American comedian, director, writer, actor, producer and TV host. A successful duo-comedy team with Dean Martin 1950-1954, his variety shows, Vegas club acts and films touched the hearts of millions. When his relationships with Martin ended bitterly, the two did not speak to each other for some 20 years. In 1976 they were reunited on Lewis’ telethon, an event orchestrated by Frank Sinatra. Lewis said that he was delighted to see his old partner and was thinking, “Please let me think of something to say.” When they came out of their bear hug, Lewis looked at Martin and said, “So. You working?”
After their split, Lewis became writer, director and actor in a score of films, which critics in Europe considered among the finest comedy movies ever made. But something was still lacking in his life, until he was persuaded to undertake his first Labor Day telethon, which brought in a million dollars. It wasn’t the money, it was the care he was able to give and the help he was able to give to “Jerry’s kids.” Lewis has been the originating sponsor and continuing M.C. for the annual Muscular Dystrophy Association drive since 1966. In 1978 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and has won international honours such as the Commander Order of Arts and Letters.
Still, not everyone cared for his brand of cross-eyed, buck-toothed-goofy physical humour. Lewis cut his teeth on the burlesque and vaudeville kind of comedy, playing the Borscht Belt in New York with his parents. He made his pro debut at five, singing “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” With vaudevillian parents who never made the big time, he was shuttled among grandparents and aunts. He remembers vividly the loneliness, separated from parents who were always “on the road.”
He still, 60 years later, got excited about performing. In 1995 he signed to do a five-year road tour of “Damn Yankees,” in the U.S., London, Japan and Paris.
He and his first wife, Patti, had six sons and they divorced in 1980. In Patti’s memoir, “I Laffed Til I Cried,” she tells of her husband’s blistering temper, emotional absences, addiction to painkillers, profligate spending and philandering that finally led to their divorce. Ex-wife Patti filed a lawsuit against Lewis for royalties he received off the remake of “The Nutty Professor” in 1996, claiming that she’s owed half of the $1.4 million he was paid. Lewis vehemently denied that she’d receive any of it. He and his second wife, SanDee Pitnick (born 1945) had an adopted daughter in 1992, Danielle, whom he adored.
After coronary bypass surgery in 1983, he stopped his four-pack a day smoking habit. Lewis was hospitalized on 31 July thru 8 August 1999 for viral meningitis in Darwin, Australia; he recovered well. Ailing with the lung ailment pulmonary fibrosis, Jerry collapsed moments before a London charity performance on 8 September 2002. He refused to go to the hospital and recovered at his nearby London home. The comedian suffered a mild heart attack on 11 June 2006 en route to San Diego from New York City on a cross-country commercial airline flight.
Lewis had had prostate cancer, diabetes, pulmonary fibrosis, and a decades-long history of heart disease. He died at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada, at 9:15 a.m. on 20 August 2017, aged 91.
Link to Wikipedia biography