Word: telethons
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...France, they call him Le Roi de Crazy for his comedy roots, but in the U.S. Jerry Lewis is known these days as the King of Telethons. The actor has hosted an epic television outreach for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) since 1955, when his first 16½-hour show raised more than $600,000 in a live broadcast from Carnegie Hall in New York City. That was before Lewis became the official host and was given the ratings-challenged Labor Day slot to host the show, and since then it's become an even greater test of a performer...
Lewis is arguably the pioneer of the telethon - an indelibly American tradition that has since been adapted around the world to benefit various charities. But the first telethons managed to do without Lewis' particular brand of boosterism for a good four years after their debut in 1951, when a "television fund-raising marathon" - you can see why the name was shortened - aired to help raise money for victims of cerebral palsy. The event pulled in the then whopping amount of $276,408 and marked the creation of United Cerebral Palsy Inc. and its annual Weekend with the Stars telethons...
...1970s and '80s were a boom era for telethons in general, with airtime set aside for appeals for all kinds of products. A two-day telethon in 1975 raised $52,000 to help California's Fresno County Sheriff Guy Langley pay legal expenses after he was charged with laundering campaign funds. (He later pleaded no contest and resigned his position.) Australia held a telethon to fund its 1984 Olympic team. In Argentina, a fundraising program was broadcast to finance the country's two-month war in 1982 with England over the Falkland Islands. (The islands are now a self-governing...
...know, it's the wrong one. The Motion Picture Academy is giving him the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award - an honor recognizing charity work, and given more frequently to producers than to actors. Lewis's commitment as a spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, notably in the 19-hour MDA telethon he fronts each Labor Day, has certainly earned him a hearty Hollywood thank-you. But it's a minor token, almost an insult, to one of the wildest, most imaginative comic talents in any medium and, without question, the definitive showbiz ego of the mid-20th century. (See pictures...
...crazy kid audiences had once loved. The low point came in 1972, when he starred in and directed The Day the Clown Cried, a sort of Bozo at Auschwitz drama that was never released and remains a very tantalizing lost film. Comedian Harry Shearer - whose report on the 1976 Telethon is one of the finest pieces written on Lewis, and who may have seen the movie - described it as "the Holocaust on black velvet." In what must be another painful twist for Lewis, Roberto Benigni did the same shtick in 1998, starring in and directing Life Is Beautiful...