I turned on the radio. Fresh Air with Terry Gross happened to be on and they were playing an interview they once did with Jerry Lewis. At one point, he said he got his way in negotiations with studios because of his 168 IQ.
How would he know what his IQ was and how would that help in negotiations? I googled it when I got home.
It turns out that Lewis used to claim to have an IQ of 190. He's quoted on imdb.com as saying, "I'm a multi-faceted, talented, wealthy, internationally famous genius. I have an IQ of 190 -- that's supposed to be a genius. People don't like that. My answer to all my critics is simple: I like me. I like what I've become. I'm proud of what I've achieved, and I don't really believe I've scratched the surface yet."
He must have decided that 190 was too high to be plausible and was a suspiciously round number. So he decided it was 168. More recently, an interviewer asked if he really had a 190 IQ. He said no, it was 145.
The other implausible claim in that quote was "I like me." If he did, he wouldn't have spewed that nonsense about his IQ.
We are talking Jerry Lewis the most contradictory character in Hollywood here.
ReplyDeleteThere's interviews of him declaring his undying love and respect for his wife and others with him claiming to have banged anything that moved as soon as he became famous.
We have interviews of him talking about how much his kids mean to him and how family is more important than anything and how close he's always been to his children.
Then we here about his kids saying how nasty he could be and eventually Jerry dying and leaving nothing to them in a very public way