INVENTING JERRY LEWIS (Smithsonian Studies in the History of Film and Media)

For more than half a century Jerry Lewis has cultivated multiple and contradictory self-images: the idiot kid, the Las Vegas showman, the auteur-director, the telethon philanthropist, the elder statesman of American show business. His work has provoked extremes of critical adulation and hostility on both sides of the Atlantic.

Frank Krutnik discusses Lewis's partnership with Dean Martin in the late 1940s and early 1950s, exploring how their performances elaborated on a wartime theme of male bonding. Examining such early '60s solo works as The Bellboy, The Nutty Professor, and The Patsy, Krutnik probes the ways in which Lewis both dismantled the conventions of film comedy and manipulated his public identity. Charting the decline of Lewis's film career and his simultaneous rise to fame as the emotional powerhouse of the Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon, Krutnik also traces Lewis's attempt to create a serious, adult image to replace that of the aging "kid."