US comedian Jerry Lewis dies aged 91

[Barbara Fan]

Entertainer Jerry Lewis, one of Hollywood's most successful comedians, has died aged 91, US media report.

His 10-year partnership with Dean Martin saw them star in 16 films and achieve huge box office success.

Lewis became the highest paid actor in Hollywood, chalking up hits such as The Bell Boy, Cinderfella and The Nutty Professor.

The actor died at his Las Vegas home, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Other notable successes included The King of Comedy in 1983 in which he played a talk show host stalked by Robert de Niro.

In 1995, he became the highest paid star in Broadway history as Mr Applegate in the musical Damn Yankees.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

What ever dies in Vegas....

 

[Angela Channing]

The King of Comedy was an outstanding film but I generally found a lot of his earlier films to be a bit silly.

He regularly told racist, homophobic and misogynistic jokes and held some rather unpleasant right-wing views, which won't be missed.

I wonder whether his film The Day The Clown Died will now be released? Mr Lewis refused to release it after it was completed and it has never been screened publically. It is a comedy set in a Nazi concentration camp and ends with him leading children into a gas chamber. Some say it's the worst film ever made and others have said it was ahead of its time so there has been a lot of fascination about it.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

He always seemed very hard-boiled to me, and I've heard that he was. Joan Collins also claims that Dean Martin -- a lovely man by nearly all accounts -- said that "Jerry doesn't care anything about the kids" regarding his eternal (and bottomlessly shmaltzy) Muscular Dystrophy telethons.

Do the French really view Jerry Lewis as a genius? Because that's what we always hear.

 

[Seaviewer]

I read his memoir a while ago. I don't know about "genius" but he was more intelligent than his screen persona would suggest. His greatest film IMO would have to be The Nutty Professor - a reworking of the Jekyll and Hyde story which was streets ahead of the Eddie Murphy remake.