It's the day after the Aug. 20 death of Jerry Lewis. While a total eclipse of the sun is going on, I'm sitting at my office computer ... laughing. I'm on YouTube hunting up my favorite Jerry Lewis movie scenes, which I'll describe shortly.
When years have passed since we've last seen something we once found rip-roaringly funny, it sometimes comes off as stupid or hokey to our older, more sophisticated, more jaded selves. Not in this case. My co-workers are wondering what the heck I'm laughing at.
I have been a Jerry Lewis fan since back in the day. A fan I'll remain.
"Back in the day" refers to my childhood, which spanned the 1960s and '70s. I loved Jerry Lewis movies, especially the ones in which he was paired with Dean Martin. Whenever one of these movies was scheduled to be aired, I was invariably at odds with my brother, seven years my senior, over whether I'd get to see said movie on the single, small black-and-white television we had.
As an awkward nerd, I identified with the exaggerated awkward nerdiness that defined Lewis' comedy persona. With his high-pitched, nasal twang and his onscreen propensity for making the most howl-worthy disasters out of the simplest of tasks, nerds everywhere could laugh at him and with him, and not feel so bad about themselves.
Chronicling Lewis' ups, downs and grapples with his critics, the online obituaries mention how his brand of physical comedy fell out of favor. He began to come off as stupid or hokey to a society that had become more sophisticated, more jaded, one that had turned to the foul-mouthed brand of stand-up comedy we've come to know too well today. I confess to having laughed at Eddie Murphy's comedy routine/film Raw. But I suspect I've laughed harder at Lewis, who came off as, well, simply uncooked.
Among my favorite movie examples of that "uncooked"-ness:
• The scenes in which Jerry's rich, very eccentric Brendan Byers III -- who was rejected by the military -- goes hilariously spastic over the word "rejection" in Which Way to the Front. That "I must have the password" scene is also priceless.
• Yes, that over-the-top vacuum-cleaner-gone-wild scene in Who's Minding the Store. But I also favor the shorter scene in which scrawny Jerry, as character Norman Phiffier, shoots a rifle in the sporting-goods department and is propelled backward into a boat by the force of the gun recoil. Then Phiffier and the boat continue through the store in a hilarious voyage.
• The debut of Lewis' suave/arrogant Buddy Love in The Nutty Professor ... a debut during which Love orders an epic drink with ingredients that include half the liquor in the bar, plus vinegar, lemon peel and orange peel. He does this while managing to make a cerulean-blue tuxedo, ivory vest and pink shirt look cool. What nerd, male or female, didn't secretly long for a Buddy Love-esque alter ego?
My vote for the absolute funniest Lewis movie scene ever takes us to Sailor Beware and the scene in which Lewis' Melvin Jones, swabbing the top deck of the submarine, misses the announcement that the ship is going to take a dive. As the submarine becomes submerged, he climbs in desperation up the periscope, screams into its end, then peers, cross-eyed into it, confounding the men looking into the periscope from inside -- "Looks like a sea monster to me, Captain."
It's interesting that Lewis died close to Labor Day weekend, a time associated with the Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day Telethon he hosted from 1966 until 2010. I watched The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon religiously as Lewis, never much of a singer, tearfully warbled his signature "You'll Never Walk Alone" and asked in song, "Could you arrange to let me keep the change ... for my kids?"
The aforementioned obituaries waxed brutally realistic in some instances about the various bads and uglies in Lewis' life -- politically incorrect remarks, a reputation for being controlling, cranky, unpredictable and what my mother called sometime-y -- as well as the good. Film critic Gene Seymour was kinder, gentler: "He wasn't perfect, but he was unavoidable and always commanded an audience's attention. It's easy to take someone like Lewis [for granted] when they're always around. But when they go away, that's when you notice the size of the space they leave behind."
Indeed. If you see me sitting laughing at the TV, or at You Tube in the next few days, you'll know why.
Hey laaaady! Email me!
hwilliams@arkansasonline.com
Style on 08/27/2017