in fiction. It is similar to a World War II novel recently written and published by local Tampa Bay dark romance book author, Gwendolyn Olmsted, in her recently released parallel universe masterpiece Jude: A Story of Love, Deceit, and Survival in World War II.
Both works of fiction, tell brilliantly composed stories of the era yet contain violently orchestrated realities of that “embarassingly” corrupted evil time in history that people are more upset with than entertained. Yet I did see a stark link between these two World War II fictional stories written with such a high caliber of story-telling, that they would be more suitable to be shown in a university history class or even a film making class than for actual entertainment purposes in a family movie theater.



Jerry Lewis, much like Frank Sinatra, did it his way, all the time, breaking rules and norms and standards, like in 1982, when he starred in his own personal parallel universe satirical dark comedy: The King of Comedy, along with Robert De Niro and Sandra Bernhard. In the movie, setting the tone for the 1980’s Hollywood scene, he plays Hollywood legend and talk show host, almost himself, who amongst other things is kidnapped by obsessed fans: A comedian want-a-be, played by Robert Dinero, and his sidekick played by Sandra Bernhard. She throws a fancy dinner with him being tied up and gagged, and tries her best to seduce his attention:



While the want-a-be breaks into show business as his ransom is paid by airing his stand-up act.
Upon Jerry Lewis’s escape, and after being bored to death by her criminal ways, he punches her in the face and hard, not the norms in American culture to hit a woman. Many watchers, like myself a mere teen at the time viewed in admiration, as although I did not realize it at that time, I would later in life become a kidnap victim myself — it happens, and the exhilaration of the kidnappee slugging the kidnapper like Jerry Lewis did to Sandra Bernhard in The King of Comedy will forever go down in history as a truly great moment in life: To stand up to the villain, even when it is a woman.
Two minute YouTube clip: 30 years later, Martin Scorsese, Jerry Lewis, Robert Dinero, and Sandra Bernhardt get together and re-live the making of the movie: THE KING OF COMEDY.
The 1990’s and 2000’s marked an era for Jerry Lewis of reaping the rewards of his previous decades of hard work, and continued telethon hosting for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, that actually began in 1966. Many do not remember, but during these early Muscular Dystrophy Association telethons Jerry Lewis hosted once a year on labor day, the four hour long telethon completely hijacked all 13 channels all simultaneously on the 13-channel television sets that existed back in the day. In the end, Jerry Lewis would wind up raising 2.6 billion dollars from 1966 through 2010 for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

It is always significant when someone contributing such greatness to the arts and entertainment, lives an extended fully capacitated life into their 90’s, and Jerry Lewis did just that. His last movie he made in 2013, at age 87, and released in 2016, entitled Max Rose, is a story about a retired piano player at the end of his life who questions the true meaning of the emotion of “love,” in much the same way most of Tampa Bay dark romance author Gwendolyn Olmsted does in her collection of dark romance stories: Gwendolyn Olmsted’s Amazon author page.

To be sure, Jerry Lewis was one of a kind, right up there with the best of the best, and remained unyielding in his personality he projected out to everyone who ever knew him, never changing to fit any norms our society places on people, however many disorders psychologists may have said he had, I am sure many, right to the very end:

Rest in Peace to one of Hollywood’s Greatest and most admired Legends of all time:
We love you Jerry

Jerry Lewis is survived by five sons with then wife, Patti Palmer, actress; and one daughter with girl friend, fashion model Lynn Dixon, for a total of six children.
Two additional children were adopted by Jerry Lewis. Jerry Lewis was married to second wife SanDee Pitnik, actress, at the time of his passing on August 20, 2017.
Loved a lot and lived well, Jerry Lewis lived and loved a full life.