The Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon - Classic or Dud?

*awaits Jerry and Ed*

Damn. He likes his pasta I guess. Jerry the Hutt.

Jean and Kasey Kasem! FEAR!

And you're right about Ed too. I think Ed generously donated some of his spare flesh to Jerry.

http://www.mdausa.org/ telethon/

more as this story develops!

I've never met a disabled adult who didn't have the utmost scorn for this event.

he is hawtt and smart

This year, it was a dam shame to see Jerry Lewis because he is extremely ill but yet still appeared on television when anyone can see that he is dying.

So he had courage to do this, something that many of you do not possess.

http://www.rp-online.de/news/bilder/bildershows/bilder2002-

So he had courage to do this, something that many of you do not possess.

-- renee' lee greco (leomemoria...), September 2nd, 2003.

OTM. They are raising money for research, devices to help keep people out of pain and make their lives tolerable, and they pay for people with Muscular Dystrophy to get free hospital visits if they do not have insurance and are still in the process of trying to get Medicaid. Tell me what's wrong with these telethons again?

i can't help but recall chris rock's routine on the jerry lewis telethon. it's rather savage.

http://www.cripcommentary.com/faq.html
http://www.sfbg.com/SFLife/35/48/cult2.html
http://www.disabilityinstitute.org/news.htm (scroll down to "Lewis Pity-thon Perpetuates Stereotypes of People with Disabilities," although there's lots of good stuff in the rest of it too.)

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4170/1690/1600/lewis.jpg

He's recovering from his 'mild' heart attack and preparing for Labor Day.

when was Zep on the MDA telethon???

I love Jerry. He apparently called one of the cameramen a faggot during the final stretch this year.

He's starting to look and sound more like Buddy Hackett now. Needs better-fitting teeth. Some of his maudlin monologues were nearly early-'70s quslity.

was Charo on?

I didn't watch, but I did see Carrot Top at one point while flipping through. He kept the guns stored in a track jacket.

so utterly classic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfgB2JmHF-A

http://www.tmz.com/2007/09/04/jerry-lewis-drops-f-bomb-during-telethon/

I can't listen, but some seem to think he was saying "fat" something or starting to say "faygeleh" (ie, Yiddish for fag, which I've heard him do on the kinescope of his '50s Copa act with Dino).

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=3556180&page=1

There was this crazy ass dance troupe on this year who looked like they hadn't changed their routine, music, or uniforms in 16 years. =good

have any of these offended people heard Don Rickles' act? now or in 1963?

I think Jerry Lewis is god, pretty much...even if he hadn't been in The King of Comedy. Check out the movie "Cracking Up" aka "Smorgasbord" sometime. It's from 1983, and the first seven or eight minutes consist of a sequence where he is repeatedly falling on some slicked up floor of a shrink's office, to the tune of some swinging jazz, while the opening credits flash onscreen. No dialogue, just a forty-something guy doing awkward pratfall after awkward pratfall. No one, no one, would be insane enough to try to get away with doing that shit so late in film history. The rest of the film pretty much blows, but that opening sequence is fucking fantastic.

Not to mention "The Day the Clown Cried", which unfortunately has never seen the light of day, but which Harry Shearer, who was privileged to have seen it at a private screening, tried to describe by invoking the hypothetical analogy of going to Tijuana and seeing a black velvet painting of Auschwitz. Jerry Lewis is so bizarrely out of touch as to have inadvertently swerved over into some kinda idiot-savant territory, almost becoming like "the kid" that he was famous for playing in his most celebrated films.

His Buddy Love character in "The Nutty Professor" pretty much redeems his entire career, as well...

Jerry was 50something in Cracking Up.

Not to mention "The Day the Clown Cried"

WE ALL WISH

hes like krusty the clown

Jerry was 50something in Cracking Up.

That's even better!! My admiration for the man has just jumped a decade's worth.

6 years on, not remembering anything of the sort, I say classic, only because I read this thread as "The Jerry Lewis MDMA Telethon"

i still think the jerry lee lewis mdma telethon would be teh-awesome

uh MDA telethon

MDA is sorta old school MDMA

It's on, y'all!

Wynonna's singing "I Want To Know What Love Is" with requisite choir.

Charo on NOW!

Singing freakin' Rihanna's "Don't Stop the Music!!!!!!!!"

She just slammed her crotch in a female audience member's arm.

I think I just saw the face of God.

I hope that gets YouTubeded.

I got it on tape.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_QSvWE_HkA

What I thought Jerry said: "Ladies and gentlemen, the rock band GWAR!" (wha????)

Cut to a shot of War doing a medley of their hits.

I could never force myself to watch more than ten minutes of it. The show biz schlock and pity-pushing are so palpable it tastes like a slug of mercuric acid.

Yay!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiI2FzZIn80

God bless you (and her)

It's kinda sad he couldn't get up and do a spaz-dance with Charo.

OK, a friend says Jerry sang "Mammy" on the show (sitting down).

Jerry had oh so many senior moments, but none quite so bizarre as when he somehow managed to nearly get run over by his own motorized wheelchair cart.

that would be a good gag for Cracking Up II

Will have this on my TV all day at work tomorrow. Can't wait.

call me when Charo is on

Jerry condescends to the Jackson 5, whereupon they burn the damn house down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsqBjvOUPsQ

this is the era of Jackson 5 during which I first heard them and it's so special to me, how funky they were getting, just the vibe - when I was a kid I had the Enjoy Yourself single & listened to it over & over & over - and man just look at them chew up all the scenery. so rad.

Never seen the Telethon, being a Brit. But Jerry Lewis was classic onstage on Broadway and in London in Damn Yankees. Pure old school showbiz classic.

Tony Orlando indefatigably hosting NY local segments, still

biggest performers I caught last night were Manilow & Norm Crosby :/

is there any more boring a performer than Tony Orlando? I saw him on one of the telethons a few years ago and he was singing some song (i dunno if it was even one of his as I generally avoid his music) but during it he was making ridiculous facial expressions as if he had just blown your mind after every lyric.

also remember a few years ago that he had his son perform (Gary Lewis and the Playboys). and of course Gary's voice sounded terrible and tinny ("This Diamond Ring").

story on that is that Gary Lewis was supposed to originally just be the group's drummer, but they pushed him to the forefront of the group because he was attractive and related to celebrity, and could sell the group. Since he couldn't sing well, so they mixed his voice in with several other peoples so that he sounded more like Mario Lanza. this is why they lip-synched on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Competitive jump ropers back with more bore!

Jerry has lived this long just to keep jumpropers on TV

I wonder if I can write about French film w/ this on

if only they were martial arts jumpropers

Tony Orlando's showbiz hyperbole fits this show like a glove. To wit, SNL 1978:

Bill Murray:

Nominations for Update's Quote of the Year have piled up over the months and even though two weeks remain in the year, uh, the front-running quote looks hard to beat. Comes from the former member of Tony Orlando and Dawn, Tony Orlando himself. [Photo of Tony Orlando] It was on Bob Hope's seventy-fifth birthday special that Tony said, and I quote here, [slowly and solemnly] "If you could put all the laughs that Bob Hope has gotten, one after another, they would stretch all the way to the universe and fill up the black hole in space." Unquote. Jane?

Carrot Top.

The horror.

ditto

does Jerry just do the first 3 hours and the last 90 mins? seems that way.

Was gonna say, he was conspicuously absent until now.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs209.ash2/47179_431921752357_513642357_5226486_8180314_n.jpg

ok, a friend posted this on F'book -- is it an accurate quote?

"I have wonderful Porno stuff that I watch A LOT! Porno Corporation, the same people that did the Castle Films with the Monsters! Did I get away with it? NO!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIJQbSl7tr0

thx <3

Funnily enough, i misread this as "The Jenny Lewis MDA Telethon."

kicker on that clip is Taylor Dayne's horror

end of an era, obviously; his last, and shrunk to 6 hours.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/17/entertainment/la-et-quick-20110517

Last two hours should be The Day the Clown Cried.

dohhhhhhhhhhhhh

I guess he didn't want to go out with "I have lotsa pornos"

wow that really is the end of a long, long era.

the afterimage of vaudeville

Hey, lady!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8NCvn8LtCc&feature=related&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

for a few years I kept tripping on Labor Day weekend so the telethon made some deep, weird connections. peaking at 3am trying to grok the banter between Norm Crosby and Charo

slightly off-topic, but i wonder if anyone in his circle ever tried telling him that he is much funnier playing "himself" (like in the bellhop or buddy love or the king of comedy) than he is doing the manchild character that he made his reputation on

xpost

lol, that's awesome. advice: i would recommend never watching sonny and cher show under similar circumstances. on the other hand, i think i would kind of enjoy watching an endless loop of those dean martin celebrity roast infomercials

"hold it a second. hold it hold it, hold, hold it. we'll make our own music, gorgeous, just hold it. you and you stay. tubby, you go rest your thumbs, i'll drive. sweetie, go get your lips pressed. split! ...mood is wrong, mood is wrong! innkeeper, got sexy lights? lay it on me!"

I'm not a fan, but Lewis is just great in King of Comedy. I'm sure it took every ounce of Scorsese's energy to rein him in. I don't know if he's playing himself or not--I always thought he was playing Carson (when the cameras were off), but I suppose he draws heavily on his own life too.

He did MC some talk shows, you know.

And he didn't really play the manchild much (except for quick laughs on TV) after The Disorderly Orderly.

xpost
yeah, he was just amazing in that. was larry sanders supposed to be based on johnny carson, or am i making that up?

arizona dreams is another drama with lewis that is supposed to be really good, but i've not seen it

Jerry's speech in Sandra Bernhard's apartment -- "the pressure, the ratings," etc. -- was entirely improvised. So yeah, I think there's a fair bit of himself in there.

With a big cock on it.

xpostie

what talk shows?

well, he was still sort of playing the manchild to some degree in hardly working and smorgasbord. anyhow, the point i'm trying to make is that when he played less broadly or whatever i think he was much much funnier and more impressive

dr. morbius, do you have a favorite out of his late sixties films?

jeez, the late '60s films are kind of a wasteland. I saw Three on a Couch not long ago and it was better than I remembered, but he didn't direct some of the others -- which were among the first I saw as a kid on TV, probably put me off from the good stuff for years.

The broad "nine-year-old" stuff is very funny on the TV specials he did with Dino in the '50s, much wilder and improvised than anything that's in their movies certainly. That's what made him a star, it's understandable that he didn't start to let go of it til he was about 40.

(I will hit anybody who brings up Adam Sandler w/ a sock o' manure)

He had at least one short-lived 'Jerry Lewis Show' chat series in the '60s. Then he did a "pilot week" of one around 1984 that I saw -- I remember him interviewing William Shatner, and then doing a sketch where he played an Asian chef with plastic buck teeth. :(

Anyway, this is the telethon thread. He really performed some amazing, drugged monologues of fury in the '70s.

ok, yeah, afaict the consensus seems to be that three on a couch is the best of the lot.

lol, he did the asian with buck teeth thing in hardly working when he gets a job at a benihaha-type place. yikes

i would love to see footage from his chat shows or from the telethon years when he was out of control

him interviewing shatner. the mind reels.

They probably both thought they were talking into a mirror.

jenny lewis should take this over next year

He did the Asian stereotype bit when he guested on Mad About You (voice only, not that it made it any less offensive); you could hear the studio audience collectively thinking, "What the fucking fuck?"

For me, seeing Jerry as "the kid" (first in You're Never Too Young, which COMPLETELY changed my mind about Lewis/made me a convert for life), the first thing that sprang to mind was, "Oh, so this is where Pee-Wee Herman got about 60% of his schtick." The Errand Boy makes that connection more obvious (and the studio backlot scene in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is pretty much an homage to Errand Boy).

in his more freeform moments, Jerry is clearly father to Jim Carrey too

Jerry's out

A month before the show... If this isn't purely age/health-related, I'm sure there's a story, and I don't wanna hear it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpdnfD1Z_tg

Sorry, disfigured kids. I'm not watching a second of your show this year.

missing the mortifying hilarity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMX8yA3MAwc

At 4:10: "I'd like to see her in a platter with a banana in her mouth.

!!

And nice Goodfellas moment at 6:30. "Why did you play those few notes after he said stop?"

excellent Torah joke about a minute after that

"It shoulda been a Jew that did it."

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/09/dean-martin-jerry-lewis-reunion-anniversary

I somehow missed this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il2bddu2a8A

him interviewing shatner. the mind reels.

― dell (del), Thursday, May 19, 2011

They probably both thought they were talking into a mirror.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, May 19, 2011

1984:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWeR3MN4im0

Shatner interview starts at 28:00 if you're impatient

Totie Fields, people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=velqgpw6PTY