美国国家公共电台 NPR Jerry Lewis, Comic Icon And Titan Of Telethons, Dies At 91

 

DWANE BROWN, HOST:

Jerry Lewis was truly a star of stage, screen and television. He created a hit nightclub act with singer Dean Martin. He starred in more than 60 movies and directed some 15 of those, including the original "The Nutty Professor." And Lewis spent four decades raising hundreds of millions of dollars for charity in his annual Labor¹ Day Telethon. Jerry Lewis died today at the age of 91. Pat Dowell has this remembrance. She was a big fan, and this was the last piece she finished before she passed away.

PAT DOWELL, BYLINE²: Jerry Lewis was the son of small-time entertainers who were always on the road. As Lewis told TV interviewer David Susskind in 1965, he spent a lot of time with relatives.

(SOUNDBITE OF INTERVIEW)

JERRY LEWIS: I was a rent-a-kid-a-day club, you know? Who wants Jerry this week (laughter)?

DOWELL: Lewis did get to travel with his folks, mostly as a teenager. That's when he developed his own act. But he didn't hit it big until he teamed with Dean Martin, who played the suave³, handsome grownup to Lewis's juvenile⁴.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DEAN MARTIN: (As character) What are you doing in my fountain anyhow?

LEWIS: (As character) Oh, I came over here, sir, from the employment agency. And they said that you needed a very fine, upstanding, sanitary⁵ soda⁶ jerker, sir. Well, look know further, buddy⁷. I'm your jerk.

(LAUGHTER)

DOWELL: Such crazy crackups made Martin and Lewis the highest-paid comedy act in the country. They got their own radio and TV shows and made 16 hit movies, including the 1956 Western parody⁸, "Pardners." Dean rejects Jerry through the whole movie. When the words the end appear on screen, they shoot them off.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "PARDNERS")

LEWIS: We have something to say to you. Right, Dean?

MARTIN: We sure do, Jer. We want you folks to know we sure enjoyed working for you, and we hope you enjoyed the picture.

LEWIS: Yeah, and we hope you'll keep coming to see us because we like seeing you.

DOWELL: Shortly after "Pardners," Martin and Lewis broke up without public explanation. But with headlines in all the papers, they made one more movie - again, a hit - but they were hardly speaking to each other by that time and for decades after. Yet Lewis always used the word love to describe his relationship with Dean Martin.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

LEWIS: We never, ever fell out of love.

DOWELL: Fifty years after the breakup, Lewis told WHYY's Fresh Air that their success with club owners and audiences wasn't about the jokes.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

LEWIS: They were paying for two men to let an audience see how much fun they were having and the love that went on between the older guy and the younger guy. When we were able to project that to an audience, we had them in our pockets from day one.

DOWELL: Going solo let Lewis realize his ambition to write, direct and star in his own movies. He was an early adopter of new film and video technology. He pioneered the now-standard practice of placing a video monitor on the film camera to provide immediate⁹ feedback to the director on how a scene looks. He used it on all of the films he directed, including his biggest hit, "The Nutty Professor."

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE NUTTY PROFESSOR")

LEWIS: (As Prof. Julius Kelp) The various aspect, of course, is relativity to hydrogen. There is hydrogen - duly explosive and more devastating¹⁰ than the atomic.

DOWELL: Lewis plays both Professor Julius Kelp in the 1963 comic take on Jekyll and Hyde, and Kelp's chemically liberated¹¹ id, the smug hipster, Buddy Love.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE NUTTY PROFESSOR")

LEWIS: (As Buddy Love) Here you are, baby. Take this. Wipe the lipstick¹² off. Slide over here next to me, and let's get started.

DOWELL: Lewis wrote in his autobiography¹³, "In Person," that he hated Buddy Love. But co-star Stella Stevens recalls that when it came time to shoot the scene in which the irresistible¹⁴ bully¹⁵ publicly reverts¹⁶ to the shy academic, Lewis balked¹⁷.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

STELLA STEVENS: And he locked himself in his dressing¹⁸ room and was crying. To come out - to have to make the transition between being Buddy Love back to the nutty professor himself.

DOWELL: Lewis's struggle was not surprising in a film that has an almost confessional air about it, says Lewis biographer Shawn Levy¹⁹.

SHAWN LEVY: There's something very, very personal about that film - very revelatory, you know. Jerry as a solo director and performer made a lot of films about multiple personalities²⁰. There's two Jerry Lewises is in "The Bellboy." There's five or six in "The Family Jewels." There's three in "Three On A Couch." But in "The Nutty Professor," I think it's the only one where you have a contrast between the nebbish, you know, Professor Kelp, who invents something, and then this guy who kind of destroys it, who much more resembled the off-camera Jerry Lewis than any other character he ever played.

DOWELL: Levy says that Lewis could be brusque and self-confident. He also could be intimidating²¹, says Martin Scorsese, who directed Lewis in "The King Of Comedy."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MARTIN SCORSESE: Could be gracious, could be difficult, and is the kind of person who, you know, walks into his office or an area, and people just move aside.

DOWELL: Lewis was also a great film maker²², Scorsese says, right up there with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SCORSESE: The concepts, I think, really, the absurdity²³ of the imagery and the execution of those ideas visually - very precise, very brilliant.

DOWELL: By the time Scorsese directed him in 1983, Lewis's filmmaking career was over. But he'd become such an entertainment powerhouse that he'd acquired the rights to his films, which allowed him to control and cash in on remakes. And, in 2012, he turned "The Nutty Professor" into a stage musical, which he directed himself at the age of 86. And Lewis remained popular around the world, most notably²⁴ in France, where the government gave him its highest civilian²⁵ honor.

But Jerry Lewis never got an Oscar for his filmmaking. And many critics here refused to take him seriously. The Academy did give him the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian²⁶ Award in 2009 for his decades of fundraising for the Muscular Dystrophy Association on his annual telethon. But he was criticized for that, too, by activists²⁷ who complained he patronized people with disabilities. Lewis brushed off all of his critics.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

LEWIS: I would do it again in a heartbeat. To hear an audience laugh, you go to any extreme because that's your lot in life. Now, if you're not dedicated²⁸ to the love of your work, that's a whole different performer. Those are people that don't get nervous before they go on. Those are people who are there for the paycheck, and that's all they know about. So what they're giving is a mechanical performance.

You would never know it. He looks like he's singing great, or he looks like he's dancing great. But, in truth, he's waiting to get the check. That's all that means to him. He would respond no differently if he was a shoemaker. And that's not the true sense of the word performer.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COME RAIN OR COME SHINE")

LEWIS: (Singing) You're going to love me like nobody loved me. Come rain or come shine.

DOWELL: And Jerry Lewis was a performer in the truest sense. For NPR News, this is Pat Dowell.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COME RAIN OR COME SHINE")

LEWIS: (Singing) Days may be cloudy or sunny.

1 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 suave   

adj.温和的；柔和的；文雅的

参考例句：

• He is a suave,cool and cultured man.他是个世故、冷静、有教养的人。
• I had difficulty answering his suave questions.我难以回答他的一些彬彬有礼的提问。

4 juvenile   

n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的

参考例句：

• For a grown man he acted in a very juvenile manner.身为成年人，他的行为举止显得十分幼稚。
• Juvenile crime is increasing at a terrifying rate.青少年犯罪正在以惊人的速度增长。

5 sanitary   

adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的

参考例句：

• It's not sanitary to let flies come near food.让苍蝇接近食物是不卫生的。
• The sanitary conditions in this restaurant are abominable.这家饭馆的卫生状况糟透了。

6 soda   

n.苏打水；汽水

参考例句：

• She doesn't enjoy drinking chocolate soda.她不喜欢喝巧克力汽水。
• I will freshen your drink with more soda and ice cubes.我给你的饮料重加一些苏打水和冰块。

7 buddy   

n.（美口）密友，伙伴

参考例句：

• Calm down,buddy.What's the trouble?压压气，老兄。有什么麻烦吗？
• Get out of my way,buddy!别挡道了，你这家伙！

8 parody   

n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文

参考例句：

• The parody was just a form of teasing.那个拙劣的模仿只是一种揶揄。
• North Korea looks like a grotesque parody of Mao's centrally controlled China,precisely the sort of system that Beijing has left behind.朝鲜看上去像是毛时代中央集权的中国的怪诞模仿，其体制恰恰是北京方面已经抛弃的。

9 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

10 devastating   

adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的

参考例句：

• It is the most devastating storm in 20 years.这是20年来破坏性最大的风暴。
• Affairs do have a devastating effect on marriages.婚外情确实会对婚姻造成毁灭性的影响。

11 liberated   

a.无拘束的，放纵的

参考例句：

• The city was liberated by the advancing army. 军队向前挺进，解放了那座城市。
• The heat brings about a chemical reaction, and oxygen is liberated. 热量引起化学反应，释放出氧气。

12 lipstick   

n.口红，唇膏

参考例句：

• Taking out her lipstick,she began to paint her lips.她拿出口红，开始往嘴唇上抹。
• Lipstick and hair conditioner are cosmetics.口红和护发素都是化妆品。

13 autobiography   

n.自传

参考例句：

• He published his autobiography last autumn.他去年秋天出版了自己的自传。
• His life story is recounted in two fascinating volumes of autobiography.这两卷引人入胜的自传小说详述了他的生平。

14 irresistible   

adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的

参考例句：

• The wheel of history rolls forward with an irresistible force.历史车轮滚滚向前，势不可挡。
• She saw an irresistible skirt in the store window.她看见商店的橱窗里有一条叫人着迷的裙子。

15 bully   

n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮

参考例句：

• A bully is always a coward.暴汉常是懦夫。
• The boy gave the bully a pelt on the back with a pebble.那男孩用石子掷击小流氓的背脊。

16 reverts   

恢复( revert的第三人称单数 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还

参考例句：

• The mind reverts to the earliest days of colonial history. 我们回想到早期的殖民地历史。
• Macau reverts to Chinese sovereignty at midnight on December19. 澳门主权于十二月十九日零时回归中国。

17 balked   

v.畏缩不前，犹豫( balk的过去式和过去分词 )；（指马）不肯跑

参考例句：

• He balked in his speech. 他忽然中断讲演。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• They balked the robber's plan. 他们使强盗的计划受到挫败。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

18 dressing   

n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料

参考例句：

• Don't spend such a lot of time in dressing yourself.别花那么多时间来打扮自己。
• The children enjoy dressing up in mother's old clothes.孩子们喜欢穿上妈妈旧时的衣服玩。

19 levy   

n.征收税或其他款项，征收额

参考例句：

• They levy a tax on him.他们向他征税。
• A direct food levy was imposed by the local government.地方政府征收了食品税。

20 personalities   

n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There seemed to be a degree of personalities in her remarks.她话里有些人身攻击的成分。
• Personalities are not in good taste in general conversation.在一般的谈话中诽谤他人是不高尚的。

21 intimidating   

vt.恐吓，威胁( intimidate的现在分词)

参考例句：

• They were accused of intimidating people into voting for them. 他们被控胁迫选民投他们的票。
• This kind of questioning can be very intimidating to children. 这种问话的方式可能让孩子们非常害怕。

22 maker   

n.制造者，制造商

参考例句：

• He is a trouble maker，You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼，你不要跟他在一起。
• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。

23 absurdity   

n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论

参考例句：

• The proposal borders upon the absurdity.这提议近乎荒谬。
• The absurdity of the situation made everyone laugh.情况的荒谬可笑使每个人都笑了。

24 notably   

adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地

参考例句：

• Many students were absent,notably the monitor.许多学生缺席，特别是连班长也没来。
• A notably short,silver-haired man,he plays basketball with his staff several times a week.他个子明显较为矮小，一头银发，每周都会和他的员工一起打几次篮球。

25 civilian   

adj.平民的，民用的，民众的

参考例句：

• There is no reliable information about civilian casualties.关于平民的伤亡还没有确凿的信息。
• He resigned his commission to take up a civilian job.他辞去军职而从事平民工作。

26 humanitarian   

n.人道主义者，博爱者，基督凡人论者

参考例句：

• She has many humanitarian interests and contributes a lot to them.她拥有很多慈善事业，并作了很大的贡献。
• The British government has now suspended humanitarian aid to the area.英国政府现已暂停对这一地区的人道主义援助。

27 activists   

n.（政治活动的）积极分子，活动家( activist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His research work was attacked by animal rights activists . 他的研究受到了动物权益维护者的抨击。
• Party activists with lower middle class pedigrees are numerous. 党的激进分子中有很多出身于中产阶级下层。 来自《简明英汉词典》

28 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。