Jerry Lewis to retire from telethon

[The Straight Story]

Jerry Lewis will step down from hosting the annual Labor Day weekend Muscular Dystrophy Assn. telethon this year, ending a 45-year run.
"It's time for an all-new telethon era," Lewis said.

To that end, the telethon is reducing its length from 21 1/2 hours to six, airing in a combination of live and tape-delayed segments Sept. 4 from 6 p.m. to midnight in each time zone to make it more attractive to local stations and to entice bigger talent.

Lewis, 85, said he will continue to serve as the org's national chairman.


http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118037136

[elocs]

1. I guess I didn't realize that Jerry Lewis was still among the living. n/t

[KamaAina]

2. What? Only a six-hour pity party?

Disability rights activists wish it would just go away altogether.

http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/archive/jerry92.htm

Perhaps MDA had simply hired a new ghostwriter for the annual pap piece that ran each Labor Day weekend in Parade magazine under Lewis's byline. But the 1990 one, published in the September 2 issue of Parade magazine, took a new twist: "What if the twist of fate that we hear so much about really happened? What if, when the gifts and the pains were being handed out, I was in the wrong line?" Lewis began . "What if I had Muscular Dystrophy?" was its title.

"I decided after 41 years of battling this curse that attacks children of all ages, I would put myself in that chair, that steel imprisonment that long has been deemed the dystrophic child's plight," he continued.

"I know the courage it takes to get on the court with other cripples and play wheelchair basketball, but I'm not as fortunate as they are," Lewis wrote, halfway into the piece. He had so far managed to include nearly every term or concept offensive to disability rights advocates, and his next sentences would work in the others: "I'd like to play basketball like normal, healthy, vital and energetic people. I really don't want the substitute. I just can't half-do anything. When I sit back and think a little more rationally," he continued, "I realize my life is half, so I must learn to do things halfway. I just have to learn to try to be good at being half a person."

The article outraged disability rights activists nationwide -- in a way little else has. The Rag received countless copies of the article for our "We wish we wouldn't see . . . " pages. In Chicago, Cris Matthews and Mike Ervin, a brother and sister who both had forms of Muscular Dystrophy and had been MDA poster children in 1961 and who had been active in ADAPT actions and had started a group called AccessAbility Associates, decided to do something about it.

[elfin]

3. He should have groomed a successor

It was "done" a few years ago. Poignant, but probably took a real hit with the passing of his sidekick, Ed McMahon, for the production.

Sad in a way, and am thankful for his efforts and happy my family has not been affected by this horrid affliction.

[dhill926]

4. there goes another good drinking game.....

used to make predictions on when he would cry.....yeah, I know......

[Sonoman]

5. Good riddance, you fake.

He tried to rip off a song I donated to the show. The song raised a lot of money and I found out he was wanting 10% royalties and claiming I gave it to him and not MDA.

Fucking Charlatan.

Sonoman

[monmouth]

7. When I was a kid performing in Atlantic City, he and Dean were at

the 500 Club. I would be in their company quite often. Jerry is the most obnoxious and arrogant person I hated to be around. I would always talk to Dean and completely ignore JL, he used to get so annoyed. go out of his way to be noticed, etc. Very juvenile a-hole at least back then....

[Sonoman]

8. Thanks, you would not believe how many people get annoyed...

when I tell that story.

I am still - after all these years - confounded by the way Americans basically worship the images portrayed rather than the reality of the performer.

I am curious as to your gig in long-ago Atlantic City. Sing? Dance?

Do you still perform?

Sonoman

[monmouth]

9. "Stars of Tomorrow" produced by Tony Grant on the Steel Pier.

I had the pleasure of befriending people like Sophie Tucker (hey kid, wanna get me some cigs?) and Sammy Kaye (his orchestra was downstairs from the Children's Theatre where I was. "Stay out of the business kid, it's crap." Haha. When I was 13 I met a boy from New York named Alfredo who was "going to make it big, just remember Al." He did and I remembered.

[Vinca]

6. I thought he was dead.

[onethatcares]

10. I almost hate to say this, but

I think Dick Clark shouldn't be rolled out this year either.

I mean, he was a great guy back in he 60s and stayed looking young for a long time, but IT'S TIME TO GO HOME AND WATCH THE BALL DROP. Not

be on national tv telling us how great it is to be in New Yorks Time Square on New Year Eve.

if I offended anyone by this post, to bad. suck it up and move on .

[monmouth]

11. You are absolutely right. I also feel the same way about Kirk Douglas.

He makes me feel very uncomfortable, and hard to understand. He's another one with the ego. Back in the day he was always in the news about womanizing, many female stars wouldn't work with him....