Working with the daughter of the hotel’s owners, he created a comedy act in which they lip-synced to popular recordings. During the winter of 1938-39, his father landed an extended engagement at the Hotel Arthur in Lakewood, N.J., and Joey was allowed to go along. Lewis with an enduring sense of insecurity and, as he observed, a desperate need for attention and affection.Īn often bored student at Union Avenue School in Irvington, N.J., he began organizing amateur shows with and for his classmates, while yearning to join his parents on tour. The experience of being passed from home to home left Mr. The Levitches were frequently on the road and often left Joey, as he was called, in the care of Rae’s mother and her sisters.
His parents, Danny and Rae Levitch, were entertainers - his father a song-and-dance man, his mother a pianist - who used the name Lewis when they appeared in small-time vaudeville and at Catskills resort hotels. But Shawn Levy, author of the exhaustive 1996 biography “King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis,” unearthed a birth record that gave his first name as Jerome. Most sources, including his 1982 autobiography, “Jerry Lewis: In Person,” give his birth name as Joseph Levitch. Jerry Lewis was born on March 16, 1926, in Newark. His ultimate object of contemplation was his own contradictory self, and he turned his obsession with fragmentation, discontinuity and the limits of language into a spectacle that enchanted children, disturbed adults and fascinated postmodernist critics. Lewis seemed to contain multitudes, and he explored all of them. Lewis raised vast sums for charity as a filmmaker of great personal force and technical skill, he made many contributions to the industry, including the early adoption of a device - the video assist, which allowed directors to review their work immediately on the set - still in common use.Ī mercurial personality who could flip from naked neediness to towering rage, Mr. As a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Mr.
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