Another one gone: Jerry Lewis

Yahoo reports the death of Jerry Lewis by Joal Ryan:

Jerry Lewis, the brilliant, divisive giant of comedy, died at his Las Vegas, Nevada home Sunday morning at the age of 91. The news was first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and confirmed by Lewis’ agent.
In a career that spanned nearly his entire life, Lewis played funnyman to Dean Martin; starred in, wrote and directed the original The Nutty Professor; and served as longtime host of television's most famous telethon.
Once Hollywood’s most bankable star, Lewis fronted more than fifty movies, from the light Martin-and-Lewis fare of Artists and Models to Martin Scorsese’s darkly funny The King of Comedy.
Born Joseph Levitch (or, according to biographer Shawn Levy, Jerome Levitch) on 16 March, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey, the future star was, like his idol, Charlie Chaplin, born into a show-business family. Lewis’ father was a Catskills entertainer; his mother, a pianist. Lewis got his first applause at five. By the time he was a teenager, he had a full-fledged act, pantomiming his way through the popular songs of the day.
In 1946, Lewis, then twenty, was playing an Atlantic City, New Jersey club when another act on the bill canceled. For a replacement, Lewis suggested a singer, Dean Martin.
On stage, Martin exuded slickness; Lewis acted like a monkey boy. Together, they were were a hit. For a time, Martin and Lewis, as they were billed, were everywhere, in television, records, radio, and the movies; the duo cranked out sixteen films in seven years. After a red-hot decade together, the relationship cooled. Lewis became bent on becoming an auteur like Chaplin; Martin balked at being bossed around by the budding multi-hyphenate. “I like the co-star, but not the director, writer, and producer,” Martin sniped at the time.
After their 1956 split, the pair would reunite on stage just once, in 1976 at Lewis’ Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon. Mutual pal Frank Sinatra brokered the summit. Martin died in 1995. “We loved one another more than any two men ever loved one another in their lives, period,” Lewis told the Toronto Sun.
Per the conventional wisdom of the day, Lewis was the star of Martin and Lewis. But, just as the pundits expected, Lewis was an immediate smash on his own, starring in and producing the 1957 hit The Delicate Delinquent. The movie’s opening sequence was classic Lewis, depicting a thirty-year-old grown man mugging and jutting around like a kid on a sugar high. “He’s nine years old. He’s forever,” Lewis once said of his movie persona.
As silly as it all looked, Lewis was dead serious about the work. He wrote, he produced, and he directed film after film after film, from The Bellboy to The Ladies Man to The Errand Boy. Behind the scenes, he was credited with improvising a video-playback machine to monitor his performances, a now-standard procedure on movie sets.
Then, in 1963, came his signature movie. “Every director in the history of cinema prays for the one work,” Lewis recalled for the Kansas City Star. “And I’ve had mine: The Nutty Professor. That’s the one.”
The tale of a hapless academic (a Jerry Lewis type), who, upon gulping a magic potion, turns into suave ladies’ man (a Dean Martin type), The Nutty Professor was embraced by audiences and critics alike. The New York Times called it “less of a showcase for a clown than the revelation (and not for the first time) of a superb actor.”
After Lewis’ peak, a long, long valley followed. A much-hyped 1963 primetime variety series was canceled after only thirteen episodes. He was dropped by his longtime movie studio, and by 1968, was without any deal at all. A back injury fueled a long addiction to prescription painkillers.
Martin, meanwhile, began to look like the tortoise to Lewis’ hare. After a slow, post-split start, things perked up. He spent the 1960s hanging with the Rat Pack, selling records and starring in movies. Martin was cool; Lewis was not. By the late 1960s, Lewis was so uncool that fan Woody Allen couldn’t convince his backers to let the older comic direct him in his first starring vehicle. (In Lewis fashion, Allen wound up directing himself in Take the Money and Run.) For a time, Lewis wasn’t even the most famous member of his own family: his eldest son Gary Lewis briefly eclipsed his father with the 1960s pop band Gary Lewis & the Playboys (whose most famous song was the execrable This Diamond Ring):

None of this escaped the notice of Martin, who gloated in 1965: “You know, when Jerry Lewis and I broke up, he said I wouldn’t last two years in show business.”

Rico says he never cottoned to Lewis' style, nor Martin's...