On Jerry Lewis being booted from "the Jerry Lewis telethon"

Well, the expected event has occurred, but before we thought it would (a lousy month before): the MDA has announced that Jerry Lewis has “completed his run” (nice ex-employer wording!) as National Chairman and won’t be hosting this year’s Telethon. Clearly the crazy and idiosyncratic press conference Jerry held last week — recounted to best effect here — spelled the end of Jer’s tenure at the MDA.

He stated at that conference that he would explain his so-called “retirement” from the show at a press conference after the ’Thon was over, and inferred that this wouldn’t be his last year as the show’s host, by using a reference to what he referred to as the “The New York Times ‘Dewey Wins!’ headline” (that most likely went over the heads of the younger journalists in the room — and it was actually the Chicago Daily Tribune proclaiming “Dewey Beats Truman”).

Jerry has always been a loose cannon, and that’s been the delight of watching the telethon. In an era when nothing unpredictable ever happens on live television (even on the talking-head political shows that are theoretically “unpredictable”), watching Jerry be so blatantly arrogant, rude, giddy, sentimental, and emotionally overwhelmed provided one of the last pieces of genuine (and genuinely bizarre) TV entertainment to be found.

As I noted in my last post about Jerry’s leaving the telethon, it was pretty evident that he was being ousted by the MDA when the two press releases announcing the telethon being cut back to six hours and Jerry’s “retirement” as host of the show didn’t include a single quote from the man himself.

So, as I did in the last post, let me acknowledge that the MDA’s main goal is to raise money to pay for research and items to help those afflicted with the disease. (Jerry has always spoken about a cure, whereas I don’t know if the MDA ever goes near such a notion.) Jerry’s “pity-based” way of raising money is from another era, when it was okay to diminish those who suffer from the disease. The famous “half-a –person” quote comes into the argument here. Warning: this clip includes "Angry Jer":



But, then again, the central reason most folks have even heard of the MDA is because of Jerry’s work as the National Chairman for the past few decades. You can argue that he made the telethon the main focus of his career because his movie career died in the late Sixties (and his TV career never, ever took off after the breakup with Dean).

Still, as the National Chairman and host of the Telethon, he has raised millions (actually $2.6 billion cumulatively). Here is a great example of the aforementioned “pity-based” fundraising that I uploaded to YT several years ago. It seems very corny and clichéd these days, but it did raise big dough from the time that the Telethon became an annual occurence, back in 1966:



So should the MDA have ousted him so unceremoniously? On the pragmatic level, you can’t have the host of your annual telethon badmouthing the organization on national TV (or whatever remains of “the Love Network”). But when your official spokesman has been Jerry Lewis, you’ve already made a Faustian bargain (shades of Damn Yankees!) — since Jerry was never going to be a Danny Thomas-like, friendly “face of charity.”

The MDA has pitched Jerry out in order to “rebrand” the franchise, but it has made a perennially angry senior citizen FURIOUS. And, whatever they may’ve thought they were doing, they did indeed muddy the organization’s image (unless they go the limit and change the name from MDA), since those who have heard of it to this date would most likely identify it with “that all-night TV show with that old comedian” — who, as much as he may be hated by some, is respected, revered, and beloved by others.

Neither option benefits the MDA in the long run — for surely the Telethon will be gone in a year or two at most, as the very notion of a telethon is something that appeals only to older viewers. Younger viewers brought up on the Internet (and those clunky two-hour celeb-filled approximations of telethons) have no referent for it, nor should they — since, as Jerry pointed out in a far brusquer fashion at his press conference last week, “appointment television” no longer exists, except for sporting events, award shows, or the occasional news phenomenon (like the recent Casey Anthony trial).

Those who have followed Jerry’s career over the years (either as a function of worship or derision) are obviously waiting to see how long it takes him to address the situation publicly (he is not the kind of person who could be bribed to shut up). I expect that an “exclusive interview” (or two or three) will find him, if he’s wise, playing the injured senior whose pet charity (which he’s raised billions for!) has thrown him out with the trash. If he plays the role properly (and the “I raised billions for them” aspect is obviously true), Jerry could be viewed in the public eye in a way he’s rarely (if ever) been seen before: sympathetically.

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Since the tradition of watching Jerry on Labor Day has now officially been killed by the forward-thinking types at the MDA (that tradition, by the way, *won’t* end on the Funhouse TV show), let’s take a little trip back to the earliest surviving record of a Martin and Lewis telethon-type show.

For trivia buffs, the very first M&L-hosted telethon occurred in March 1952 (they also guested on the very first telethon ever, for the Damon Runyon Foundation, hosted by Milton Berle). The 1952 show lasted from midnight until the afternoon of the following day, and the proceeds were split between a cardiac hospital and muscular dystrophy research.

The official start date for the telethon as we know it was 1966 — but Jerry apparently did local ones in between the early Fifties and then, if this piece of footage of a “1959 telethon” isn’t mislabeled. The first surviving footage we have of a TV show done by M&L to benefit muscular dystrophy comes, however, from a two-hour show that aired on November 25, 1953, and was called “The Television Party for Muscular Dystrophy” (!):



Labor Day just won’t be the same without ’im.

The urban neurotic Garbo: Barbara Harris

While I always enjoy celebrating the careers of performers and artists who’ve left this mortal coil, I also do want to salute those who are still with us. And this week, on the occasion of a very nice discovery (two very nice discoveries) on YouTube, and apropos of nothing at all (fortunately not a demise), I am happy to salute the work of an actress who has been forgotten by most folks, but who gave us a handful of wonderfully indelible performances.

This fascination began when I first saw one of my favorite films, A Thousand Clowns (1965). It's possible to "fall" for that film in several ways: devotions can be developed to the super-charismatic Jason Robards, the gorgeously epigrammatic writer Herb Gardner, the manic Gene Saks, or the the wonderful BH. Harris was cast in the film instead of Sandy Dennis (whom I also love, but that’s a story for another post), who had played the female lead onstage. Harris's performance in the film causes one to wonder, “who is this adorable woman, who can be cute but not cloying and impish but not off-putting?”

If you climb with me on the relatively small bandwagon of diehard Barbara Harris fans (not to be confused with the bandwagon for the lead singer of the girl group the Toys, or any of the many other Barbara Harrises who’ve worked in show biz in the last half-century), you’ll discover a small number (18) of terrific performances in both landmark movies and ones that only the true aficionado of late-night TV (or, these days, obscure old VHS tapes and the occasional TCM airing) knows about.

At various points in the Sixties and Seventies, Harris was perched on the brink of superstardom, but didn’t have much interest in it (in that regard, she is a “legit” theater, less sex-kittenish version of the wonderfully hesitant Tuesday Weld). The only trace of a recent interview with her on the Net, from 2002, finds her saying she didn’t have an impulse to keep acting, and she has in fact been an acting teacher for the past few decades — before, during, and after the final flourish in the Eighties and Nineties where she played a few moms onscreen.

So who is this “mystery” performer who was marvelously endearing onscreen, but deliberately forsook fame and wealth at just about every turn? The basic facts of her life are available in the usual places online. She was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1935, and found her first great foothold as a performer in a troupe called the Playwrights Theatre; other members of the troupe included Ed Asner, and Nichols and May. She graduated from there to the Compass, which is best known for serving as a springboard for both the aforementioned comedy team (whose three LPs never, ever go outta date) and Shelley Berman (whose wonderfully paranoid visions also never, ever date). The group was run by her first husband, Paul Sills, one of the true legends of American improv comedy.

The first cast of the Second City.

The Compass, in turn, grew into a troupe called “The Second City,” with Barbara being one of the two women in the initial ensemble (Mina Kolb was the other). The troupe brought its sketches to the Broadway stage in 1961 (in From the Second City), and Harris distinguished herself in a number of roles, including a housewife seduced by a beatnik (Alan Arkin) in a sketch called, simply enough, “Museum Piece.” A video exists of this sketch and appears in a CBC documentary about the history of the two Second City troupes (it is time for someone to get the full sketch online!).

The Second City's Broadway run was Barbara's ticket to fame in legit theater. She appeared in the off-Broadway hit Oh Dad, Poor Dad… in 1962, then costarred in Mother Courage on Broadway in ’63, and wound up having the distinction of Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane writing her a musical — On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (pictured) was written explicitly for her. Her big number later became an AM radio staple for singers like Eydie Gorme, “What Did I Have That I Don't Have?”

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever

Barbara repeated her off-B'way role in Oh Dad, Poor Dad... in the wildly uneven 1967 film adaptation (her sole overtly sexy role, with even a bikini scene thrown in, to wake the audience up) and won a Tony for her next musical, the critically hailed three-part show The Apple Tree ('66-'67) with Alan Alda and Larry Blyden.

At this point, the story gets a little fuzzy — I distinctly remember looking her up in the Lincoln Center Library to find out where she “went” after the big films of the Seventies and discovering an article in a theater magazine that mentioned that she had scuttled her Broadway career by having a night where she went “dry” onstage and abruptly left a show in mid-run (I believe the show was Apple Tree). I’m told by many people that “everything you need to know is available on the Net,” but the name of that particular show is mentioned nowhere online, nor is her supposed “nervous breakdown” confirmed or denied anywhere.

The cast of The Apple Tree.

Whatever troubles she had in the late Sixties were totally wiped away by her successes in the Seventies. She came back with a one-two punch, two roles in two very significant films, both of which feature finales that pivot entirely around her. The first is, of course, Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975), and the second is Alfred Hitchock’s Family Plot (1976). Hitch thought enough of Barbara to end the film (and thus, unwittingly, his career) with her winking at the camera. An adorable gesture in a very enjoyable but not perfect film.

Family Plot

It’s almost inconceivable that Harris didn’t go on to instant fame after those two films. Imagine — to have Altman’s critically-lauded tapestry end with a performer absolutely nailing a killer song by Keith Carradine (which pretty much sums up what Altman was trying to say about America and apathy in a few verses), and then for that same performer to be the very last person seen in the very last Hitchcock film, winking at the camera (Hitch himself winked at his audience in the Family Plot poster, meaning Barbara was most definitely his surrogate). And then the lady appears in one very popular film — the first (and much-too-copied) modern-era “body-switch” comedy Freaky Friday (1976). She follows this with a few more umemorable movies, withdraws to teach somewhere along the way, does a few more supporting "mom" roles (and a scene in the, again, wildly uneven, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)), and is never heard from publicly again (unless you took her classes, of course).

Harris is indeed an enigma of sorts — the Garbo of adorable urban neurotic Sixties actresses. We don’t know anything about her private life, which is fine (I was intrigued, though, to see Robert Klein mention in his autobiography that he had a crush on her when they worked together in The Apple Tree). But we also don’t know much about her as a performer, except for the work that was preserved onscreen.

Nashville

The book The Nashville Chronicles by Jan Stuart reveals that, early on, she thought her performance in Altman's epic tapestry was terrible (she initially had another song in the film, one by Chicago friend Shel Silverstein). Altman told her she was wrong, but she begged him to let her buy and destroy the rushes of her initial scenes. He wouldn’t let her, and thus we still have her performance as Altman intended it — but the other song hit the cutting room floor, so that Altman could properly tease out the fact that her character indeed *could* sing….

So Harris is an actress who left us with some superb starring and supporting performances on film, some well-remembered but ephemeral theater and TV work (out of which only a jarringly disturbing and brilliant Naked City episode exists on DVD), and a bunch of unsubstantiated show-biz-style rumors (another one appears on the always-unreliable IMDB, but I will only refer to the ones I’ve actually read in print sources). Of course what it comes down to is that Harris’s personal reputation, whatever that may have been, has been washed away by the sands of time and what we’re left with are the performances, for which I am incredibly grateful.

Since A Thousand Clowns, Nashville, Family Plot, and Freaky Friday are all imminently available, let me just direct you to the nicest rarities that appear online. First, audio tracks of an ill-fated, off-B’way revival of Brecht’s Mahagonny starring Harris and Estelle Parsons. Then the underrated (okay, forgotten) Herb Gardner character masterwork Who is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971). Harris has a bravura scene that earned her an Oscar nomination. She is utterly sublime.



Jerry Schatzberg’s The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979) is remembered primarily for its early starring performance by Meryl Streep, but Harris is equally wonderful. The trailer can be seen here.

The only Harris film I’ve yet to see — and I'm certain it will appear on the Net in some fashion — is Hal Ashby’s 1981 picture Second Hand Hearts (originally called “The Hamster of Happiness” — I’m not kidding!). A fan of the film put up a clip here.

The Apple Tree

I close with the two clips that kicked off this whole musing on the wonderful Ms. Harris, two segments from her work in Broadway musicals, as captured for TV. I was surprised by these clips for two reasons: because I NEVER thought I’d see her work on Broadway on video; and because she worked in a quiet and nuanced fashion in the movies, but is definitely using what they call “heightened realism” in these clips (or, more apt, cartoonlike caricature for broadly cartoonish musicals).

She also played “split” characters in both shows, so she affects a very cute and somewhat silly voice for each introverted personality. Here she is on the Tony Awards performing a scene from The Apple Tree where she plays the Jules Feiffer character “Passionella,” who wants to be a “beautiful, glamorous, radiant, ravishing… movie star!” Check out the ultra-quick costume change:



And please let us not speak of forthcoming revivals with Harry Connick Jr., or overblown Minnelli movies with Streisand (was there a movie musical with Streisand that was not overblown?), Yves Montand, and a young (singing — yes, I’ve got the LP with the outtake) Jack Nicholson. Here are the original stars of On a Clear Day…, John Cullum and Barbara on The Bell Telephone Hour’s 1966 special “The Lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner.” On a Clear Day… is very much of its era (the lyrics get into very cutesy places, as when "bestir" is rhymed with "disinter"), and I have no idea how it will be packaged as a revival, and I don’t care, because I won’t see it. This is the real deal:



Wherever you are, Ms. Harris, thanks for the performances. You did turn out to be a very different sort of “radiant, ravishing movie star,” and are not forgotten.

Update: My Deceased Artiste tribute to Barbara Harris can be found here. RIP.