• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, September 6, 2017

There was no Jerry Lewis telethon on Labor Day, but there was a marathon of Jerry Lewis movies on TCM that evening.

Lewis died August 20 at age 91. Turner Classic Movies mounted its salute to him this past Monday night with a string of movies starting at 8 p.m. -- “The Nutty Professor,” “The King of Comedy” (directed by Martin Scorsese), “The Stooge,” “The Bellboy” and “The Disorderly Orderly.”

We bailed about halfway through “The Nutty Professor” when we realized that despite all of our best efforts, we couldn't stand to watch him.

I had this epiphany at about the time Jerry was seen playing an infant version of his character -- the “nutty” professor of the title, Julius Kelp -- in a scene in which the buck-toothed “baby” Jerry watched from his playpen as his parents fought and argued.

There are many people (including Jerry when he was alive) who regard “The Nutty Professor” as a masterpiece.

Many critics and writers have waxed effusively over Lewis the director's use of color, the brazenly cartoonish nature of his physical comedy and, where “The Nutty Professor” is concerned specifically, his delving into deep psychological themes such as the duality of personalities.

When writing about Lewis, commentators are also quick to emphasize that he was the innovator behind a number of moviemaking techniques that have earned him deep respect in the fraternity of A-list movie directors.

According to TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, who introduced the movies on Monday night, Labor Day was purposely chosen by TCM for this Jerry Lewis tribute in recognition of the many years in which Jerry captivated us all with his annual telethons to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association (photo above, courtesy of the MDA website).

At one point between movies, Mankiewicz was seen interviewing Lewis, who was quite elderly. Perhaps the interview had been conducted in the last year or two. Earlier, in a segment preceding “The Nutty Professor,” Mankiewicz had a brief conversation with actress Illeana Douglas about Lewis. She said she had been friends with him.

Coming upon this Lewis tribute on Monday had me remembering a few things I had forgotten about Lewis. One was that on his old telethon, you could sometimes detect Jerry becoming tired and irritable.

The show would return to the Lewis segments from Las Vegas after a lengthy local-TV cut-in, and you would get the feeling that Jerry had recently engaged in some sort of off-camera argument with a producer or director, or maybe Ed McMahon.

And there was another thing about Lewis that I remembered from an interview and profile of him that was in The New Yorker some time in the last 15 years or so (or possibly more). In the story, the interviewer asked Lewis about the status of his relationship with one of his grown sons, with whom Lewis was estranged.

I believe Lewis’ answer went something like this: “He is in the cemetery. He’s dead to me.” It gave me chills. For years after that, a former co-worker and I would jokingly apply that quote when talking about people in the TV business that we didn't care for.

Come to think of it, that co-worker and I are no longer in touch. I wonder if he thinks that of me now?

Meanwhile, a group of well-meaning celebrities is banding together for a one-hour telethon to benefit victims of Hurricane Harvey. This telethon will air on multiple networks next Tuesday (September 12).

At one hour in length, this charity show hardly seems to justify the word “telethon,” which was coined to indicate a much longer expenditure of time than an hour. But their hearts are in the right place.

The late game-show host Dennis James once put TV’s telethons in perspective when I interviewed him many years ago as he was preparing to host a telethon -- a long one -- for United Cerebral Palsy. He said he found that hosting telethons for charitable causes trumped hosting game shows.

Or as he put it, colorfully: “The game shows were fun to do, but who the hell cares about someone winning a refrigerator?!”