Jerry Lewis remains one of Hollywood’s most influential comedy stars of all time – but the actor and director was also well known for his explosive personality away from the cameras.
Lewis was never afraid to speak his mind when he was unhappy, whether he was beefing with comedy rivals like Joan Rivers or complaining about being snubbed by the Academy Awards. While the comedian was widely recognized as a humanitarian for his work with the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), his partnership with the charity eventually soured as well near the end of his life.
Dean Martin
Lewis’s personal and professional life was defined by his on-stage partnership with Martin. The pair became one of the world’s most successful comedy duos after World War II, starring in 16 movies and selling out live venues across the globe.
Lewis wrote in his 2005 book Dean and Me that the pair started to butt heads at the height of their success over Martin’s reluctance to follow his partner’s creative guidance. Martin was anxious to pursue solo projects, while Lewis was insistent that they were most successful when working together.
The two stopped speaking around the time of their final live performance at the Copacabana on July 25, 1956 – 10 years to the day after their first-ever performance – and would not reconcile for another 20 years.
Lewis told People in 2002 that he “broke up the act,” which he said “hurt [Dean] desperately.” The pair’s mutual friend Frank Sinatra famously organized a surprise reunion for Martin and Lewis on the 1976 MDA Telethon. The old friends briefly appeared together on stage to raise money for Muscular Dystrophy but didn’t reprise any of their old routines.
In the biography King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis, author Shawn Levy wrote that Lewis made “a few overtures” towards reconnecting with Martin after their TV reunion but was ignored. The pair wouldn’t speak regularly again until Martin’s son, Dean Paul Martin, died in a botched military training flight for the California Air National Guard in 1987.
Joan Rivers
The comedy icons took plenty of light-hearted jabs at one another throughout their careers, but it turned serious when Rivers publicly criticized Lewis’ charity work with MDA. During an appearance on Sirius XM Radio in 2014, Rivers vowed to never perform on the MDA telethon after observing Lewis openly discussing death in front of the children he was raising money for.
“You don’t say in front of a little boy who’s going to die, ‘This child is going to die,'” Rivers angrily declared. “Who are you? You unfunny, lucky, stupid a–hole? So, he took umbrage!”
Rivers was perhaps underestimating Lewis’ reaction, because he accused her of “setting the Jews back 1,000 years.” In his own Sirius XM interview that same year, Lewis said he would “always feel bad when someone passes away except for Joan Rivers.”