The Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon - Classic or Dud?

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.