Showbiz Survivor -- Love Him Or Hate Him, Jerry Lewis Is A Pop Icon Who Can Still Make 'Em Laugh

Mention the name Jerry Lewis, and people react. They blow hot and cold on the guy, but lukewarm?

Forget it. With Lewis, the response comes straight from your gut.

Some recall with great fondness the fabled Lewis odd-couple double act with crooner Dean Martin. And they chuckle at the memory of the box office-smash comedy films Lewis directed in the 1950s and '60s - the ones starring the Jermeister himself as an anxious, endearing, frequently cross-eyed little screw-up with a terminal case of klutz-itis.

Ask European cinema scholars and pundits, and they'll babble on and on about Lewis the brilliant auteur. They'll tell you about the sensitive genius underpinning his every whine and pratfall in "The Bellboy," "The Nutty Professor," and the other dozen or so comedy "classics" he ambidextrously wrote, directed and tailored for his own Silly Putty persona.

French director Jean-Luc Godard even declared Lewis "much better than Chaplin and Keaton."

But then there are all the other people who cringe and shudder at the mere thought of Jerry Lewis.

To them he's Mr. Obnoxious: The chronic screamer whose wail would make an air-raid siren sound soothing. The grating clown whose herky-jerky slapstick suggests irremediable neurological disorders. The ultra-sincere pitchman whose annual national charity telethons (for the Muscular Dystrophy Association) have devolved into smarmy endurance marathons.

Carving out a new niche

Whatever you think about Jerry Lewis, the man remains a one-of-a-kind icon and a showbiz survivor. And since 1983, when Lewis surprised audiences with a restrained, broodingly right performance as a beleaguered talk-show host in the underrated Martin Scorsese film "The King of Comedy," he has slowly carved a new niche in the American Zeitgeist.

The past several years have been especially good for Lewis, now 69 and in apparent good health after surviving open-heart surgery that saved his life in 1981 and a bout with prostate cancer several years ago.

Lewis recently co-starred in the well-received independent film "Funny Bones." He and his second wife, Sam, adopted a little girl named Dani, who is now 3 and the apple of her daddy's eye. (Lewis also has six grown-up sons from his first marriage, but admits he was too busy playing a kid himself to be a good father to them.)

And these days, Lewis swears he is having "the time of my life" criss-crossing the country as the devilish Mr. Applegate, the Brylcreemed, ascoted villain in a Broadway revival tour of the classic musical comedy, "Damn Yankees." Staged by Jack O'Brian, the production comes to Seattle for a two-week run at the Paramount Theatre, Tuesday through Christmas Eve.

And who knows? In consumer culture, what goes around inevitably comes around again. If "The Brady Bunch" can reap a renaissance, maybe those vintage Jerry Lewis films are on the verge of rediscovery.

Maybe Lewis will be hailed in his own land as the cinematic innovator all those French eggheads have long insisted he is. Or at he'll least be acknowledged as an undeclared role model for such younger film wackos as Pee Wee Herman, Robin Williams and Jim Carrey.

Then again, maybe not.

Last of a generation

His well-known grouchiness with reporters having mellowed lately, Lewis does not appear to be losing much sleep over his place in the American pop-culture canon. During a carefully arranged telephone interview from his Palm Springs hotel room, he wanted to talk about the joys of doing "Damn Yankees."

"We're having a hell of a time," Lewis enthused in that deep Buddy Love voice of his. "We've had great theaters, great audiences. The whole thing is just impeccable."

And the star can't tell you enough about his adorable daughter: "Nothing seems more important to me right now than the time I spend playing with her," he mused softly, almost wistfully.

But with a little prodding, Lewis, who for years has taught at the University of Southern California film school, thoughtfully delivered an illuminating impromptu seminar on the art of screen comedy.

Lewis never lets you forget he's a member of the last generation to be shaped by the rigors of crowd-pleasing American vaudeville houses and Borscht Belt resorts, where comedians honed their acts by repeat performances before voluble audiences.

"I was brought up in a trunk," points out the New Jersey native. "I had my first tux on when I was 5. My mom was a concert pianist, a brilliant musician. My father was quite a performer, too.

Between the both of them I had quite a college."

Even before he teamed up with pop balladeer Dean Martin, Lewis' performance style was inherently musical. At 5, he made his debut at a Borscht Belt hotel singing "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" Later, he had a few Al Jolson-style pop hits, including "Rockabye Your Baby (With a Dixie Melody)."

And many of the best bits in his movies involve music - for instance, the routine in "The Errand Boy" where the sniveling little schmo he plays pretends to be chairing a movie-studio board meeting, in sync with a jazzy orchestra tune. Or his bopping entrance to the ball in "Cinderfella," to the swinging beat of the Count Basie band.

"Comedy is beats, it's rhythms," Lewis emphasizes. "But there's an awful lot of comic people who don't work with rhythms - like Bob Hope. He's one of the best monologuists who ever lived. But he has a beat like a cop. There's nothing musical about him."

"Conversely," he reflects, "Jack Benny had nothing but rhythm in his work. Every time he lifted an eyebrow, it was musical."

Was it the musicality, or the Jewish-neurotic kibbitzing, or mainly the shameless, freaky, little-boy silliness that made Lewis such a top attraction in the Cold War years? (His films collectively grossed roughly $800 million.)

"I'd have to say that I was simply a child of my period, and the people in this country took me to their bosoms and pushed me to do well.

"People tell me they grew up on my films. I get that 10 times a day from every sector of the public. It's a wonderful feeling. It's marvelous. How many entertainers in their careers get the chances I've had?"

It is a matter of longstanding record how desperately Lewis tried and failed to please one especially tough audience member: his father, Danny Levitch, who died in 1982. The son who never got the fatherly accolades he craved now believes comedy is often borne out of a furious, insatiable hunger for acceptance.

"Funny people get a commendation every minute," he observes. "It's difficult to stop a guy playing Othello and tell him he's wonderful. But in comedy you get moment-to-moment reassurance that you're accepted, and you can't get enough of it. That's why most comic people are neurotic, really wacko - though we try desperately to come off as normal offstage."

High praise for Jim Carrey

Though rubber-faced Jim Carrey, today's reigning movie clown, could be accused of borrowing a lot of this old master's shtick, Lewis expresses high regard for the top banana of "Ace Ventura" and "Dumb and Dumber." And he knows all about the dangers of vaulting to superstardom.

"I think Carrey is the most brilliant young visual comic to come down the pike in 100 years," Lewis says. "I just hope the studios don't burn him out, because he's wonderful for the industry, and for the ticket-buying public. I hope he has all the ingredients of longevity."

And what about those who decry Carrey's humor as stupid and sophomoric - charges also repeatedly leveled at Lewis over the years?

"That's snobbery, just snobbery," he retorts. "Do you think it's stupid that a matador goes into a ring with a bull? Highly entertaining, but not the brightest thing, right?"

Ostensibly talking about Carrey, but with obvious application to his own experience, Lewis pondered the fickleness of the public's ardor.

"Anyone who excels has tremendous support, and then that support will wane. The public has this affinity between love and hate. Take Muhammad Ali. They rooted for him, and then they couldn't wait for him to get knocked (down). It stinks, but it's part of the risk you take."

Scanning the current screen scene, Lewis says he's a big fan of Robin Williams ("the funniest man in the world!"), and he considers the erratically popular Eddie Murphy "brilliant." That compliment is not entirely incidental: Murphy is starring in a new remake of Lewis's favorite self-made film, "The Nutty Professor" - the spoof of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" that won him warm compliments from such hard-to-please, uptown critics as the New Yorker's Pauline Kael.

"I'm an executive producer on the Murphy remake. I was going to be more involved, but I had to put it on the back burner to do this tour," Lewis explains. "Eddie's going to be wonderful in it. He has a different approach, but the concept is still the same."

Lewis has less use for today's more sardonic comics, the stand-up wise guys who eschew physical humor entirely: "I call what they do visual hi-fi," he cracked. "Why go to see them, when all you have to do is hear it? Dennis Miller is a perfect example of a brilliant comic who wants to beat the audience with his intellect. It's like cerebral combat."

His voice rising, Lewis continued, "That's a terrible, sad state to be in. Just go out and be funny! There isn't a single joke you can't start with a visual gag. I'd love to hold a seminar with the 2,000 best comedians of today - I'll give them visual! Never has this country needed laughter more. Laughter, not confrontation." In love with "Damn Yankees"

Since joining the cast of "Damn Yankees" on Broadway last summer, Lewis has been makin' 'em laugh for eight shows a week.

"That's nothing, my darling," he tells you. "Forty years ago, Dean and I did three shows a night for months at the Paramount Theatre in New York."

Back then, Lewis used to improvise up a storm, getting progressively loopier and louder as the night wore on. In "Damn Yankees," he adheres to the George Abbott-Douglass Wallopp script (based on Wallopp's novel, "The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant").

And the devil's big solo tune, "Those Were the Good Old Days," Lewis performs relatively "straight."

"I loved the show when it first played on Broadway in 1955, and I have an infinite regard and respect for its integrity," Lewis says. "Wherever we can sprinkle in the insanity that is Jerry we do. It's there, but it's there with restraint." (Too much restraint, said some early reviews.)

As for being cast as the devil who tempts a middle-aged sports fan into realizing his dream of playing big-league baseball, Lewis says, "They came to me and said, let's get the guy who's been playing the devil for 64 years. But I've always been a 9-year-old devil. If it was mean mischief I do, it wouldn't work."

This kind of long show tour can grind down performers half his age, so it's a bit surprising that Lewis has signed up for a five-year hitch. Eventually he'll visit London, Paris and Japan with "Damn Yankees," as well as about 50 American cities.

"I had committed to just the first year," Lewis recounted, "but when I saw the business it did and the response and I felt what was happening to me I thought, why not? How often can you say you're having the time of your life - and get paid every week for it?"

After a freewheeling half-hour chat, practically in mid-sentence, the star announced, "I'm outta here, sweetheart!" And that was that.

But the 9-year-old Jerry had a final word: "Tell the Mariners I said, `Bravo' - willya?"

Sure, Jer. Anytime. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Seeing Jerry and the M's

"Damn Yankees" with Jerry Lewis is at the Paramount Theatre, from Tuesday through Dec. 24. It plays Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets: $20-$42 (292-ARTS).

In celebration of the Seattle Mariners baseball season, there is a special performance Wednesday at 8 p.m., with Mariner team members, their wives and members of the coaching staff in attendance.