Name: Jerry Lewis on Letterman, 1982, 1984
Uploaded: 2017-08-20T22:11:14.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jerry Lewis on Letterman, 1982, 1984' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-08-20. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Jerry Lewis on Letterman, 1982, 1984' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-08-20. Transcript available.

Jerry Lewis on Letterman, 1982, 1984

Thank you. Welcome back to the show.
This is exciting. My first guest tonight is a show business legend in the truest
sense of the word.
His newly published autobiography entitled Jerry Lewis in Person is fascinating.
Please welcome Jerry Lewis.
Thank you.
Pretty impressive entrance. Pretty impressive.
I hope you didn't hurt yourself there.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, no.
Oh, no, no.
Can I ask you a couple of questions about a few things before we get into the
discussion here?
Yeah.
First of all, I don't know. I guess people know that you sing.
This was an old...
This is...
This is more Jerry Lewis. What was the date on this, do you suppose?
Uh, 1909.
While holding that up, why don't you let the people know that Lindbergh landed
in Paris?
That was about 1957, I guess.
Yeah. And then this other one. This one...
You take good care of your stuff, don't you, David?
Uh, look at this. You're just a baby here. Look at this.
How old a man are we looking at there?
Uh, that, oh, maybe, eh, give or take a year or two.
15, 16, let's see.
Come rain or come shine, shine on your shoes.
I was 20 years old.
How long has this been going on?
Are you listening to me?
20? I'm sorry.
I'm talking.
I was talking.
You don't turn away when someone...
I know, I was just making...
I was just making...
I was talking.
20.
Making some selections...
20, 20.
Just making some selections for the party later, that's all I was doing.
Now, now, we have, we have some other things if...
Oh, here it is.
Now, this, the records...
Now, I want you to explain this to us, if you can.
Can we...
Right here.
This is Dean and Jerry, or Jerry and...
Dean and Jerry Tuck Tape.
Right.
What exactly is that?
It was about the only thing that kept us together, baby.
Tuck Tape, David, was owned by the founder of the Musculoskeletal Association,
Paul Cohn.
He was the shining light and the guiding figure in building the organization.
His company produced this, and it was his joy to have Dean and I endorse it by
just putting
the pictures there.
And, of course, we loved him so much that the charge was $200,000, $300,000 a
year, and...
A deal.
And Paul, Paul is gone now, and we miss him a lot.
As a matter of fact, that watch was from Paul Cohn, the night he died.
Charged me $350 for that watch.
That's, this is interesting stuff here.
Now, in the book...
Where did you get that?
This, well, this, I think two members of our writing team have a collection of
your memorabilia,
paraphernalia, whatever.
Leopold and Lowe must be writing.
And this gentleman came to us and said, I have some Tuck Tape, and we said,
geez, get over
here as soon as you can.
I read this book, and I really enjoyed it.
It's, aside from just being entertaining, it's really good from a historical
standpoint, and
you start...
There's nothing in there about pilgrims or Thanksgiving.
No, no, no, no.
You make it sound like...
Well, you are certainly show business history.
And that's what I was...
No, no, see, I didn't mean that as...
You know what I mean?
You represent...
Go ahead, David.
You're a legend.
There you go.
Anyway, the book starts out with the breakup of you and your partner.
Right.
Now, fairly traumatic.
Well, I know for a fact, according to the book.
We don't want to get heavy, David.
No, no, no, no.
I'm getting to something here, I think.
Because, I mean, certain things are tough to deal with.
No, no.
It'll be all right.
It'll be all right.
What I wanted to ask you about was...
Oh!
Now, wait a minute.
Look what you've said.
Oh, I'm sorry.
You've just missed the whole thing.
What I was going to say was, before it got heavy, it must have been the most
fun you've ever had.
No way.
It was.
It was a marvelous experience.
It was a super relationship.
And I really wish we could have said it all.
You can't do it all in a book.
You have to minimize and abbreviate an awful lot of stuff.
But the people that you meet during the course of a day, here at NBC, for
example, I've never seen so many people I've either worked with over the years
or that have grown up with me over the years.
And I never knew that I would still be in the business at this age and still
have people.
As a matter of fact, there was one man this morning at NBC.
He had to be 79 years old.
Hey, Jerry, remember when we worked together at the old Hudson Theater?
I never worked with this old man.
I mean, he's the oldest man I ever saw in my life.
But he tells people he worked with me.
Hey, Bonnie, here's Jerry.
We worked together, remember, Jerry, that one night with the one, with the what?
What was the one night?
With the pretzels and the two bras and the heartbeats, remember that?
I don't know who that man is.
This may be a good chance to pause.
Now, you've done it again.
You missed the tray there.
Well, I haven't.
We'll be right back.
We'll dust things up and come back with Jerry.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
You're very entertaining.
So, when you and Mr. Martin were not on stage, were you peculiar off stage to
do odd things
to one another?
I don't mean peculiar, but, you know.
I think you mean peculiar.
No, no.
We had marvelous times.
Practical jokes.
We got a picture up here, yeah.
Oh.
Now, I can't get over how young you were.
I mean, this was big-time stardom for you at a very early age, wasn't it?
Why don't we read the will while you...
No, no.
No, no.
I'm not going to let this happen.
I meant that...
What do you mean you're not going to let this happen, David?
I mean, I meant that as...
David, you'd think after the show I lift this up and there's a decayed old Jew
under there?
This is it.
This is it, 56, David.
It is not...
It was never on the Titanic.
Do you understand?
No.
Repeat, look at the chart on the wall.
I am never...
But, uh, what I'm...
Guayam, Guayam.
Oh, what Guayam.
But all I want was...
I was...
This is the third time now I've tried to pay you a compliment, and it always...
It always gets a...
Because basically you don't want to.
I saw Clement Freud last night, and I spent two, three wonderful weeks with
Clement...
Freud on a boat going through the Aleutians.
Now, to spend three weeks on a boat with Clement Freud is just...
I mean, you want to talk about yawning?
I mean, I watched you last night, and I thought you came off like the total
professional.
Oh, uh...
How we dance.
Be my lunch.
Go ahead.
What were you going to say?
Uh, gee, I don't know.
It all, um...
Uh, anyway, what I was going to say before I was distracted...
I was just going to ask you what your relationship was like offstage, you and
Dean.
We had great fun offstage.
Great fun onstage.
Made a fortune.
And he's ten years older than I am.
What kind of things would you do to amuse one another?
Besides that, we would do the kinds of things where we would look to see if we
could break one another up, okay?
I had carried Dramamine across the counter to Dramamine to sleep on a rough
train ride to Chicago.
He was the most gullible man in the world, because if I wanted to suck him in,
I would say,
Listen to what I...
I heard this yesterday.
Yeah, really?
And I had him.
He said, I better sleep tonight.
You going to take Dramamine?
I said, we don't sleep.
We have a first show tomorrow morning, and we better get some rest.
He said, yeah, let me have a couple of those Dramamines.
Well, he was so cool that I could have taken out a moose's hat rack, and he
would think that's a Dramamine.
Okay.
I mean, he's cool.
He made Perry Como look like he had palsy, okay?
So, I go to the briefcase, and I take out sugar tablets that I had carried only
because I needed desperately to get diabetes.
So, I was taking them for...
So, for...
Will you listen?
I'm sorry.
I have to give you a minute.
I give him the two sugar pills.
It's of no consequence why I have them, okay?
He takes them.
And he's now in the upper, in this berth, on the...
Hey, Pally, when is the Dramamine going to do stuff, babe?
I said, some people fast, some slow.
Now, I'm stuck.
I'm not going to get any sleep.
I've just locked myself into this bit, right?
I got to get some sleep.
I gave him a second all, telling him that that was a little better than Dramamine,
okay?
He takes the second all, right?
I said, hold it a second.
He said, it's gone.
I said, you better do this.
I gave him a combination of Dramamine, second all, and an upper, in the upper,
and he is now up all night, not knowing whether he should...
We have a rehearsal at the Chicago Theater the next morning at 9 o'clock.
We're going to do five or six shows that day.
And during the rehearsal, he is deeply, deeply in rested position.
He said, hey, pal, you got to have some, I'm so tired, I didn't sleep, and if I
don't have, you know, babe, we're going to be out there by yourself.
I said, I'll give you something that'll get you flying, and you'll never know
you didn't sleep.
And I gave him a little second all, just to swallow fast, and he was starting
to really get very, very tired.
And I wound up the patsy, because I literally did the first show at the Chicago
Theater alone.
We could not get him up.
And I had to tell the audience that he became suddenly drunk, and I had to work
alone.
What a guy.
Hi there.
We're going to pause for station identification.
We'll be back with Jerry Lewis.
Right after this.
Hi there.
Welcome back to the program.
Of course, Jerry Lewis is here, and Herb Graff, film historian, will be joining
us.
Is Herb here?
Herb is here, yeah.
Could I show them?
Should I show them?
Could we get a close shot?
Yeah.
Please let me show them.
Close, right here.
Look at this setup.
I want the whole audience to see my pride and joy.
Right there.
Hit it.
Oh!
Do you smoke?
No, I don't smoke.
Thank you.
You didn't mug Rip Taylor on the way in here, did you?
That's one in a row.
Have you...
Now, I know that Dean and you were, he came back and was on a telethon not long
ago.
Have you seen much of him since then?
No, we haven't, David.
Was that fun to see him again at that point?
Yes.
Yeah.
But not enough fun to keep going on, I guess.
Whatever.
Yeah.
Do you hear from him at all?
No.
Hmm.
Um, why do you suppose that is?
Huh?
I say, why do you suppose that is?
Is there, are you going through a deja vu like last night?
No, absolutely.
Do you have the feeling that you got Freud back?
Maybe a little, yeah, a little bit.
Let me tell you something.
People are really intrigued about Dean and myself, and it's very flattering, it's
very complimentary.
We grew up with this country, we worked, and we did our thing, and everybody
that cared about what was happening really, really felt something about what we
had going together.
And I find on the tour, it's the most interesting subject people will refer to
in the book.
For a while, I was very hesitant to talk about it, because it was a little
painful.
I love him very much.
I think he loves me also.
I think we had a great thing.
When the breach happens, and whatever that breach is, whether it's an outside
force, or something that divides you, there's no way you can fix the hostilities
that come down, and then the dislike happens.
Not hate, but the love never diminishes.
Not when you have that much time together, and the creative process comes to
the fruition like it did.
So, I was very resentful about talking about it for a long time.
But I had seen people on television with a book, and I never suspected that
that would be the one point that most people wanted to discuss.
And it's interesting, and I am enjoying it, because I'm reliving a lot of those
wonderful moments, but there's other stuff in this damn book, David.
All right, all right.
Let me, I'll ask you another thing about this book.
You want to talk about the jacket?
That's easy.
No, no, I'll ask you something.
There was one statement you made in here as I was reading this.
There's a lot of them.
Oh, no, I know that, Jerry.
Oh.
The...
A little room, some room.
Oh, I'm sorry, am I crowding in a little bit?
No, it's okay.
Okay.
And I'm going to ask you something else in the book.
This is not about Dean.
Why not?
We had a wonderf