A Jerry Lewis Thread...c'est magnifique!

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

I'm guessing this will be a low-traffic thread but the French are RIGHT. So I'll just sit here and enjoy the comic genius by myself if necessary.

1963..."The Nutty Professor"...FUNNIEST...movie...EVER.

[mmm]

1. I haven't thought of "The Nutty Professor" in years

Lewis was awesome in "Arizona Dream" with Johnny Depp.

[eileen from OH]

2. je ne sais barf

(not a JL fan. At all.)

eileen from OH

[camero]

3. I just watched that 2 weeks ago

I liked the Ladies Man better. Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

15. Ladies' Man is surreal!!!

Did every lady's room lead to an alternate dimension? I watched it when I was 13 (that's 26 years ago) and never again.

[camero]

18. Every lady had a quirk

and he was scared of women because he got left at his graduation.

It was hilarious seeing how he dealt with his fear.

[WI_DEM]

21. the scene with the gangster

and JL trying to comb his hair and adjust his hat in "Ladie's Man" has to be the funniest scene I've ever seen--I can't control my laughter. Even Orson Welles told Peter Bogdonovich, "I burst a gut laughing at that".

[Th1onein]

4. I don't like JL and I DON'T like his MS drives.

I think that they should have done something about that horrible disease decades ago. They've twiddled their thumbs and done nothing for those poor kids, except treat symptoms. This is disgraceful.

[RoyGBiv]

6. FWIW ...

For the last two years I've attended a Muscular Dystrophy Association summer camp for kids. I was rather ambivalent about the whole MDA/Jerry's Kids thing until I did this. Those kids very much appreciate what the MDA does, as do their parents. I've been involved with several other charitable organizations over the years, and I've not encoutered one that inspires the kind of appreciation among those it helps that this one does. If not for MDA, the vast majority of these kids would have spent their lives completely sequestered from the world, if they had lived at all.

Put another way, they've done, and do, quite a lot for these kids. The problem is that MD is not an easily curable disease.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

8. Just about anything of merit is often understood...

I know it's an area of controversy for some. I'm not an expert. I think his heart is in the right place and that's just my personal opinion that I'm not trying to inflict on anyone. And you are right. A lot of money will be spent in pursuit of a cure and I feel his efforts are worth more than staying home and doing nothing. I'd just like to see him live long enough to see the payoff...but I don't think that's a critical issue for him.

I watched him in an interview once, saying that if he died before a cure was found, "use my death"...meaning take a minute to cry for him but get back to work and realize why he had the damn telethons in the first place.

Then, of course the story of his son Gary. He was up for the draft in Vietnam. He was enjoying success with "Gary Lewis & The Playboys" like "Everybody Loves A Clown" and "This Diamond Ring."

Jerry COULD HAVE EASILY pulled a "Pappy Bush" and gotten him deferment, or a stateside post, and he said "I'm not going to do that." He allowed his son to be drafted because he didn't want to raise a George W. Bush.

Rumor has it that Gary was pretty severely traumatized by the experience. But it was Jerry's decision, he stood by it, and anyone who wants to judge him can ask "who's the better father...George H.W. Bush or Jerry Lewis." I saw Lewis discuss this in an interview as well. It was not an easy decision. He understood the way it changed his son permanently. Maybe if he had the chance to go back and do it differently he would. He can't. That's life. No one is perfect, including Jerry Lewis.

The reason I started the thread is that...once again in my opinion...if you're going to honor Abbott & Costello...The Marx Brothers...Peter Sellers...Monty Python...basically anyone of merit in comedy for their work, save a seat in the Hall of Fame for Jerry Lewis.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

17. A veritable Pantheon of Clowns you listed there

May I add Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Mel Brooks?

[Th1onein]

10. I don't know about that, but I believe you....STILL........

Over FIFTY years? I've seen this happen with the CF Foundation, too. They support drugs that treat the symptoms, period. They are so entrenched in the status quo that they could care less about the cure.

More power to them for making these kids lives better, but they should do the research better.

All that money? All that time? All those brains? No cure?

Nope; don't believe it.

[RoyGBiv]

14. Well...

My apologies to the Bush_Eats_Beef for hijacking the thread. That wasn't my intention, but I don't like seeing this kind of misinformation spread.

Muscular Dystrophy is a common term for a range of neuromuscular diseases affecting nerve and muscle cells. There are at least thirty distinct varieties. MD is not caused by a virus or a bacteria that can be isolated and battled individually with drugs. It's a genetic mutation resulting in the body not producing needed proteins. Trying to cure MD is akin to trying to cure Down syndrome or any of the countless other genetic disorders.

The first problem in finding a cure for any of these diseases is determining cause, and with each different variant of the disease, there's a different cause, i.e. a different mutation on different chromosomes. Until the 1980's, this simply wasn't possible. The gene mutation causing Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common type of MD, was discovered in 1986, and that provided a road-map that has allowed the discovery of the genetic causes of most other types as well. The effort to map these genes has been led by those working with MDA research funds.

There are also a few, rare types of non-genetic MD that result from immune system malfunctions. Therapies for this variety of MD have focused on changing the actions of the immune system.

Now, the problem with all these diseases is that since they are not caused by a "bug" the best treatment that medical science has is therapy or prevention. Prevention at this stage is genetic screening to limit the possibility of passing on the trait to succeeding generations or testing fetuses. Moral questions have limited the effectiveness of this type of approach. Gene therapy to those living with the disease has shown a great deal of promise. It is a relatively new medical science, and its advancement has been aided significantly by MDA research grants.

If you have any questions about what MDA does with its money or with the history of its research, I urge you to look for information. MDA has its own website, but you could also visit the sites of various medical or health journals and read their articles on genetic and neuromuscular diseases.

We're not dealing with the common cold here, and believe it or not, there's no cure for the common cold either.

[Th1onein]

23. This is not misinformation. Let me give you some facts:

Muscular dystrophy is a genetic disease, indeed. I never said it was caused by bacteria, or a virus. It is, quite frankly, silly to infer such an idea from my post.

And, yes, there are several forms of muscular dystrophy, but the worst form is Duchenne's, which kills young boys in their early twenties. EARLY TWENTIES!

MDA was founded in 1950. It is over 54 years old. In 1987, Hoffman, Brown, and Kunkel isolated the dystrophin gene; polymorphisms of which cause muscular dystrophy.

To date, there is NO drug used to specifically treat MD. Not one. All these poor kids have is physical therapy, prosthetics, and surgery to rely on. There are some studies underway to determine the efficacy of corticosteroids, such as prednisone, to slow down the progress of the disease, but I think this is a case of too little, too late, given the amount of time anti-inflammatory steroids have been on the market. So sad.

Since 1987, the "cause" for MD has been known. In 1987, they isolated the gene. Once you do that, you look at the function of the protein that the gene causes the cell to express. Once you know the function, you seek to find drugs that will replicate it. Has this been done? Nope.

The Muscular Dystrophy Association has a function, but it is not to find a viable treatment that will stop the disease. Like most bureacracies, it seeks, first, to perpetuate itself.

[RoyGBiv]

24. Misplaced Criticism

Your complaints are really about the difficulty in treating a genetic disease, which is understandable. If you would like to criticize the disease, go ahead. I won't complain.

The "worst" form of MD is not Duchenne muscular dystrophy. That's the most common form, and the one most associated with "Jerry's Kids." "Worst" is more than a little subjective, but in my view, the worse form is the kind that results in a degeneration of brain tissue. I've known two kids who died from this. It was horrible.

As for the rest of what you say, you're not addressing the difficulties of curing a genetic disease. I didn't assume you believed these diseases were caused by a virus or bacteria; I was addressing your simple argument, which would be more appropriately directed toward a group dedicated to curing a disease caused by a specific "bug." But even these can be difficult to cure. The cause of various forms of MD have been known as long as the cause of AIDS. Neither is cured. Is this an argument in favor of not pumping as much money as possible into continued efforts to find a cure?

Yes, it's taken a long time to get to this point. It's taken just as long, or longer, to find viable treatments for countless other diseases with causes that are known. That's unfortunate. Now, if you have some sort of medical knowledge these people that have been working on it all this time do not have that would allow them to find a cure more quickly, I can give you their phone number. They'd love to hear from you so that they could save these lives and move on to something else.

[Th1onein]

25. Wrong again.

My complaints are not "really" about how difficult the disease is to cure. My complaint is about the tendency of a bureaucracy to, first and foremost, perpetuate ITSELF. It is a simple matter of logic to see that when your goal is to perpetuate your own institution, then why would you support finding a compound that would make that institution unnecessary? The fact is that the longer these types of bureacracies exist, the less likely it is that a viable treatment will be found. The evidence, especially in the case of the MDA, is obvious.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

7. Yes, and that's where I separate the man from...

...the performer.

As an example: I'm a big Neil Young fan. I own every note he's ever played, both on CD and vinyl. In "real life," if you want to believe the biography "Shakey," he's completely lacking in any sense of moral responsibility. He sits in his barn and plays with his trains and screws over his friends.

But man, do I like "Cinnamon Girl"...

Ya know?

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0679750967.01._PE30_PIdp-schmooS,TopRight,7,-26_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

[lucidmadman]

5. There was always something brilliant in every Jerry Lewis movie...

...I'm on Benayoun's side.
I'm thinking of one where he's a 'houseboy' in a women's boarding house and he's dusting. He gets to a butterfly-under-glass display and opens it to dust and the butterflies come alive and fly off...it's brilliant. It's right up there with Keaton. So kill me...I think Jim Varney is funny. I think Adam Sandler sucks...I think Rob Schneider is funnier than Sandler.
I try to separate the public JL from the film JL. There was one JL film written by Gore Vidal where he was an alien...what was that called?

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

9. "Visit To A Small Planet" (1960)

http://www.jerrylewiscomedy.com/

"Kreton (Jerry)is an extraterrestrial who is extremely interested in the ways of Earth. He finally gets a chance to visit it when he breaks the rules of his planet, by heading a spaceship Earthward. Kreton manages to befriend the family of news commentator Roger Putnam Spelding (Fred Clark), a man who just happens to have presented a program in which he debunked the craze for searching for flying saucers. Kreton wins the family's confidence by using his extraterrestrial skills to help them; they return the favor by taking the alien under their wings and teaching him about the behavior of an average Earthling family. The bulk of this teaching process falls on the shoulders of daughter Ellen(Joan Blackman), who takes Kreton to clubs and coaches him in some of the more intimate habits of humans."

[WI_DEM]

22. "Visit to a Small Planet"

is one of the lesser known Lewis films, but in my opinion one of his best.

[camero]

12. That's "The Ladie's Man"

My favorite JL movie. Also, "Do you know you've been sitting on my HAT."

lol

[mac56]

11. "The King Of Comedy" is one of the best movies I ever saw.

Lewis more than holds his own with Bob DeNiro.

[kskiska]

13. Even Jerry Lewis has said it's not true

about the French. I saw him on Larry King not too long ago where he said he's way down the list. It's a myth.

[WI_DEM]

20. what he actually said is that the French are way down on the list

that he is even more appreciated by the Swiss, Germans, Japanese, Autralians

[henslee]

16. WHAH WHAH WHAH -- NICE LADY!

[WI_DEM]

19. you're not alone

and I consider JL to be one of the great screen comedians of all time. He probably would have done best in the silent era though because he was a brilliant at mime. There are brilliant moments of comedy in many of his films when he doesn't allow the situations to get too filled with pathos.

[WI_DEM]

26. kick