All right. The Jerry Lewis thing. Let’s talk about that.
I don’t care.
Yes, I know, he almost said “faggot”. He did.
I don’t love that word, believe me. But he was referring to an inanimate object, for God’s sake, and he’s 100 years old he’d been up for hours and really, who gives a shit?
And yes, I realize Issiah Washington got rehab.
Well, look. Not that I think people need rehab for being assholes, but when Issiah Washington spends 30 years raising money for kids, I’ll give him the same pass.
Anyway, I didn’t actually see it happen. I saw video afterward, but not the moment itself, and that was mainly because it’s become so depressing that even I can’t watch it anymore. And that’s saying something.
I watched just a few minutes of it on Sunday night, and I was so saddened by it all that it wasn’t even laughable anymore. Really, that upsets me much more than anything.
I remember being so excited about the telethon when I was a kid. The whole concept of staying up late and “watching the stars come out” seemed so glamorous and grown up. And there was a sense of danger that made me giddy: live television, late hours, no scripts. Something magical could happen.
So what happened? Why is it so sad? What’s missing?
Well to start with, everyone is dead.
Sammy, Frank, Dean . . . anyone who was worth staying up for, anyone who made it an event, gone, gone, gone. And it’s not just that no one has replaced them, it’s that no one can.
We don’t have stars like that now. In the few minutes I watched, I saw a pre-taped clip of Celine Dion singing I Drove All Night and doing air guitar. That makes me want to ask MDA for money.
Even the orchestra, which at one time was helmed by Count Basie, now sounded like a bar mitzvah band. It all seemed so dated and cheap and pale. I felt sadder watching the entertainment than I did seeing the kids in their wheelchairs.
To me, this is Jerry’s biggest mistake, even more than losing his judgment at 2:00 in the morning. He hasn’t found replacements. Not for the stars and not for himself. And the time is rapidly approaching when he just isn’t going to be able to do this anymore. Let’s be honest, he really isn’t able to do it now.
One very telling moment was when he was sitting at his desk, talking to some people from a supermarket chain that had been supporting the telethon for many years. An executive was talking about a company meeting they’d held to discuss fund-raising efforts, when Jerry interjected.
“Was this the meeting I was at in Atlanta?”
“Jerry,” said the woman, “that was 30 years ago.”
Between this kind of poignancy, Ed McMahon’s encroaching dementia and the industrial show production levels, there isn’t much to feel good about anymore. The whole event has turned into a sort of infommercial, completely devoid of joy.
I have to believe that Jerry’s original intention was to keep people watching and involved, so they’d become invested and want to affect the outcome of the evening. But it’s devolved now into something you can’t really bear to look at for more than a few minutes.
It’s common knowledge that Jerry Lewis has control issues, creatively speaking. He’s written, directed and starred in almost everything he’s ever done, and his tyrannical approach to movie making is legend.
It’s obvious that he’s taken the same approach to the telethon, and the people who depend on him are starting to pay the price. Because now that he’s either intimidated or prohibited anyone else from breathing new life into it, we’re witnessing the bleeding out of his creation. It’s literally dying along with him.
It’s hard to know what to feel the worst about.
First, there the fact that we live in a country where you and I are expected to pick up the phone and help pay to cure life threatening diseases.
And there’s the fact that only 2% of the people who watch the telethon every year are responsible for all the donations that MDA receives. And those are the same people who’ve been ponying up for the last 30 years, and when Jerry goes, so will they.
And then there’s the fact that Jerry Lewis has been so busy making this his telethon, that it never became bigger than Jerry Lewis. And that means that it has no future - or more accurately - it has the same future as he does. And that’s not long.
The fact that he’s allowed that to happen offends me more than anything he could say, in any context, at any hour.
17 responses so far ↓
1 Rogue of the Celestial Night // Sep 9, 2007 at 12:52 am
I miss the entertainment, however, my mothers friend Louis who had MD, asked the MDA for a wheelchair, but they said they couldn’t help him, that all the money they receive goes back to NY, called back to NY and they wouldn’t help him.
All he wanted was a wheelchair, not gold plated, or diamond crusted, just the “K” car of wheelchairs, and they couldn’t let loose with the dough to help him.
I hope they help someone, because they sure didn’t help Louis.
2 jj // Sep 9, 2007 at 10:45 am
BRAVA! I agree with you completely…back in the 70’s we would plan the whole weekend around staying up and watching the telethon, and let’s face it, there was an air of cheese around it even then…but it was good cheese.
And the whole “faggot” thing makes me crazy…you nailed it perfectly. Jerry’s got enough problems, let this one go. Strange and domineering as he is, his track record for doing good is pretty fucking amazing.
Now, I’ve been told that the “gay community” is outraged…I’m really quite gay, as is my boyfriend, but we’ve never found this community, and I don’t think it exists, or else we’re just not gay enough and so they don’t invite us to their rallies. And if it is indeed the buzz-cut, tank-topped, spray-on-tan gym bunnies that populate a large portion of West Hollywood, then count me out.
One of my favorite old Buddy Hackett comedy specials has a long audience-participation joke in it, and the punch line ends “two fags are trying to fuck a dead alligator.” IT’S FUNNY!
This is much like the whoel Don Imus affair, and April hit it spot-on…If you don’t like what someone says, don’t become a victim, just say “Fuck you, Jerry!” and be done with it. It’s so unproductive when people choose this sort of petty shit to get upset about. Yes, the freedoms offered in this country allow minorities to generate a voice…but why are so many of them so whiny.
Thanks, April…you should run for office this year too. Has Fred T. picked a running mate yet? Just a thought…
3 cinder-fella // Sep 9, 2007 at 11:25 am
I saw a part of the telethon with Jerry conducting the orchestra with the music from Cinderfella! Hey, he played a pretty good air flute and other stuff. That part was good, even though he had a painful look on his face…
Could it be time for some Jerry Lewis Celebrity Look-alikes for the telethon? Why not?
oh! I have it… hey… Jerry could put some Ceti Alpha 6 love loves into the ear of the look alike live on the show.
Woweeeoooowowwww… goes Jerry!!!
That will get all of the trekies to donate for shure.
4 haineux // Sep 9, 2007 at 12:34 pm
That has to be the least offensive use of the word FAGGOT I’ve heard in months.
You wanna hear FAGGOT and GAY? Check out the comments on damn near every single web bulletin board existing.
“This video is GAY.” “You’re a FAGGOT because you like that band.”
GAY and FAGGOT are the new words the kids are using, instead of RETARD, and before that, POLACK.
If I were Mr Gay Rights Warrior, I’d be a lot more concerned about the kids these days than Jerry Lewis.
But that’s not the point. The point is that making a big deal about something as stupid as this IS productive — if you’re the organization doing it. You get cameras on you to make your case.
These well-meaning organizations have probably been trying for years to get some air time, but is MSNBC or CNN going to show a picture of a YouTube comment stream of a bunch of Guitar Hero weenies hatin’ on each other? Of course not.
Television is most fascinated with itself.
5 pal Jacky // Sep 9, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Thanks April,
I thought I was beating a dead horse. To give him a tad of credit, he did say ‘no’ right afterward, like he just remembered he was in the 21’st century. People went insane about the word. Not the fact Jerry was flopping in and out of 1979. There was even an editorial in the times about it which wondered whether ‘F** Hag’ is also verbotten.( I dated a black girl for two months and I don’t want to be called a ‘n*****-lover’). Wanda Sykes said it best,’ It’s not what your called, it’s what you answer to’. Since Sykes is a female comic, her opinion means nothing to a person like the great Jerry.
6 NewsTalkGuy // Sep 9, 2007 at 5:57 pm
I pretty much agree with April and most of the comments. Growing up in the late 60’s and early 70’s, my dad and mom left the TV on all night and it was pretty neat back then.
I also seem to remember back at that time, that Jerry Lewis had a bit of a caustic streak about him, bullying certain corporations on the air. In the late 70’s, I was a teacher in Kentucky, near the Nashville market that carried the telethon (I believe it was WSM-TV). Anyway, everytime it looked like Jerry was on the air, they switched back to Nashville and did the local thing until there was an entertainer, then when Jerry was about to speak, they jump cut to Nashville. I asked a friend of mine who was an engineer there what was going on, and he told me that when Jerry was on the air, the phones in Nashville virtually stopped ringing and only began ringing again when he was not on the air.
Did anyone catch Norm Crosby early Monday morning during the telethon? He was still funny, but looking OLDER and sounding like he was on his fifth set of bad dentures.
Yea, the ‘old gang’ is gone and it seems more and more (to my 50 year old mentality) that many folks are celebrities and not Entertainers, such as Dean and Frank and Sammy, etc. They could showcase their talents in things like TV SPECIALS. Gee, could CBS even to a half-hour special with Brittany Spears and make it appear credible?
7 adorisday // Sep 9, 2007 at 6:05 pm
April, I think we’d all appreciate it if you got on the Telethon next year. You are the 21st Century comic bridge to that 70’s rat pack cheese. Yes, I’d defintely donate just to see you on.
8 adorisday // Sep 9, 2007 at 6:17 pm
And I mean definitely.
9 Egregious // Sep 9, 2007 at 7:09 pm
April, did your father ever appear on the telethon? Any story connected with that?
10 April // Sep 9, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Egregious, I don’t know if he ever did. I don’t think so. But he did make an awful movie with him in the early 70’s called Which Way to the Front?, and I had the displeasure of being on the set and watching him work. I think he was in his Percodan heyday and he was just an awful human being.
I was probably only about 8 at the time, but I still vividly recall him reducing Kaye Ballard to tears while they were filming.
11 Stretch // Sep 9, 2007 at 11:03 pm
…so a gay man from Italy would be a Fagoo? - Its OK I dated one…
I think J.L. is actually a marketing genius…when was the last time the Telethon got this much press
12 Egregious // Sep 10, 2007 at 7:56 am
Thanks, April. That Internet Movie Database review of “Which Way to the Front?” — woof. Just for the heck of it, I did a little Internet research. The year isn’t specified, but the MDA’s offical list of celebrity appearances for 1966-2006 says Paul Winchell was on the show.
13 pal Jacky // Sep 10, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I’m one degree of seperation from Jerry Lewis! My brother-in-law’s father, Milton Ebbins, produced the ’salt and pepper’ films with Peter Lawford and and Sammy Davis Jr. Jerry Lewis directed the second. My brother-in-law was a child on the set of that one and cannot stand Jerry lewis to this day. ( A ‘dick’ Donner directed the first, think original ‘omen’ and Christopher Reeves’s ’superman’). Milton is in his nineties and still going strong and last christmas told me a great story on how Sammy Davis Jr. was going to lip sync his last tour after his trac, but he died. He was even going to lip sync his comments in between. How creepy is that.
14 esmeralda // Sep 11, 2007 at 7:23 am
Yes Jerry Lewis can be caustic, can it be some of us are a little envious of his fame and fortune. I can tell by most of your comments that you think you will be young, beautiful and sound of mind forever. Think of this when we are 83 years old and our false teeth clatter and we say ridiculous things or have trouble hearing a comment…….if we live that long!!
15 wills7577 // Sep 11, 2007 at 9:53 am
Ok, enough about Jerry, I’m sure that when he finally goes off to be with Frank, Dean and Sammy, Ryan Seacrest will pick it up. Christ knows he does everything else. Then we’ll all have to put our heads in the oven.
Let’s move on, we need to hear you weigh in on Brittany at the VMA’s
16 jj // Sep 11, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Jesus, I hadn’t considered that…”Ryan’s Kids” - yikes.
17 Pookie // Sep 12, 2007 at 1:58 am
April, you said it so perfectly. I share all of your feelings and thoughts about this, and the memories of being a kid and staying up to watch. It was an event.
You must log in to post a comment.