Labor Day weekend reminds me of how Jerry Lewis got screwed

Drunk again. And it's not even really the evening.

I miss seeing Billy Gilman.

Didn't Jerry keep around 12% ?

Jerry Lewis was a horrible and was so awful in how he talked about people with disabilities. I don’t know a single disabled people who ever had a single good thing to say about him (and I have a PhD in Disability Studies). Jerry Lewis is dead. Good. As Miss Davis would say.

I remember them fondly from the 70s. Where I lived, it usually turned cold around Labor Day, and this was another marker of the change of seasons. Plus, he really did attract some relevant people back then, like, who had talent.

A single disabled people?

A PhD?

I remember when Jerry was bloated on steroids for some health condition and Rickles called him a Jew whale.

He was a notorious serial cheater with his wife Patti, who had been with him for many years on the telethon. She finally dumped him.

Frankly, I never thought he was funny. The French seemed to love him.

Get your asses off the couch, Tony Orlando, Joey Heatherton, Lola Falana, Mitzi Gaynor - there's a show that needs to go on.

Don't forget ME!

r6 thank you.

Who here was able to listen to him sing "You'll Never Walk Alone" without shedding a tear?

Like R13, I always tried to catch the final number. Seeing Jerry deteriorating over the 24 hours was fascinating to me as a kid and seemed very glamorous.

We cried knowing the show was now over and he'd be coming home to beat the shit out of us.

R11 - shake a leg, Totie.

God, yes, R14 - he’d be chain-smoking and sweating profusely, his shirt undone and tie askew. The whole thing seemed so tawdry. It was morbidly fascinating to this ‘70s kid!

r4...Fuck you and your bullshit. Jerry Lewis raised hundreds of millions, if not billions, for Muscular Dystrophy. Entire communities became involved over Labor Day weekend to help out and raise money as well. People watched from home, donated from home. Fire Depts worked intersections making collections. I dont care what his personal life was like or how offended you are, he did more for that charity than any other celebrity has done for others...including Elizabeth Taylor with her AIDS foundation. If you have a problem recognizing that fact, then turn in your degree, because youre useless to the disabled.

Liza walking?

When?

What Jerry did that they covered up and paid off was very, very, very, very, very, very bad.

And there was no way the MDA was going to risk anything else.

I was GARJUS back then!

Jerry Lewis turned Billy Gilman gay.

The reason Jerry Lewis left the MDA Telethon...

What exactly went into Ann Miller's hair?

titanium extract and Aquanet

What's on the tote board, Ed?

$23 million - in the hole.

SAD

The annual MDA telethon. You could ALWAYS count on hours on end of schlocky entertainment and pleas for money.

Now I want a telethon to benefit Liza.

^^Medicare and her supplemental insurance can pay for her now.

[quote] The annual MDA telethon. You could ALWAYS count on hours on end of schlocky entertainment and pleas for money.

There wasn’t anything else to watch on tv back then, and the next day you had to go back to school. Bum memories!

The Fabulusch Lisza Telethon for Emesh.

I never thought Jerry's came off as exploitative. But then again, I don't know anyone who has MDS. I thought it was respectful.

Now the Cerebral Palsy telethon was the one I found mortifying. That's where they actually made the poor kids get up and walk around the stage in the last hour to raise donations. That was vile. That telethon wound up getting shut down years before Jerry's because all of the negative publicity surrounding it.

I hated everyone who interrupted the usual television schedule. Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, and Billy Graham can burn in hell.

He had a hot ass but he couldn't live forever.

R33 what about the President??

And who could forget multiple appearances by Lena Zavaroni...

The Telethon marked the end of summer and the beginning of a new school year. He did have on some good guests. Yes, it was a spectacle to see him become more disheveled and shiny as time wore on.

Joan Rivers said that Jerry threatened her (on the phone). She told a joke about how the Telethon was good for Jerry's career and he didn't like that.

37 posts before this is posted?

You bitches are slipping.

Is that the telethon where the kids used to sing, "Look at us, we're walking / Look at us, we're talking . . ."

Lorna's audition for Grease 2

Lorna and Greg Brady do Marvin and Tammi

Sandy Duncan will sing Wind Beneath My Wings after this inspiring story from Billy and how your pledge makes his life worth living.

Jerry and Dean reunite with Frank Sinatra

This was the top story on the news the following day.

Joan Crawford and Tony Bennett

Joey Heatherton does Peter Allen

Phylicia Rashad!

I've developed schlock jaw from watching all these clips.

r38...I dont know what to say. Im actually speechless. That clip is WONDERFUL. The raised, dramatiation as she neared the end of the poem. The tears welling up in her eyes. Peak Joan Crawford. If you ay attention, you could see Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. I never knew what to think about that. I know that stars have lots of secrets, and for the most part will protect their own, but in that clip I see it. Christina was right about her.

With all this money poured into muscular dystrophy, has the disease gotten anywhere close to being cured.

I think not

R44 - this is a prime example of why Bette hated Joan. Bette could never participate in such a maudlin schlockfest, whereas, its completely natural for Joan.

Joan looked hammered in that clip with Christina.

And that poem was tacky.

The Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon was a MAJOR institution in every Boomer's life! It is difficult to really imagine a world without it announcing the end of summer vacation in it's schlocky, maudlin, old-school Rat Pack, 24-hour orgy of Jerry Lewis way!

My parents allowed us to attempt to watch every minute of it in sleeping bags in front of the tv and allowed us to call in our $10 pledge to feel part of the dramatic scoreboard updates! Then there was Jerry himself, lachrymose, exhausted, almost confused and ragged trying to get through "You'll Never Walk Alone" in his indulgent, weepy manner. It was magnificent, and to a nine year-old me it was compelling television! School started two days later on the Wednesday after Labor Day (the telethon weekend) in New England. We set our calendars by Jerry, and it was a yearly rite for me and my sisters, and frankly everyone we knew.

When it finally ended some years ago my first thought was "How will the kids know when to go back to school?"

Yes, R52, it was maudlin and Jerry was lachrymose.

Someone is "Live" streaming the 1987 Telethon on youtube for the next few hours.

If you tune in and it's the title card and the band playing music, that's the spot where the local segment would have been placed.

R44 Tony Bennett @ Joan Crawford are Coke & Pepsi

Thats right. Local stations all got involved. The man did it for over 45 years. He was the face of MD.

Maudlin and lachrymose are such great words.