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Jerry Lewis retracts: women are actually funny


Brock

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It seems Jerry Lewis has had a change of heart from his more recent opinion of funny women.

 

From the AP:

 

 


LOS ANGELES — Jerry Lewis says women are funny, but not as crude standup comics.

The 88-year-old entertainer was criticized for expressing his distaste for female comedians a few years ago, but in clarifying his comments, he called Lucille Ball "brilliant" and said Carol Burnett is "the greatest female entrepreneur of comedy."

But women who "project aggression" onstage rub him the wrong way because women bear children, "which is a miracle," he said.

Lewis was accompanied by his wife and daughter Saturday as he left his hand and footprints in cement outside Hollywood's Chinese Theatre. Quentin Tarantino introduced Lewis, who planned to attend a 50th anniversary screening of "The Nutty Professor" later that evening as part of the TCM Classic Film Festival.

 

Article: http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/e985e1f6961e4603a55a06c306bad392/US--People-Jerry-Lewis

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I read this article the other day about how Jerry viciously insulted all the audience members adoring him at a recent Q&A. He's insane.

 

http://m.vice.com/read/jerry-lewis-is-still-alive?fb_action_ids=10202569209939223&fb_action_types=og.likes

 

I suggest you don't read if you love Jerry Lewis!

 

I read about that, too, and I wasn't surprised.  I used to be the biggest Jerry Lewis fan in the world when I was a kid.  I was crazy about his movies and watched them whenever they were on.  But then when I was ten, my dad got me out of school one day to go to an annual golf tournament.  It was the first day of the tournament and they had a tradition of having celebrity amateurs play the pros on the first day.  That year, Jerry Lewis was one of the celebrities.  Jerry, a local sportscaster and George "Goober" Lindsey were a few of the celebrities I remember being there that year.  I was most excited to see Jerry.  So were my sister and my friends.  When he reached the hole where we were sitting, after everyone finished playing the hold, we went over to him and asked for his autograph.  (Providing autographs was one of the points of this pro-am day: for the fans to meet the celebrities.)  When we approached him, Jerry didn't even register a smile, just growled that he'd sign autographs on the next hole.  So we followed him to the next hole.  There he told us the same thing.  So we followed him to the next hole, then the next.  He never signed a single autograph.  I remember George Lindsey being very friendly and happy to sign autographs for us, as did the other celebrities, but Jerry Lewis couldn't even offer us kids a single smile, much less an autograph.  He came across to my ten year-old self as a mean man.  I was very sad and disappointed.  My bubble was burst and ever since that day, I've never been able to watch another Jerry Lewis movie.  That's been 40 years!

 

I will note this.  On the evening of the day Lucille Ball died, Jerry Lewis appeared on Nightline to pay her tribute.  He went on and on about what a great star and performer she was, how all the media attention focused on her passing was unprecedented, how he had been "inundated" with phone calls.  "This has never happened before.  Never!"  "She was magic!" he said, and he said there would never be anyone else like her.  He himself seemed like her biggest fan.  So when he made those comments several years later that women aren't funny, that struck me as really odd coming out of the same mouth that had praised Lucille Ball so much.

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I read this article the other day about how Jerry viciously insulted all the audience members adoring him at a recent Q&A. He's insane.

 

http://m.vice.com/read/jerry-lewis-is-still-alive?fb_action_ids=10202569209939223&fb_action_types=og.likes

 

I suggest you don't read if you love Jerry Lewis!

Luckily it's not written in French!

 

Never understood the french obsession with him.

FYI, Jerry: Lucille Ball is not a "comedian".  She's an actress who excelled at comedy.  A big difference.

In his Martin and Lewis days, he had an energetic manic quality that was hard to resist, but his solo movies:.....OY!

Like Bob Hope, he just kept cranking them out throughout the 60s and they got worse and worse (unless there was a gem in there I missed)

And like Bill Cosby, he started to take himself too seriously and acted like an authority on everything.

Though the article about his treatment of his audience is very slanted, it's not hard to believe it to be mostly true.

 

The best thing he ever did: a straight dramatic turn in one of my favorite movies "the King of Comedy"

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