Le Roi d' Crazy is Dead...

Its not that the Late Jerry Lewis was Part of the American Zeitgeist, he really WAS The American Zeitgeist...you can just start with his emeritus status as "The Last Man Out of Vaudeville" and then segue into his insanely popular partnership with Dean Martin, the break up, the solo movies, his own comedy production unit at Paramount, his invention of "video assist", "The Nutty Professor" into the 1963 television catastrophe "The Jerry Lewis Show" (two hours live on Saturday Night nuff' said), his own comic book....and then there is the percodan addiction, the "The Day the Clown Cried" and even "Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down?"...if that isn't Secular Omnipotence, What Is? The story goes that Woody Allen BEGGED Jerry Lewis to direct "Take the Money and Run", wisely Lewis counseled Allen to be his own director...follow his own ambition to it's logical conclusion. I mean who else DESERVED to be a "God in France??" Somewhere in there, even amidst his gruesome sexism & xenophobia, his famous short temper (the man literally had a fuse sputtering away on top of his head), his spotty tastelessness, his inability to cut his leading ladies in on the funny....there is an object lesson to all comedians on the sheer power and necessity of ambition, he is a living exhortation to all comedians high and low to integrate, write perform and dominate the creative process. And yet right up to the end, Jerry Lewis repeatedly demonstrated the darkest most instructive moment was maybe the last ten seconds before the explosive bolts that held his psyche together detonated and the furies out of Heaven flew out of his head. A lot of THAT went down on the MDA Labor Day Telethons.... If Jerry broke hearts, if he fell short of his own transcendent ambitions, if he failed quite literally, its all in the shadow of his monumental success, from a lowly MC on the vaudeville circuit to an Apex Predator in Hollywood...top that well...anyone. Boston is still a "Movie Theatre Town". It is inevitable that the HFA or the MFA or some likewise outfit will execute a comprehensive Jerry Lewis Retrospective. So I serve fair warning to all and sundry that the programmers of said notional retrospective would be well served to secure local writer, critic & Lewis Aficionado Betsy Sherman as their curator....she has an insight into Lewis worth cultivating.

Jerry Lewis at High Noon

If you are like me, and you think that Jerry Lewis is never more fascinating than in the last ten seconds before his blows his stack, then RUN do not walk to Wienerworld.com where you can find a precious single episode of Jerry's legendary 1963 variety series.
It was two hours long and done live without any sign of a script with a distinctly nervous Jerry Lewis acting as host (and occasionally as house singer) in a Jack Paar style format before a live audience.
It is to say the least a bold improvisional experiment and a crackpot whim rolled up into one interminable and poorly blocked package.
What exactly gave Lewis the notion to do such a long show live is a complete mystery. No doubt he had a bracing faith in his own ad-lib abilities going back to his partnership with singer Dean Martin. Maybe Jerry was envious of the largely improvisioned rat-pack shows which was then packin' em' in at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.
Ah but back in the day Lewis had Martin to anchor the act and give pacing and direction to the younger comics's many flights of fancy. And if that didn't work, Dean would sing and give everyone a break from Jerry.
Wisely, Jerry didn't work alone on this show opting for a dour Phil Foster as his one air sidekick, serious TV buffs will recall Foster's star turn as Penny Marshall's father on "Laverne and Shirley". Here though, Foster is simply a glowering ethnic foil who looks like he'd dearly love to bust a chair over Jerry's head. Their on air banter has all the charm and ease of hostage negotiations in Beirut.
Moreover in one hundred and three minutes not ONE comedy sketch can be seen, not one, Jerry's signature format and it is not being used at all. Frankly the artistic decisions as they play out on air seem demented.
So of course the show was an expensive flop, already cancelled at the time of this particular broadcast a fact that Lewis shares with the audience about every ten minutes as the program trudges on and on.
A bitter patina invades the whole program despite a glittering roster of guests including soprano Patricia Munsel, Sam Cook and a pre Muhammad Ali Cassius Clay who was trying to the convince the whole world that he was both crazy and invincible in the lead up to the legendary fight with Sonny Liston.
That particular interview with Jerry is a veritable wince-fest, Lewis is in a manic state by this point in the program and inadvertently he makes Clay looks judicious and wise as he the host rants on and on about the boxer's blustery showmanship.
Ali would later read a poem prophesying neatly his victory over Liston, it is the program's only truly funny moment in a hundred and three minutes of bug eyed mishaugas.
In short a mess my friends...very much a mess.
But it is also a lonely sign post to his career, already Jerry had completed his best film "The Nutty Professor" and would begin a long and ultimately unsuccessful search for a new comic persona to supplant his tired "anthro-child on crack" act. He and the zeitgeist were rapidly parting company never to reunite, and this program is a good indication of how badly Jerry had misjudged his audience's taste and patience.
Lenny Bruce had a great routine about a schleppy goyisher comedian named Frank Dell who thought he'd reach the big time if only he could play the Palladium Theater in London. Of course he bombs but on his last night drenched in flop sweat he starts shreking "Kill the Irish" at the audience causing a riot and his own deportation from England.
It is that kind of flop sweat I got off of Jerry in this DVD, trapped on stage, no script, the audience glaring at him and all he can do snarl at Phil Foster or lecture a bemused Muhammad Ali on "showmanship" the very quality his own damn show was lacking.
I heartily wish that all the episodes of this unique TV series were available on DVD< there is much to be learned from all of them.