At 84, comedian Jerry Lewis's body is ailing but his energy is unstoppable as he maps out a plan for at least the next 15 years, including an Australian telethon in 2012 for muscular dystrophy, a cause he has championed for six decades.
IT'S MAGIC watching Jerry Lewis kill. It's what he does. Lewis is holding court before a group of major-league union reps. For 2½ hours he regales them with anecdotes, jokes, stories about the old days. The club circuit. His movies. The Rat Pack. Vegas. Sammy. Frank. Dean. When they're not cracking up with laughter they stare in awe. Lewis might be 84 but his timing doesn't miss a beat. Comedy isn't an act for him. It's in his DNA.
His mission this chilly Melbourne afternoon at Rosati's is to secure the unions' combined support for muscular dystrophy, a cause Lewis has championed for 60 years. His yearly Labor Day telethon has been a fixture in American homes since 1956 and Lewis is credited with raising $2.5 billion, a figure he never cites without due emphasis.
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Now he wants to host a telethon in Australia - ''the land of nice'' - by 2012 and raise awareness for the 20,000 local victims of muscular dystrophy. But he needs the unions on side. Halfway through the lunch, amid the laughing and staring, Lewis calls for my attention and whispers: ''I got 'em, Jim. I got 'em. I got 'em in the palm of my hand.'' It's not arrogance in his voice, just a silky confidence.
And he's right. They love him. They especially love his revelation that during his heyday as a director Lewis held 15 union cards. This allowed him to handle props, cameras, lights, sets and so forth without any demarcation issue. His crew counted Lewis as one of their own. Now these guys do, too. The tale has a noticeable effect on the table. It would have made a great selling point if Lewis had needed it. But he had them at ''Heya, fellas!''
It's all worked a treat. The Electrical Trades Union (20,000 members), the Plumbing Trades Employees Union (10,000 members) and the Construction, Forestry Mining and Energy Union (27,000 members) pledge their support.
The maniacal Jerry Lewis who at 20 jumped across tables and created havoc at the 500 Club in Atlantic City is today a stooped figure. He often needs assistance to walk when not being moved about in a wheelchair, and is on medication to suppress chronic back pain. Still, everybody buzzes about his energy.
Back in his limo, Lewis points a friendly finger at the chief executive of the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation. ''I was good today. I made contact with each one of them. And I enjoyed it. You can't make that up. You have to be what you are because the other human has probably got the same brain matter that you've got.''
For his Melbourne visit Lewis has granted me unprecedented access. He knows how to use the media as well as work the room. ''We are doing what I do better than anyone, we are sucking around!'' Lewis chirps. ''As I have with you from day one! And I will use you to a f---ing fare-thee-well!''
But it's not just a cold grab for coverage. If that was the case he would have gone to the most popular paper, he says. Having had a bumpy relationship with the press all his career - ''They know I can't be f---ed with'' - Lewis needs to ''feel safe'' with a reporter. My articles about his 2008 visit did the trick. ''You're my world groupie!'' he exclaims.
Extended time inside the orbit of the latter-day Jerry Lewis has its surprises.
Lewis can swear like a short-changed sailor, especially when angry. The one big crimp in his otherwise enjoyable visit is that the Victorian branch of Muscular Dystrophy Australia is refusing to join other states in developing a unified approach to the disease. Mention of it sends Lewis into a furious rant, none of it printable.
But bad language has no place when soliciting support. That's when the full power of his aura comes into play. The same day as the union lunch, Lewis does dinner with firefighters at the Via Veneto restaurant in Carlton. He enters to a thunderous standing ovation. He delivers a moving seven-minute speech telling them how committed their stateside counterparts are to his charity, and that he wants the same from them.
They know his definition of commitment. A group of firefighters tell Lewis of their plan to run across America next year to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Sadly, they won't be near LA when his telethon goes to air.
Lewis won't hear of it. ''Let me fly you guys there,'' he says. ''Let me get a private plane, get the bunch of you on the show and acknowledge what you are doing, OK?'' The firefighters are dumbstruck. ''I've got 275,000 American firefighters who gave me $25 million last year,'' Lewis continues. ''I want every firefighter that ever breathed a breath to know I love them and I gotta get 'em.'' He pauses for effect. ''And if you bought any of that you're my kinda guy!'' Their frozen faces suddenly crack with laughter.
At a giant $1000-a-plate fund-raising dinner at Docklands, Lewis holds 1200 guests spellbound as he pours out his passion for his cause, then makes them laugh with clips and a hilarious Q&A. He's in his element. The evening raises $1.3 million.
The motive for his work for muscular dystrophy has always been clear: children. ''I'd put on make-up, a dress and sit at a bar to get 20 bucks for my kids,'' Lewis often gags to potential supporters. But the spark of his dedication to ''Jerry's Kids'' remains a mystery he swears he'll keep private.
Lewis has a reputation for chewing up interviewers who are a tad slow or who keep asking the same questions, but he is unfailingly polite when the inevitable query comes up. And not even someone who has paid $1000 to ask it will get an answer. ''That is probably the only question that I've ever been asked that I do not answer,'' Lewis tells the Docklands crowd. ''The important thing is not why but that I do.''
As Lewis walks through the Melbourne central business district, people recognise him instantly, shout out his name from across the street, from shops, from cars. They come up to tell him they love him, to thank him for his movies, to pledge support.
The fan love is easy to explain. His comedy is hard-wired into people's lives. People either grew up or are growing up with his films. Lewis loves hearing that children enjoy them, that even the 60-year-old movies he made with Dean Martin still work. That boxing scene from Sailor Beware? ''That's been mentioned at least 10 times so far during this trip,'' he says.
But his stature is about more than being funny. In 1960 on The Bellboy Lewis pioneered the use of the video assist - a device that allows a director to immediately see a videotape of a scene - so he could properly direct himself. He also brought cinematic flair to big-screen comedy.
Above all, Lewis achieved at 34 what most filmmakers spend their lives pining for - total control. The story behind it is movie folklore. While making The Bellboy, Paramount got word it was a silent film and pulled out, despite Lewis's assurances that it was, in fact, ''a very noisy comedy''. So he finished it with his own money.
Once it became a huge hit, Paramount wanted to negotiate a new deal. Lewis was open to that, but only on his terms. All previous agreements had been ''handshake'' deals. He demanded that everything be in ink. He also told Paramount it wasn't getting a cent from The Bellboy. ''Whenever The Bellboy is mentioned at Paramount today people still get a rash,'' Lewis jokes. Well, half-jokes. Being stiffed is not something he takes well.
Key to his Australian visit is Mick Gatto, building industry mediator and celebrity underworld figure. He organised power lunches, dinners, the Docklands benefit. Lewis can't get enough of Gatto. What about his record? Lewis only cares about people who can help him. Bad-mouth his ''very good friend'' and Lewis pays out.
And Gatto loves Lewis. While he eyes a $9800 Cartier watch at Monards in Collins Street, Gatto's partner John Khoury tells Lewis the watch is his, a gift from them. Lewis buries his chin in his chest as his face crumbles with humility. ''It's not a Seiko, fellas.''
This is a time-of-life deal for Jerry Lewis. His dedication to muscular dystrophy had run parallel to his film career, but when his movies stopped connecting with audiences in the early 1980s, Lewis turned to live performances and redoubled his fund-raising work.
''Thirty years ago I could have [retired as] the 23rd richest young man in America,'' he says. ''There was nothing I had to do at that time except breathe, and the only way I breathe is if there is an audience. Getting the audience was so important all through my life and that congealed with the philanthropy.''
To Lewis it was commonsense to have people express their love for him with donations. ''What [else] should I do?'' he yelps. ''If someone says, 'How do you want to be remembered?' I say 'I don't care!' I want to hear it now, while I'm here! Don't yell at me when I'm in the box. I can't hear you saying what a wonderful man I was.''
Does mortality play on his mind? ''Hey, everybody knows when you're pushing 85 your life expectancy is starting to come into play. Not me.''
Indeed, he says - well, exclaims - that his professional peak is looming. There's a starring role in the feature film Max Rose and he'll be directing The Nutty Professor musical on Broadway. ''It's as exciting as anything we ever did as Martin and Lewis. Nothing has ever been as electric in my mind and heart.''
On the home front he has the next 15 years mapped out. While making his 1980 ''comeback'' film Hardly Working - after a string of failures in the late 1960s and early 1970s - Lewis met 29-year-old Las Vegas dancer SanDee Pitnick while separated from his first wife, Patti Palmer, whom he divorced later that year after a 36-year marriage. He married Pitnick - always ''Sam'' - in 1983. In March 1992 they adopted a daughter, Danielle, now 18. He needs to see his daughter graduate - four years - then secure her career, marry and give him a grandchild - another five years. Then ''I have about six left for Sam and I to skip on the beach until I have to lie down. It's easy. It's a wonderful schedule.''
LEWIS speaks as if he has another 20 years, but Mother Nature might have other plans. Given what his body has been through, that Lewis is still alive almost qualifies as science fiction. For decades he was a five-pack-a-day smoker. In 1965 during a Las Vegas performance he fell off a piano, which ''busted up my spine''. He was once addicted to the painkiller Percodan, has survived two heart attacks, prostate cancer, viral meningitis, pulmonary fibrosis and diabetes, and had a pacemaker installed in 2008.
At his best he can go full pelt for eight hours. But on the Sydney leg of his visit, his back pain became so intense he had to reduce his roster.
Sam remains at the core of his being, and his health. ''She is my wife, my friend, my medic, my pharmacist, my chauffeur, my surgeon, and I got about another 30!'' She makes sure Lewis is in bed by 9pm and that he ''eats intelligently''. ''I believe in my heart that if I sustain this regimen there's no reason that I can't last for God-knows-how long. I just want to beat George Burns [who died at the age of 100].''
Lewis can't help with the jokes. It's a reflex, and when he's giddy everything is a set-up to a punchline. That instinct now serves the cause that, he says, defines his life more than his comedy.
A sudden thought lights up his face. ''I'm just sitting here thinking 'Why haven't I told you this story?' I'll tell you how comedy works.''
He recites the tale of how in 1958 he met James Roche, the vice-president of General Motors. Lewis wanted to buy 90 specially equipped vans for children with muscular dystrophy, but wanted them at cost. ''I could take that $3 million [I save] and open a research foundation somewhere,'' he pleaded.
Moved by his presentation, Roche got on the phone to see if it was possible. While he was making a delicate negotiation, Lewis saw a pair of scissors on the desk, grabbed them and cut off Roche's very expensive tie.
''He laughed from the belly,'' Lewis says. ''He said, 'That is the stupidest, funniest thing I've ever experienced. I can't thank you enough.' I said, 'Yes you can. Gimme the vans.' He said, 'You got 'em.' Something told me I had to move it a little bit, and when you are the 'comedy genius' I'm told I am'' - Lewis makes a self-mocking face - ''I detect the time when levity may work for me.''
And Lewis knows how to punch a point. Our interview over, I lean forward to shake his hand. My tie - my very expensive silk tie - dangles down. Without breaking eye contact he grabs his scissors and cuts it off. Then he staples it back together. Then he cuts it again.
I'm practically on the floor laughing.
Jim Schembri is an Age senior writer. |