Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

months each in twelve short months.” He looked out the window and saw a branch of the Bowery Savings Bank. By now we were in upper Manhattan. “Hey, what’s the Bowery Savings Bank doing in Harlem?” he asked. “It’s for people who save Boweries,” his aide replied. (I would describe the aide, but I was too busy writing down his bad jokes to notice what he looked like.) “The House That Jerry Built" Paul Cohen — whom I do remember as a pleasant, heavy-set young man witli dark hair — took pity on me at this point. “You know, Jerry raised the funds that built the Institute for Muscle Diseases on East 71st Street. It’s the only institute of its kind in the world, and they have a cornerstone there that identifies it as ‘The House That Jerry Built.’ You ought to put that in your story.” Just then we passed the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. A group of hoys were playing soccer in the yard next door. “Stop the bus! Stop the bus!” Jerry yelled. “I wanna play ball!” The bus ground to a halt and he ran to the door. “Lemme kick the ball!” he shouted to the kids. But he didn’t leave the bus. Tbe boys all ran up to the fence and waved. A candy man hurried up to the bus and Jerry said. “Gimme some almonds.” Only he pronounced them “ammans,” with an imitation Bronx accent. “I’m an actor, Jerry,” said the candy man, who must have been at least seventy. “I know it areddy,” Jerry replied. “I saw ya in ‘King Lear.’ ” The candy man laughed. Jerry waved goodbye to him and the kids and we were on our way again. At Manhattan College, Jerry did play ball. He insisted on spending fifteen, twenty minutes tossing a football around with an appreciative group of young college men. When one of them told him they were there on a religious retreat. Jerry asked: “Oh — is that like Passover?” They all laughed and he went clambering down a long flight of stairs to the auditorium door. He entered and gave his speech to another group of workers. For the first time, I heard him mention muscular dystrophy in a highly personal manner. “I'm a father of five sons,” he said, “and I know the feeling of having them just ill with bronchitis. I can imagine the feelings of those who have a child with muscular dystrophy. . . .” And he closed his speech in a rather strange way. “Helping 135,000 crippled childen is very depressing,” he admitted. “I can only thank you for what you’re doing and what you're going to do.” Then, as a small boy approached the stage to take his picture, he smiled tenderly at the boy and said, “Is that me in the camera? Oh, that’s a monkey bird.” And he made a funny face. Man on the run With that he was off the stage and bounding up the long flight of steps toward the bus. Halfway up the stairs he suddenly stopped, caught his breath and waited for a minute, an oddly surprised expression on his face. Then, very slowly, he conp tinued on up. holding onto both railings for support. His face was flushed red. Back in the bus, he went through to the bedroom and lay out flat on his back. After a few moments I went in to see if he wanted to talk. He said, “Siddown. Let’s talk about anything except you-knowwhat.” His face was still slightly flushed. I sat on the edge of the bed and asked, “Why do you work so hard? I know you’ve had a heart scare or two.” “Because I love it. that’s why,” he said. “Because it’s my life. I have no use for people who say ‘I hate to work.’ That comes from untalented people.” “What do you like best about your work?” I asked. “Not being out of work,” he said seriously. “You mean after all this time you still think about being unemployed?” I asked, and he nodded. “I wanted to he a movie star when I was a kid,” he continued. “You know what happened. Now what’s wrong with that? When some people hear me say I like being a star, they're shocked. ‘You mean you say that publicly?’ they ask. But you know something? They’re the ones who are most impressed. John Wayne came into my dressing room recently and sprawled around and talked. I thought, ‘John Wayne comes in to see me!’ I’m impressed. What’s wrong with that?” “But how do you keep up the pace — writing, directing and starring in your own movies, plus all this work for muscular dystrophy?” I asked. “The doctor’s been helping me with vitamin B shots,” Jerry said. “Does the doctor try to slow you down?” “He knows better,” Jerry laughed. “As 1 said, I like to work. I’m the only guy who takes four weeks’ vacation in two days. Actually, once a year I go away with Patti and the boys or else they stomp on me. And I spend every weekend relaxing with them at home. That keeps me going for the rest of the week.” Suddenly he jumped up. pulled a hat down low over his ears and ran into the other room. He gave a stupefied stare, reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of horribly crooked false teeth. He slipped them into his mouth, looked at us and asked, “Hey, where’s my caps? I gotta make a public appearance!” We all laughed, and the bus pulled up to a stop in front of Roosevelt High in the Bronx. As usual, a crowd quickly clustered in front of the picture window and looked in at Jerry. He waved genially at them, all the time making wildly insulting remarks which they couldn’t hear. “They love him— he’s a baby” Jerry’s aide enthused, “The one thing he has in common with these kids is that he hasn’t learned to repress his emotions. He’s a baby. That’s why they love him — he’s a baby.” Then we all trooped into the school auditorium and Jerry gave another pep talk. This time his manner was more subdued— possibly because a line of muscular dystrophy victims in wheel chairs sat at the front of the auditorium. Their ages ranged from five or six to sixteen. Some of them were hunched down in their chairs, unable to hold themselves erect. But they all beamed when Jerry would crack a joke. The biggest laugh came when a little girl asked Jerry, “Do you ever give any money for dystrophv yourself, Mr. Lewis?” His reply: “Yes, honey, I have. In fact, I wanna get a little back. I’m empty today!” The audience roared. But he closed his speech with this reminder: “The things you keep, you lose. The things you give away, you keep forever.” Back at the bus I told Jerry goodbye. I felt I had to get the rest of his story from others. He was heading out to Long Island for an all-evening tour of rallies that wouldn't get him back to Manhattan until around midnight. “Sorry I couldn’t tell you more,” he said quietly. “But I just don’t think I should talk about it. It was nice having you along, though. And any time you want to talk about show business or anything like that, just let me know.” The following week I dropped by the Institute for Muscle Research — “The House That Jerry Built” — and talked to some of the doctors there. One told me a story that Jerry himself would never have told. “Jerry got some information a few years ago that a little boy with muscular dystrophy was going to celebrate his ninth birthday the next day,” the doctor began. “The child was in Lakeview Sanitarium near Boston. His father had murdered his mother and was doing life in the Massachusetts penitentiary. The boy was pretty far gone, and they knew that this birthday would be his last. The authorities would never divulge his name — they just called him Little Boy Blue. He was a great fan of Jerry’s, and loved to watch him on TV. “When Jerry heard about the child, he said. ‘We’ll put on a TV show exclusively for this boy.’ He called General Sarnoff at NBC and had a closed TV circuit set up between Los Angeles and the sanitarium in Massachusetts. They had to send mobile units up there from New York. “In less than twenty-four hours, Jerry assembled an array of talent that would have cost a million dollars if any sponsor had to pay for them: Dinah Shore, Hugh O'Brian. Eddie Cantor, George Gobel. Eddie Fisher and a twenty-eight-piece band. They helped Jerry put on a ninety-minute show that nobody in the country saw except that one kid and the people watching in his room. Jerry had sent the boy a TV set and they had a big birthday cake for him. It was a birthday like no kid ever had before or since.” An office worker at the Institute revealed that Jerry has raised $15,000,000 for muscular dystrophy research and care in the past ten years. “And you know,” he said, "I know for a fact that Jerry spends some part of every day of his life working for dystrophy.” This was a big revelation. “We who must die— salute you" A nurse told me another story about Jerry’s concern for muscular dystrophy victims. “A teenage boy in Miami Beach, suffering terrible agony from muscular dystrophy, wrote Jerry a letter not long ago. He told him that as a sufferer who would die soon of dystrophy, he had great admiration for the magnificent work Jerry was doing in helping the search for the cause and cure of the disease. Well, Jerry took to phoning this boy every week, and writing to him frequently. Once he went to Miami and visited him. “A few months later, Jerry did a TV