FRIARS CLUB ROASTS KING OF COMEDY, JERRY LEWIS

Celebrities and comedians came to honor and laugh with the king of comedy, Jerry Lewis at the Friars Club Roast at New York’s Hilton hotel. Chris Elliott who got his start with physical comedy as the man under the stairs on The David Letterman show says Lewis is a legend in his own time and definitely influenced his own comedy.

Every comedian needs a straight man and Jerry Lewis had one in spades with the late Dean Martin. In their 10 years working together Lewis and Martin made sixteen films. Seinfeld star Jerry Stiller says their comedy team was effortless and wishes he could get away with some of Jerry’s humor.

“To me what makes him a legend is that he sort of combines everything that’s ever made me laugh into one person. I have a very, very broad taste in comedy watching W.C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers but I also loved Andy Kaufman and my dad’s work. But Jerry Lewis whenever I watched him it was like I was watching everything combined into this one guy and I think that’s what makes him a legend. I think I play my personas is fairly a kind of nut and to a degree there is some similarity there but I could never have mastered the physical stuff that he was able to do.”

Sopranos star Vincent Pastore was a Jerry Lewis fan ever since he was a kid and became a groupie of his Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy telethons. The tough Italian actor admitted to weeping during the 24 hour fundraiser.

“There was no competition between the two of them and that’s the truth. I describe it as no air between them as actors. They weren’t judging each other or anybody overseeing the other so there was a freedom that if you have that as an actor you’ve got everything and Dean and Jerry were those two.rnYou know I adored him. He was like the kid who cut up. He did all the things you couldn’t do in life and there he was on stage screaming and hollering. If I did it I’d get arrested.”

At 80 years old Jerry Lewis will certainly go down in history for making us laugh in over 70 comedy classics such as The Nutty Professor, Cinderfella and The Bellboy.rn

“To me Jerry Lewis is my life. I grew up with first Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis and then Jerry and then Dino, they go their ways. I watched them on the telethon when they had their reunion and I used to go to the telethons and sit there like a groupie. I used to cry for 24 straight hours whenever that show was on. And I also donated so don’t think I just sat there to watch for nothing.”