Who'd protest an Academy Award for Jerry Lewis?

We at Tabloid Baby are very happy that film genius and total film-maker Jerry Lewis will be receiving a long-overdue Academy Award on Sunday. Some activists for the disabled are not. They plan protests against this man who raised billions of dollars and generations of awareness for their cause.

For Immediate Release: Contact:
February 18, 2009 Lawrence Carter-Long, 917-684-3235

OSCAR CONTROVERSY!

Disability Advocates Protest "Humanitarian" Award Recipient, Jerry Lewis. Learn why:

Los Angeles, CA - Disability community leaders from across disability advocacy will protest the decision of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to grant Jerry Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at this Sunday's Oscar Awards ceremony. Lewis has described disabled individual is "half a person" and referred to a wheelchair as "a steel imprisonment."

For more than two decades, disability rights advocates have objected to Lewis' portrayal of life with a disability as tragic and pathetic. In response, Lewis snarled, "You don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!"

Dismissing the disability community's objections, the Academy has decided to proceed with the award. In a letter to the activist group The Trouble with Jerry, Academy director Bruce Davis compared Lewis' insulting, outdated attitudes to "some scratches in the paint job... of a Lamborghini."

"To outsiders, Jerry Lewis may be perceived as a humanitarian, but to us Lewis personifies one of the biggest barriers facing people with disabilities: outdated attitudes," said author and activist Laura Hershey, a protest organizer. "While the Motion Picture Academy has chosen to award Lewis the Hersholt award due to the money raised on his MDA Telethons, we counter the cost is too high. Money can't buy respect." Said Hershey, "we experience the side-effects of Lewis' pity-mongering every day, when people see us as victims rather than as contributors, as recipients of handouts rather than equal citizens. Every dime raised has been at cost of our dignity."

Over 30 organizations endorse The Trouble with Jerry campaign, and to date over 2600 individuals have signed a petition protesting the award. The petition states in part, 'Rather than working for equality and social inclusion of disabled people, the MDA Telethon portrays us as hopeless, pathetic, eternal children.

Demonstrations will take place during Oscar weekend in Los Angeles and around the US. Local LA protest schedules and locations are as follows:

Friday, February 20, noon, Motion Picture Academy, 8949 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills
Saturday, February 21, 12 noon, Kodak Theatre, Highland & Hollywood Blvd
Sunday, February 22, 2:00 p.m., near the Kodak Theatre, Hollywood & Vine

Correspondence between The Trouble with Jerry and the Motion Picture Academy, as well as some history of disability rights protests against Jerry Lewis, and current protest information, can be found at http://TheTroubleWithJerry.com

Jerry brings his Telethon back to Vegas. Almost.

Variety reports that Jerry Lewis is bringing his Labor Day Telethon back to his hometown of Las Vegas after ten years and a brush with death. Looks like God, whom Jerry once accused of having “goofed” when he created dystrophic kids, has spared him for another run in the desert.

Hooray for Jerry Lewis. Jerry, as we all agree, is the greatest comedian of our era, a wonderful film clown, and a great and influential filmmaker (read The Total Film-Maker if you think this is satire).

So it’s too bad that Jerry is not being welcomed back into the heart of the action on the Strip, but is actually bringing his telethon to a squaresville hotel on the edge of Las Vegas, far from the neon and big money, off the I-15 highway. Fans won't be wandering in off the Strip 24/7, but will have to be bused in to a new place called the South Coast, a joint with an equestrian center, bowling alley and Italian joint called Don Vito’s. It’s a long way from Caesars, where Tabloid Baby’s author worked on a Jerry Lewis Telethon close to two decades ago, having wangled his way into a weekend production gig just to be able to spend 48 hours awake with Jerry, Sammy, Tom Jones, Susan Anton and Mr. T, among others. Two years later, Jerry granted our man total access behind the scenes of his 1989 Telethon, for a special episode of A Current Affair (still being sold on videotape online).

The A Current Affair segment-- Jerry raw, verite, bleeped, no-holds-barred, warts and all-- caused a scandal among the MDA and Jerry Lewis’s staff, and though Jerry himself called to say he loved the show, would be the first and last time such access was given (read the entire story in Tabloid Baby, Chapter 6, “Lesbians, Cripples & Clowns”).

That said, it’s a shame someone in power in Vegas doesn’t step up and bring the Telethon to the heart of the Strip. And it’s too bad that a young superstar or group of stars don’t take the Telethon to a new generation of viewers.

Hey, we understand that no one in the Telethon universe can be of greater magnitude than Jerry— which is why each year brings us a reunion of Gary Lewis & The Playboys and not Pink Floyd, but surely at this point in the December of his years (he’s turning 80 on March 26), Jerry would realize that the comic pretenders to his throne are his lessers and only reflect in his brilliance.

Otherwise, the Telethon will die with him. Jann Carl and Tony Orlando aren’t the ones to carry on.

What’s needed is star power: Adam Sandler, David Spade and Rob Schneider. Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell. George Clooney and Rande Gerber and Matt Damon, with Zeta-Jones and Julia Roberts sitting in. Ben Stiller. The Hudson Brothers. Angelina and Brad. Tiny Fey and Jimmy Fallon.

Most every one of them in one combination or another have participated in telethon events, from Comic Relief to 9/11 benefits to the “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” Katrina broadcasts. They showed that the telethon form is not necessarily a dinosaur, but with the right production, direction, talent and the kind of edge Jerry gave for so many years (especially when he was hooked on pills), it can be the most exciting television formats around— and with a DVD afterlife.

This new generation of Vegas lizard has the juice to grab the Maloofs to hand over the showroom in the Palms or collar Steve Wynn or borrow the Mandalay Bay for a weekend so Jerry Lewis can sit at his rightful place, under a tote-board in a classy showroom on the Strip. It's for the kids. It's for show biz.

In the meantime, download the script for The Day The Clown Cried here.

Inglourious Tablet trashes Jerry Lewis movie (without even seeing it)

With Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds #1 at the box office and the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon around the corner (September 6th-7th), Our Man Elli in Israel (who's been very busy as a television correspondent for the Israel Broadcasting Authority) turns us on to Tablet Magazine website ("a new Jew news site, a few months old, actually very good," he says), which, amid its coverage of Quentin Tarantino's World War II revenge fantasy about American Jewish soldiers slaughtering and scalping Nazis, informs a new Jewish generation about the great Academy Award®-winning director (Jerry Lewis) and his Holocaust fantasy, The Day The Clown Cried. "Don't Forget Jerry Lewis' Holocaust Movie (It's so much worse than 'Basterds')" reads in part:

"...Lewis plays a German-Jewish clown named Helmut Doork—suffice to say that we’re making absolutely none of this up— who is sent to Auschwitz, where his job is to entertain the children as they are marched to the gas chambers. So picture Jerry, complete with slicked-back hair but dressed as a clown, doing his schtick, while Jewish children—who all look suspiciously Scandinavian; the film was made in Sweden—are joyfully, laughingly walking unwittingly to their brutal slaughter. Life is Completely, Totally Tasteless. At the end, the clown, having led yet another group of kids to the 'showers,' decides to enter with them. Fin.

"According to The New Yorker, Lewis— who was battling a Percodan addiction during the film’s production— insists the film will never see the light of day (even as he also insists it is a masterpiece). So we have to rely on those unlucky few who have borne witness. 'This was a perfect object,' comedian Harry Shearer told Spy. 'This movie is so drastically wrong, its pathos and its comedy are so wildly misplaced, that you could not, in your fantasy of what it might be like, improve on what it really is.' 'I was appalled,' concurs journalist Lynn Hirschberg. 'I couldn’t understand it. It’s beyond normal computation.' No word on how the French felt about it..."


Of course, the writer has never seen the unreleased Jerry Lewis film, and in an effort to create an aura of hipster journo cool, has fallen into the "make fun of Jerry Lewis" scene that was so hip twenty years ago. In fact, the Tablet post cites the trendy, elitist Eighties-era Spy magazine as its source for its Jerry-bashing. We, for one would like to find a hip young Jewish website that's proud that one of its own is perhaps the greatest comedic figure of the Twentieth Century, and as his Oscar® this year attests, among most important innovators in cinematic comedy and cinema itself, and make headlines with a frank reappraisal of a maligned work of art.

As a matter of fact, it's high time we all get a chance to judge The Day The Clown Cried for ourselves.

Meanwhile, read the script here.

Don't forget the Jerry Lewis Telethon

The 2006 Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon begins on Sunday evening. It's the 41st. It's back in Las Vegas. Sort of.

You can donate here. Give 'til it hurts.


From Tabloid Baby:

...The next day I had a message from Jerry Lewis. I'd written him a letter, asking permission to shoot behind the scenes at his Muscular Dystrophy Telethon. Jerry had called me back.

Jerry Lewis was my show business hero. His telethons were, to me, the ultimate in reality television, edge-of-your-seat psychodramas from an alternative show business universe where time stopped in the Sixties and only Frank Sinatra was a bigger star than Jerry himself.

I had dozens of VHS tapes at home filled with complete 21-hour telethons from years of Labor Day weekends. Two years earlier, when my friend Kiki worked as an assistant director for the telethon from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, I volunteered as a production assistant just so I could stay awake the entire time and hang with Jerry and Sammy and the gang.

One of the producers had assigned my first task the moment I arrived in the production trailer: fix the show rundowns that were distributed to all studio personnel. Someone had typed "Muscular Dystrophy Telethon" at the top of the sheets. Jerry had passed through the office, noticed the misprint and demanded it be corrected on every page. It was my job to white out the words "Muscular Dystrophy" and type in "Jerry Lewis." This wasn't the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, it was the Jerry Lewis Telethon. I was in fucking heaven...

Las Vegas Sun features Tabloid Baby video clip in Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon preview

The Las Vegas Sun has posted a clip from the Tabloid Baby YouTube channel as part of a feature story tribute to Jerry Lewis as his 45th annual Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Labor Day Telethon approaches.

The clip depicts Jerry in full throttle mode in the final hour of the 2009 MDA telethon, which added $60.5 million to the cause.

The Sun's reliance on material posted by the Tabloid Baby team reveals clearly how the Las Vegas news media looks to Tabloid Baby since our site excoriated local journalists for the shamefully lax and negligent coverage of the mysterious and untimely death of Las Vegas superstar Danny Gans.


The Sun article notes that the telethon from the South Point Casino-- far from the legendary Strip that 84-year-old Jerry Lewis helped put on the map and cultivated--faces obstacles in this tough economic times and confusing celebrity grid:

"He just keeps marching on, even with the changing economy, even without the support of stars who once clamored to be seen on the telethon.

“'You hear the list of performers this year — Brad (he searches for a word) Stump, Helen Utch, Ruth Belmenent,' he said. 'And these people are some of the best talent in America. But it’s a big difference' from big-name stars.

“'People don’t want to do a telethon anymore because they have to get off their butt, get on a plane, come here and do it,' he said. 'But I don’t want them when they don’t want to, because they don’t come with the right attitude. If they come out of pressure, they’re no good to me.'"


The 2010 Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon begins Sunday, Sept. 5 at 9 pm EDT, live from the South Point Hotel in Las Vegas. It concludes Labor Day, Sept. 6 at 6:30 pm EDT. Check listings for local stations, start and end times, or visit mda.org.


Social media followers of MDA’s Twitter, Facebook and sites will get a behind-the-scenes look at the show during the broadcast.

Read the only behind-the-scenes account of Jerry Lewis and the MDA telethon in Chapter 6 of the book, Tabloid Baby.

(NOTE THE BABY PICTURE)

PHOTOS BY JUSTIN M. BOWEN/ LAS VEGAS SUN

MDA to Jerry Lewis: "Thanks and f--- you!"

The Muscular Dystrophy Association has distanced itself from and shown great disrespect toward its greatest asset and the man who gave it an international identity, saying today that Jerry Lewis "will be asked" to participate in the drastically-slashed telethon in 2011.

We reported five days ago that something was amiss in the MDA's announcement that it would turn the 21 1/2 hour national tradition into a six-hour Sunday night television special because its announcement did not mention Lewis' name, while featuring photos of subhost Jann Carl. The following day, we reported exclusively word from a telethon insider that Jerry Lewis was not part of the decision-- and that the MDA officials consider the end of Lewis' reign to be a "transitioning."

Today, John Katsilometes of the Las Vegas Sun picked up the story, reporting that by all indications, Lewis will have a diminished presence on the revamped television special.


He quoted MDA PR VP Jim Brown:

“Jerry Lewis has been MDA’s national chairman for more than 50 years. He’s a world-class humanitarian how has done an absolutely outstanding job for the families served by the association. Jerry will be asked to play a key role in the 2011 telethon.”

Kats emphasized the "will be asked. Not, has been asked. "Lewis has been informed of, not consulted about, the drawdown of the show. He had nothing to do with that decision, which organizers feel will intensify interest in the program and appeal to big-name celebs who want to reach a large audience in prime time instead of the insomniacs tuning in at 3 a.m."


Kats says Jerry returned his phone call this morning and said, "I have nothing more to discuss about the situation," but called back later and promised to speak over coffee later in the week.

Stay tuned.

Why did TMZ exaggerate Jerry Lewis' gay slur?

We awoke this morning to see that corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com had lifted our story on Jerry Lewis' anti-gay slur in Hour 18 of the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon. They didn't give us any credit, but we didn't expect them to. We did expect that Harvey and the boys would at least be honest, and get the story right, especially since they followed our link and posted the incriminating video.

Jerry, in one of his freeform comic riffs, referred to someone as "the illiterate fag."

TMZ gilded the lily by claiming that Jerry "A woozy Jerry Lewis, 81, went all Isaiah Washington on his telethon last night, calling someone -- or something -- an 'illiterate faggot.'"

As the video illustrates, Jerry never uttered the word "faggot." As part of his old school, inappropriate riff, he deliberately-- and clearly-- caught himself at "fag."

Nor did the slur escape "last night." It occurred in the telethon's hour 18 yesterday. TMZ, who further hyped the story by claiming in the headline that "Jerry Lewis Drops F-Bomb During Telethon" (note to TMZ elitists: to mainstream Americans outside the Twink Male Zone, the "F-Bomb" is "fuck"). Crack down on those weekend workers, TMZ. There are only six Harveys til the TMZ TV debut!

Gary Lewis blames Jerry for brother's death

The great Jerry Lewis has made millions laugh and helped millions live, but like Bing Crosby and John Lennon and so many other great figures before him, has not managed to work the same magic within his own family. Word this morning is that Joseph Lewis, his 45-year-old son and a black sheep in the family for more than twenty years, has died, and that another of Jerry's troubled sons is blaming his father for the tragedy.

Joseph Lewis was estranged from his father for years. We recall that extra security was added to the Jerry Lewis Telethon in Las Vegas in 1989 (recounted in Tabloid Baby's Chapter Six, Lesbians, Cripples & Clowns), when word spread that Joe was somewhere outside, looking to attack his father. And as he has year after year, Jerry's eldest son Gary was allowed to perform for the national audience at that telethon with the latest version of his group, the Playboys.

Today, the story of Joey's death after suffering a seizure in Utah is accompanied by statements from Gary Lewis in which he blames the death in part on his father, for turning his back on the drug-addicted son.

Gary Lewis tells The Globe:

"Joe had problems his entire life and I blame our father. Jerry Lewis is a mean and evil person. He was never loving and caring toward me or my brothers.

"I don't know if Joe's death is drug related, but I believe it could have been prevented if he and my father had been on better terms. I believe he partly died of a broken heart.

"(My father) doesn't really care. He's more worried about his career and his image than his own family."

Comedy is not funny.

Jerry Lewis says "fag," minces, doesn't get laughs

Oh, that Jerry Lewis. The Tabloid Baby comedy hero who is exposed in a very wonderful way in the book of the same name, has caused a real kerfuffle in Sydney, Australia today, where he let loose with another anti-gay slur at a press conference.

Jerry, whose onscreen relationship with Dean Martin and many subsequent film roles cast him in gay-tinged or effeminate light, is 83, so... here's the story from a very helpful Australian gay website:

At a press conference in Sydney today 83 year old comedian Jerry Lewis decided to let fly with the word ‘fag’. And what’s even more shocking, a major Australian news outlet didn’t even feel the need to edit the word out before televising the interview.

While speaking with a journalist from Channel Ten News, Lewis was asked “What do you think of cricket?” His response was, “Oh cricket is a fag’s game!” Lewis then proceeded to flounce about, using camp, effeminate gestures, pretending to hold a bat with a limp wrist, squealing in a high pitched voice “Ah! The ball is coming towards me!”

He may have intended for it to be amusing, but not everyone is laughing.

It’s not the first time Jerry Lewis has publicly used the word ‘fag’. Last year he used it during his annual Labor Day Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy on American television. He issued a written apology afterwards, but it would seem he hasn’t learned his lesson at all...

Jerola! Fagola! Enoughola!

We predicted it as soon as the word rolled past his dentures. When Jerry Lewis uttered the slur "fag" on his telethon yesterday, we knew there'd be backlash and demands for apology. We knew that the ones who'd make the most noise wouldn't cut him a break, even though he's 81, he's from an era and school in which all manners of politically-incorrect labels were acceptable, he gave the world The Bellboy-- and despite the fact that the utterance took up less than one second of 21 and a half hours of philanthropy.

But the story was bound to grow-- especially after those activists at the corporate porn-pushing gossip site TMZ.com inflamed the matter this morning by claiming he'd barked the word "faggot"-- while posting the video that proved he didn't!

Leave it to our pal Ray Richmond, the straight-shooting Hollywood Reporter star (who matter-of-factly-- and spectacularly-- announced his friend Merv Griffin's homosexuality-- then rebuked Jerry for his comments on Merv's death), to put the flap into context at his essential Past Deadline site, injecting some common sense before a well-meaning old man is destroyed:

...My friend Burt Kearns at Tabloid Baby got the ball rolling in typically stylish fashion on his blog yesterday in taking Lewis to task for the anti-gay slur. It happened during the 18th hour of the annual fundraising event, with a fatigued Jerry blurting during a bit of onstage improv, "Your family has come to see you... you remember Bart, your oldest son... Jesse, the illiterate fag." There was an audible gasp in the crowd, but it didn't stop the checks from rolling in on schedule en route to a record $63.7 million haul.

Does this mean Jerry Lewis is homophobic? No. He could be. But it's more about a tired old man (he's 81) allowing some of his Vegas lounge act to slip into a live national TV broadcast. He cut his showbiz teeth during an era when it was just fine to defame gays, blacks, Latinos, Jews, whomever. Them days are gone -- as Lewis well knows -- but sometimes, if the brain isn't operating at maximum efficiency, old habits will intrude.

This comes on top of Jerry's having uttered the unfortunate phrase that Merv Griffin "deserved to die" last month because he purportedly did nothing to treat his prostate cancer. I doubt the man meant it that coldly, but he wasn't misquoted, either. I think it may be time for Jerry to take a little vacation and rest up, lest his mouth continue to sabotage the rest of his body.

(Funny. The very controversial chapter about Jerry Lewis and his telethon in Burt Kearns' book, Tabloid Baby, is titled "Lesbians, Cripples & Clowns." Click here to find out why.)

(UPDATE: Jerry apologized this afternoon.)

Everybody loves a clown

The honors and recognition for Jerry Lewis are pouring in while he's here to enjoy them. With Jerry bringing his telethon back to Las Vegas this Labor Day weekend, the Tabloid Baby team is leading the movement to give the show of our lives a home in a prime spot on the Strip, instead of the joint on the edge of town that's hosting the Glass Craft & Bead Expo this weekend.

Meanwhile, the Page Six team has this item about the recent French Legion of Honor inductee in Thursday's New York Post:

TARGET: JERRY
CAN Jerry Lewis take a joke? We'll find out June 9 when the legendary comic, who's known as a cantankerous curmudgeon, is roasted by the Friars Club at a star-studded luncheon at the Hilton. Lewis will have his self-esteem destroyed and suffer insults from some of the sharpest wits around. Richard Belzer will serve as Roastmaster. Friars Club Dean Freddie Roman said of Lewis, who's adored in France, "We're happy to prove that 50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong." Expect many cracks about "The Day the Clown Cried," Lewis' unreleased 1972 movie about a clown who entertained children in a Nazi concentration camp. Lewis has the distinction of being the most honored Friar, having previously been roasted in 1971 and 1986.

Never mind the "cracks." Download the script for "The Day The Clown Cried" here.

Read about Jerry, the Friars, and more great comedians and their place in tabloid history here.

(And by the way, take another listen to Jerry's son Gary Lewis and his group The Playboys, for some of the best pop songs of the Sixties, which means ever. Poor Gary's still out there, playing the Clay County Fairgrounds in Green Cove Springs Florida April 6 on his way to Branson, and based on classics like "This Diamond Ring," Everybody Loves A Clown," "Count Me In" and "Save Your Heart for Me," is surely a candidate for that rock hall of fame.)

Jerry Lewis' last telethon? His wife says not. "Unless we're putting him in the ground."

The spectacle of 84-year-old Jerry Lewis losing his composure during the finale of his 45th national Labor Day Telethon was the kind of reality television that cut right through the canned, faked standard TV fare. It was uncomfortable and unpredictable-- in its own way like Jerry during his sweaty, gassed-back Percodan jag heights of the Sixties and made even more urgent when producers in Los Angeles decided to cut away from the live moment, only to play the historic scene ninety minutes after it occurred.

The question is whether this will turn out to be Jerry Lewis' final telethon. Will Jerry Lewis be back in 2011? In his first-person backstage account for the Las Vegas Sun, John Katsilometes has a poignant and haunting answer from Jerry's wife, Sam:

“Oh, of course. Unless we are...“ She pauses, then says, “...putting him in the ground, he’ll be here.”

Just like 1989: Documentary crew is following Jerry Lewis at the telethon

History's being made, or at least repeating itself, at the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon taking place right now at the South Point Casino ("just minutes away from the famous Las Vegas Strip") as a documentary film crew is following Jerry behind the scenes.

As far as we know, this is the first time camera crews have been allowed to follow Jerry through the MDA Telethon rehearsals and broadcast since 1989, when Burt Kearns and a team from A Current Affair captured the Jerry Lewis in a way no one had ever seen. The shoot was edited into Jerry's Longest Day, an instant special half-hour episode of the groundbreaking tabloid TV show, earned a note of criticism from then-Fox TV chief Barry Diller because Jerry was shown uttering the word "goddamn," and is the subject of Chapter 6 of the book Tabloid Baby.

The crew trailing Jerry now is led by producer Gregg Barson, who wrote and produced the 2004 Phyllis Diller doco, Goodnight We Love You. Barson says it took six years to get Jerry to sign off on the project, which he plans to wrap by spring.

Jerry used to brag that he'd stay awake and onstage for the entire 20-hour telethon. Today, at 84, he'll be onstage from 1 to 3:30 Vegas time for the finale.

Comedy vet stirred by Jerry Lewis display

Jerry Lewis fans the world over were taken aback and moved by his display of emotion and mortality at the close of the 2010 MDA Labor Day Telethon.

Among them is Dave Sinker, the Emmy-winning comedy writer, comedian, actor, Second City vet and genius behind the legendary, acclaimed Comedy Shrine outside Chicago.

Dave writes:

It has been so easy for people to belittle this man, to poke fun at him, and to trivialize his work. But for me, Labor Day means Jerry Lewis and this telethon. I remember watching it every year as a kid, glued to my tv set when my friends were outside trying to squeeze in one last ballgame in the last few hours of summer vacation before the start of the new school year.

I remember watching it on a black and white tv set.

A parade of real celebrities entertained me. These were television icons, real talent, not reality "talent."

I remember Sinatra reuniting Martin and Lewis. I remember Ed McMahon as his co-host predicting the final donation total. I remember the firefighters, the letter carriers and Seven Eleven executives handing over monster checks ... and my mom sending her usual twenty bucks. And always I recall the playful man-child Jerry with his greasy, jet black, slicked back hair. He never seemed to age.

I've missed the last few years or maybe it's been a decade. The years have flown by faster than those fleeting last hours of Labor Day when I was a kid; the final day of summer.

I caught a glimpse of the telethon this morning. Jerry looked old to me for the first time in my life. He looked every bit of his 84 years. The ten year old boy in me would have thought that by 2010 there would surely be a cure. I think the child in Jerry felt the same way this year. There was more sadness than exhaustion in his eyes at the end of this year's telecast; as he tried to get through the closing number.

It was poignant, it was real, and bitter sweet. Thanks for sharing this video.

Three cheers for Jerry

A Tabloid Baby tip of the hat to Robert Lloyd at the LA Times, who for once offers a tribute to Jerry Lewis that isn't a backhanded compliment or a hipster's veiled slap. In anticipation of the 21 1/2 hour telethon that begins this evening, Lloyd lays it out, reminding that "before there was Live Aid-- or Live 8 or Live Earth-- there was Jerry Lewis and his telethon... Labor Day Weekend... each year with a mixture of famous faces, just-flew-in-from comics, spangly lounge singers and solid citizens bearing checks. And presiding over it all, the man the French call Le Roi du Crazy.

"Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon" is that thing that barely exists anymore, an actual television event-- and a variety show, to boot, while we're counting our nearly extinct species. But it is also remarkable in the way that Lewis-- not too proud to beg, cry or stick cigarettes in his ears if it will get you to send him a dollar-- has come, in an almost religious way, to embody his mission. It's his totally wired, sleep-sacrificing performance-- clownish, rabbinical, sentimental, slapstick -- that gives this marathon its weird ritual power. (The telethon raised $61 million last year, so "power" seems apt.) There is nothing quite like it.

I wouldn't want to claim that Lewis won't live to see a cure for any or all of the 40-some neuromuscular diseases that MDA funds help fight, because evidence suggests he can't be killed. At 81, he has fought prostate cancer, diabetes, pulmonary fibrosis, viral meningitis, a bleeding ulcer, two heart attacks and an addiction to painkillers from injuries sustained in the pursuit of comedy. But he has never missed a telethon.

Give til it hurts.

Jerry Lewis & The Telethon take a hit

We’ve supported Jerry Lewis and his Muscular Dystrophy Association since the Sixties, when we were kids putting on MDA fundraising carnivals in the driveway. And we’ve gotten older, and watched Jerry get older, every year, singing the same old song and expressing the same old hope that muscular dystrophy will one day be beaten.

So the article in today’s New York Times is a splash of cold water on the tears. Fittingly in the Business section, “Lacking Cure, a New Tack on a Muscle Disease” is more disheartening than any of the false claims that Jerry was taking money from the MDA, and far more controversial than the chapter in the book Tabloid Baby about what goes on behind the scenes at the Telethon.

The report concludes that corrupt, greedy drug companies, shortsighted doctors, the MDA's lack of direct oversight of the 225 clinics it funds, and the fact that the clinics don't share research, mean that a “cure” of the most prevalent dystrophic disease could be generations away— long after Jerry is dead. After we’re dead. And after many future Jerry's Kids are dead.

Some “highlights”:

“…For all the money collected toward a cure, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common form of the disease, still confines thousands of boys in this country to wheelchairs in their early teens. Many do not live past their 20s.

"It is a stark reminder of how American medicine — with its focus on breakthrough treatments — can sometimes fail a complex, rare and stubbornly uncurable disease. Single-minded in their pursuit of a cure, doctors and researchers for years all but ignored the necessary and unglamorous work of managing Duchenne (pronounced doo-SHEN) as a chronic condition…

"'We’re in a stone age with Duchenne,' said Dr. Linda H. Cripe, a pediatric cardiologist at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. She describes Duchenne patients as 'a group of kids that pediatric medicine had forgotten, a group of lost boys.'

"…The lack of interest in the mundane has also slowed progress in knowing what available therapies are the most useful. Large pharmaceutical companies often ignore a rare disease like Duchenne, and they are unwilling to undertake further research into treatments like steroids, where any benefits they show are shared by other manufacturers.

“'The economics aren’t there,' said Charles Farkas, head of the health care practice in the Americas for Bain & Company.

“'For too long, I was stuck on it as the home run or nothing,' said H. Lee Sweeney, a professor and medical researcher at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who is among the researchers now taking a different approach. 'The home run may skip the next two generations of these kids,' he said.

"...The Muscular Dystrophy Association, which raises tens of millions each year through Jerry Lewis’s telethon and other efforts, has also been criticized for a lack of focus on the specific needs of patients with Duchenne.

"The organization finances some 225 clinics across the country, including the one at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia... The association has no direct oversight of the clinics, some of which may have little experience in treating a patient with Duchenne.

"Dr. Valerie A. Cwik, the association’s medical director, says the group is now working to create a formal research network to gather and share information about Duchenne..."

Telethon time is here again

The 42nd annual Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon (notice how Jerry, and not muscular dystrophy, gets the billing), kicks off Sunday at 9 pm ET from the new South Point Hotel, Casino & Spa in Las Vegas, and run non-stop until 6:30 pm ET Labor Day, broadcast nationally by 190 television stations, and worldwide at www.mda.org.


Jerry's celebrity cohost is a singer named Billy Gilman, whom we've never heard of, which is fitting in a universe in which Jerry is the ultimate star. Don't miss this genuine event. Jerry Lewis is God, he won't be around much longer, he's the last one left, and last week's New York Times review of Mr. Bean's Holiday did not need to add a disclaimer when including him in the pantheon of great film pantomime artists including Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and Rowan Atkinson.

(Read the only insider's view of the Jerry Lewis Telethon-- featuring Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Bobby Berosini's orangutans and more-- in Tabloid Baby.)

Where's Jerry Lewis? Where's the media?

Surprising that the media's not making more of the news of the death of the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon, or looking into why the Muscular Dystrophy Association is trumpeting the news on its website with a photo of telethon supporting player Jann Carl and not Jerry Lewis himself. Is it a signal Jerry's being pushed aside? His startling display at last month's disappointing, low-wattage event was viewed with horror by many, and his comments about smacking Lindsay Lohan in the mouth days before the telethon were seen as an old man's crazy talk? The story's definitely worth looking into, and we'd figure editors who've grown up with the telethon as we all have would be making hay with this passing.

Back in the day, Jerry would scoff at telethon hosts who wouldn't stay awake and working for the entire 21 hour stretch, and the chopping of the cultural tradition to a bite-sized six hours on a Sunday night that won't even be live for most of the nation is a major cultural milestone, more so than John Lennon's 70th birthday.

JERRY LEWIS TELETHON SLASHED!

The annual 20-hour Labor Day Jerry Lewis telethon to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy, a fixture of American life for forty five years, is dead.

After the second year in a row in which Jerry and his surviving pals failed to top last year's total, the monumental annual television event is being downsized, slashed and shortened to a six hour prime time show.

MDA spokesman Jim Brown announced the end of the era, saying that the MDA hopes that giving the telethon a more focused broadcast window, will get bigger and better stars to appear.

The 2011 event is scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 4, and will reportedly air from 6 p.m. to midnight in each time zone, with only stations in the Eastern time zone carrying it live.

The MDA collected $58.9 million to fund research through last month's 2010 telethon.

Jerry Lewis is 84.

Death of a Telethon: MDA's announcement does not mention Jerry Lewis

The Muscular Dystrophy Association announced plans to turn the annual Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon into a six-hour primetime special on its Quest magazine website. The article made no mention of host Jerry Lewis, and ran with a photo of telethon subhost Jann Carl:

MDA Labor Day Telethon
Moves to Shorter Format

by Quest Staff

The 2011 MDA Telethon will run for six hours during prime-time viewing hours, in a bid to increase both audience and donations

Sometimes, less is more — and that’s the strategy behind MDA’s decision to shave off more than 15 hours from next year’s Labor Day Telethon broadcast.

The new six-hour Telethon will run during the prime-time viewing hours of 6 p.m. to midnight (Eastern time) on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, and will include the same time-tested mix of top entertainment, profiles of individuals and families with neuromuscular diseases, check presentations by MDA sponsors and live local segments.

The shorter format could well attract more television stations into MDA’s “Love Network,” as it’s easier for stations to clear six broadcast hours for Telethon programming than to clear nearly two days. It’s hoped that the combination of new format and prime-time Sunday viewing slot will result in larger audiences and more income for MDA’s research and services programs.

MDA has presented a 21½-hour Telethon over Labor Day weekend for 45 years.

“Ever since pioneering the Telethon as a fundraising, education and sponsor-recognition program, MDA has enjoyed unparalleled support from television and cable stations across America,” said Gerald C. Weinberg, MDA president & CEO and Telethon executive producer. “Our ‘Love Network’ of some 170 stations annually helps us reach an audience of some 40 million Americans. The stations’ efforts, and those of our national, regional and local sponsors, have been truly outstanding.”

Weinberg noted that MDA has been considering reducing the length of the Telethon broadcast for several years. Feedback from the 2010 show underscored the benefits of an extended prime-time show, he said.

“There’s nothing like our Telethon,” said Lee Miller, longtime Telethon producer. “In 2010, some 65 top acts performed, including some amazing production numbers by Tyce Diorio of ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’ as well as top Broadway and Las Vegas show segments. Our 2011 prime-time focus should make it easier to fill every moment of the show with the best headline entertainment.”