Lewis’s complex legacy

Jerry Lewis remains as cantankerous as ever, said Amy Wallace in GQ. Now 85, he’s been in show business since the age of 5, when as the son of vaudevillians, he kicked out a stage light and got an accidental laugh. He was tight with Charlie Chaplin. He’s met nine presidents. He still refers to Dean Martin as his “partner,” even though their act broke up 55 years ago. His films have grossed millions, and his work for the Muscular Dystrophy Association is one of America’s great philanthropic stories. Along the way, he’s earned a reputation as a control freak and a narcissist.

“If you add up the totality of the comic, there’s a lot of s--- there, pal,” he says. He’s certainly not afraid to toot his own horn. “I’m smarter than a pig in s---, I’ll tell you. I just don’t like to let everybody know.” He’s had more than his share of women, including, he claims, Marilyn Monroe. “I was crippled for a month,” he says of the encounter. Recently, Lewis was ousted as MDA chairman and host of the telethon, ending a nearly 60-year run—but he is undeterred. “I’ve got so much to do.” His goal is to live longer than George Burns (who died at 100), because he told Burns he was going to. “It was a joke,” says Lewis. “That’s all it was. Now it’s no joke.”

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