Suppose Ghostbusters had been made 30 years earlier? It all starts on one terrible night... [SLYT]
posted by katillathehun on Jul 29, 2009 - 30 comments

A Horror Film that will Stiffen You with Laughter! The jungle is jumping, with gals, gags, and goofs! And a gorilla! It's not the set-up for an awkward joke, but an honest to goodness motion picture, starring Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist, and nightclub comedians Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo as themselves, though in roles approximating Martin and Lewis. It was the comedy duo's only movie (possibly due to the cease and desist request to Sammy Petrillo from Jerry Lewis), and was one of Bela Lugosi's last movies. Some classify this movie as a z-grade budget film, while others claim it to be staggeringly unfunny. But don't take their word for it. You can watch it all online, or download it from the Internet Archive.
posted by filthy light thief on Jun 12, 2009 - 17 comments

Martin and Lewis Just, wow. I had no idea. [more inside]
posted by five fresh fish on May 8, 2009 - 81 comments

The Continental was a short-lived TV show that debuted in 1951 on KNBH Los Angeles and aired nationally on ABC and CBS during the 1952-1953 TV season. Sponsored by Cameo Stockings, the show featured Italian actor Renzo Cesana (who got discovered when Robert Rossellini produced a play Cesana wrote when he was 16!) purring seductively into the camera, while offering "sham-pan-ya" to an offscreen lady friend. Best known for inspiring a series of Saturday Night Live sketches starring Christopher Walken, the show inspired parodies in its own era, such as this Popeye cartoon (where Bluto tries to seduce Olive Oyl by posing as "The International"), a Jerry Lewis skit on the Colgate Comedy Hour that imagines the Continental as played by Marlon Brando, and a Pepe Le Pew cartoon where our amorous skunk attempts to seduce the feline object of his affection in The Cat's Bah. Unfortunately, Internet footage of the real show appears to be nonexistent, although you can buy some love songs recorded by the Continental off EBay.
posted by jonp72 on Aug 14, 2007 - 25 comments

Is he going to pull it off again? That is The 40th televised Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.First broadcast , 1966. that makes it 40 years. Hats off to Jerry Lewis. Buy that man a case fo Red Bull on August 30th.
posted by celerystick on Jul 10, 2005 - 37 comments

In 30 years of going to Cannes, Roger Ebert has witnessed Francis Ford Coppola suffering from post-Apocolypse insanity and learned Jerry Lewis's secret for preventing riots--but the most interesting character he ever met there was a loudmouthed, fast-talking Texan named Silver Dollar Baxter with an uncanny gift for bluffing...
posted by yankeefog on May 9, 2005 - 5 comments

"The Day The Clown Cried." Even unfinished, the breathtaking scope of it's...awfulness has for thirty years both attracted and repelled would-be producers and distributors. (script, zipped Word doc) Just the concept is startling, like some kind of hellish Sad Lib -- Jerry Lewis plays a clown in Auschwitz who leads children to the gas chambers. Harry Shearer, one of the few to see the film: "You are rarely in the presence of a perfect object. This was a perfect object. 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. 'Oh my God!' -- that's all you can say." Can this movie ever be made?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders on Jul 16, 2003 - 39 comments

Does the MDA Labor Day telethon do more harm than good from a cultural perspective? Sure the money helps to find a cure, but does it cause 'normal' people to feel undue pity for the physically challenged? Is Jerry Lewis doing more harm than good for the cause? [MORE..]
posted by ZachsMind on Sep 2, 2002 - 28 comments

First French woman in space set to go up again. Can Jerry Lewis be far behind?
posted by MAYORBOB on Oct 21, 2001 - 10 comments

It's Jerry Lewis's weekend; we just live in it. Nothing says holiday fun like a 21.5-hour parade of handicapped children!
posted by aaron on Sep 1, 2000 - 6 comments

Jerry Lewis pulled an Andy Kaufman at a recent comedy awards Q&A session. When asked about female comics he admires, he answered with "I don't like any female comedians" and went so far as to say that he considers a woman "a producing machine that brings babies in the world." No word yet on whether or not he'll start professional wrestling anytime soon.
posted by mathowie on Feb 14, 2000 - 4 comments