eMoviePoster.com

What are the objects in the corners of some images? Learn More

Jerry Lewis was born Joseph Levitch in Newark New Jersey in 1926. He began performing at an early age. His father was an entertainer and M.C. who performed as Danny Lewis, and his son used the stage name Joey Lewis at first, but changed it to Jerry to avoid confusion with either Joe E. Lewis or boxer Joe Louis. In the late 1940s, he met singer Dean Martin, and Dean served as his "straight man", and they performed in night clubs and TV, and in a string of incredibly successful movies. But as Jerry became more and more the focus of the act Dean became increasingly dissatisfied, and the two broke up in 1956. Jerry continued making movies (writing, directing, and starring in most of them), and many feel many of his solo movies were superior to the ones he made with Dean. Perhaps his best was The Nutty Professor in 1963, where he played a mild mannered professor who turns into Buddy Love, in a wacky parody of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In 1965, Jerry injured his back while performing and became addicted to Percodan, and he battled this addiction for at least a decade. From 1966 to 2010, Jerry hosted the annual Muscular Dystrophy Telethon on TV, which raises millions of dollars every year. In 1976, Dean appeared on the Telethon, and even though they had made some minor appearances together in the past decade, this was widely touted as the first reconciliation of the legendary comedy team. In 1981, Jerry attempted a comeback with Hardly Working, and although the movie made some money, his style of humor had fallen out of favor, and it was the last slapstick comedy movie Jerry made. He switched to dramatic roles, and in 1983 he took the Johnny Carson-like role in Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy, and was great. He also was memorable as Eli Sternberg in an arc of the cult favorite TV show, Wiseguy. There is one movie Jerry Lewis made that was never released, called "The Day the Clown Cried" in 1972. It was completed but then multiple lawsuits kept it from being released. There are constant rumors that one day it WILL be released! Sadly, Jerry passed away in 2017, and the fate of "The Day the Clown Cried" is unknown. There are reports he donated a copy of the film to the Library of Congress in 2015, under the stipulation that it wouldn't be screened before June 2024.

Important Added Info: Note that this TV still (which from is an undated, but likely 1970s, re-release of "The Ladies Man") has been personally autographed (signed) by Jerry Lewis!

Note that this autographed 8x10 is part of a remarkable new collection we have been consigned, and we are auctioning nearly 500 items from this collection in this set of auctions (we will have more from this collection in our next few sets of autograph auctions).
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a high school teacher who taught a film class, and one day a week (and all through the summer) he ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits and one-sheets from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s, but increasingly greatly in the early 1980s, he hit on the idea of writing to famous celebrities, and enclosing an 8x10 from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He often was able to locate an 8x10 still from his collection that was from a really good movie from that star, or one that had a really good image of that star. In a relatively small number of cases, he did not have a still in his collection to send, so he bought a reproduction from a photo shop, and sent that instead, which is why some of the items that have this notation on them are reproductions.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this photo (and the vast majority of the other photos we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the mid-1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775