Jerry Lewis Cinemas

I knew very little about the Jerry Lewis Cinema chain. I remembered my brother and sister enthusing over it, like there was some chance of my family going into it. My mother might have considered it for a minute or two before dismissing the idea.

At the time, I thought they were talking about us actually owning a theater. Thinking back to it later, I was sure I misunderstood and they were just talking about buying stock. But, no, from what I read now, they must have actually been talking about buying a franchise and opening a theater, throwing away everything we got from my father's life insurance.

I wasn't the smartest kid in the world. I thought it meant we would produce the movies we'd show.

I read a little about it later and knew that the theater chain failed in part because they would feature only family entertainment at a time when Hollywood wasn't producing any family films to speak of. There was already a theater in town that had that tiny market cornered anyway.

The first movie the Jerry Lewis Cinemas showed was a John Wayne movie where he used the phrase "son of a bitch". I can't remember where I read that.

Harry Shearer, one of the few people who has seen Lewis's The Day the Clown Cried, speculated that Lewis made that movie to be shown in his theaters, which didn't make sense. Lewis was directing a lot of movies back than and any of them could have been shown in his theaters. Shearer changed his mind and now thinks Lewis made the movie because he was then teaching a class at USC, the French took him seriously, he had written a book modestly titled The Total Filmmaker and he wanted to make something reflecting his newfound gravitas.

Poor Jerry Lewis was held back a grade in elementary school and never graduated from high school. He was terribly hurt by this and tried to compensate by absurdly claiming to have an IQ of 190. His inferiority complex drove him to stardom, but it ultimately destroyed him. Look at his filmography. He was directing one or two movies a year before The Day the Clown Cried. After that, his career ground to a halt. He had flown too close to the sun. It was ten years before he made Hardly Working which was just awful.

Anyway, here are some pictures of Jerry Lewis Cinemas and former Jerry Lewis Cinemas.

They told people how easy it would be. The theaters would practically run themselves with the push of a button!

Maybe that would work now with digital projectors. Maybe Jerry Lewis was forty years ahead of his time. Like if he opened a nickelodeon in 1860.

As it happened, people who invested tens of thousands of dollars in these things felt ripped off, like they had been misled. Running a movie theater wasn't as easy as they were led to believe, they got little support from the company and they were forced to show only family films that nobody liked.

My sister developed an intense dislike for Lewis after seeing him interviewed by Tom Snyder on The Tomorrow Show. Lewis was one of those guys who would brag about battering his children because he thought it showed what a good father he was. Specifically, he gloated about backhanding his son and knocking him to the floor during a party at his house.

Mel Brooks seemed to have admired him and Woody Allen wanted him to direct Take the Money and Run. And looking at other comedies from the 1950's I can see why Lewis appealed to people back then.