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THE PRINCE OF COMEDY

I couldn’t believe that I was going to direct a segment of First Person with Jerry Lewis, one of my idols.  He lived to a ripe old age of 91 but seemed to never grow old.  I was going to spend an afternoon with the Clown Prince of Comedy.

Mr. Lewis was born in Irvington NJ to show biz parents and this made him a natural candidate for the NJN network show First Person with Betty Adams which I directed for two seasons until Betty ran out of her list of famous Jerseyians.

We were scheduled to shoot in Mr. Lewis’s suite the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia’s most posh neighborhood.   When we arrived we took a private elevator that opened directly into a suite and we were greeted by Jerry’s personal assistant,  Robert Considine, who I recognized from his brief appearances on the Labor Day telethon.  Mr. Lewis was on the East Coast doing his stand up act first at the Valley Forge Music Circus and now he was starting a week at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, NJ, once famous for its show with big names stars but long gone to the wrecking ball.  The suite was big and as grand as I imagined with a baby grand piano as a centerpiece of the “living room” with a wonderful view of the city.  We set up our equipment in a corner there with a wingback for Betty and a leather loveseat set so Mr. Lewis would face her.  It was a big set up with two sound synced film cameras cross shooting and about 8 lights placed around the room. Plus, we had backup for everything just in case Murphy’s Law struck us.  After an hour of setting and testing I informed the assistant we were ready to go.

Jerry Lewis entered and said “Hi” not in his familiar Nutty Professor voice but in a low cool and very serious voice.  I introduced myself and the crew.  He was cordial but obviously more interested in our setup and chatted with our two cinematographers.  I waited patiently while he perused our equipment. “Hum, two 16’s huh?  Arrie’s (Arriflex) are good cameras much smaller than our 35 mills at my studio. Nice mike.   I always liked this one,” and so forth.  He was obviously trying to impress the guys that he was more than a comedian and also a pro in the filmmaker’s craft.  He was dressed in sharply pressed very new looking jeans, an immaculate blue oxford button down shirt and dark blue tennis sweater. His black leather boots looked like they cost more than my weeks’ pay.  And his cologne was fantastic! His outfit was complete with a paisley silk ascot.  I had rarely ever seen anyone wearing one (except in the movies).  Fascinating wardrobe choices.

We went right to work and the interview was fairly straight forward – “Where were you born…What’s your first memory of NJ…Your father was in vaudeville? How did you like school? Your first comedy show? and so forth.  We shot more footage than we would need for a half hour segment.  And then it was over.  My biggest surprise was that during the entire interview Jerry Lewis did not say one funny thing; did not use one comic voice – not knowing his work one would have thought he was a stock broker.  I got the feeling that he enjoyed being behind the camera much more than falling in front of it.  “Thanks guys, I hope you got enough footage.”   And he disappears into the inner sanctions of his suite.  We quickly went to work striking the gear and as always it went down faster than it went up.  His assistant stayed with us and praised us for being professional and quick and thanked us for not “wasting Mister Lewis’s time as he has two shows to do tonight.”  As he showed us out we learned something much more “telling” about Mr. Lewis, then the whole interview and this has stayed with me all these years.  Assistant Bob, as Lewis called him, noticed that I was eyeing a hotel rolling rack of clothes in the foyer.  There were at least a dozen tuxes with all the accessories along with a number of jeans, blue shirts – duplicates of the outfit Mr. Lewis wore it for the interview.  “Oh these,” and in a confidential whisper he told me that his boss never wore the same thing twice.  That he was “allergic” to cleaning fluid and most laundry detergents.  And frankly, he revealed,  after growing up in “hand-me-downs”  he just simply loved the feel of new clothes, underwear and all.  He could see my surprise.  And added I take the worn ones to the “Goodwill Deposit Box” each week when we are on tour.

“Wow,” was all I could muster as we entered the elevator to travel back from the realm of a Prince.



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