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+--- Thread: fallen idol?!....Vanity Fair article: 'Jerry Lewis' was a 'sexual harasser/assaulter'.... (/showthread.php?tid=264489)
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fallen idol?!....Vanity Fair article: 'Jerry Lewis' was a 'sexual harasser/assaulter'.... - NewtonMP2100 - 02-23-2022
.....new 'Vanity Fair' article is out....interviews with co-stars.....
Jerry Lewis’s Costars Speak Out: “He Grabbed Me. He Began to Fondle Me. I Was Dumbstruck”
Women first interviewed by the directors behind Allen v. Farrow say the comedy icon sexually harassed—and in at least one case, sexually assaulted—them with impunity. A special collaboration, including a mini doc, between V.F. and the filmmakers.
.....She’d never been summoned by a costar like that before—but then she’d never worked with Jerry Lewis. Apparently, it was how he did things.
Karen Sharpe had already held her own onscreen with Clint Eastwood and John Wayne and won a Golden Globe for the airplane-disaster movie The High and the Mighty when she was cast in 1964’s The Disorderly Orderly. The role, the love interest to Lewis’s typically zany buffoon, hadn’t initially appealed to her. It was a comedy, and she preferred drama. It had also been made clear she wasn’t permitted to be funny opposite the film’s notoriously insecure leading man.
But Sharpe had recently taken a year-and-a-half-long hiatus from Hollywood—she’d gone to San Antonio to settle her father’s estate after his death—and returned to a town that seemed to have forgotten about her. When Lewis offered her the role, he even sweetened the deal, tripling her salary and guaranteeing that Edith Head, the costume designer behind Grace Kelly’s and Audrey Hepburn’s iconic looks, would create her wardrobe. “It was an offer I shouldn’t and couldn’t refuse,” says Sharpe, now 87.
Lewis had the power to make these promises. About a decade earlier, he’d split from Dean Martin after their singing and comedy duo rocketed both to a post–World War II superstardom on par with Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. Critics (and Lewis himself) believed the hyperactive comedian—not Martin’s straight-man crooner—was the real talent. Lewis, who had been the putzy kid brother to Martin’s debonair gentleman, felt he had outgrown his partner. Lewis’s ego expanded even more in 1959 when, at age 33, he signed a seven-year contract with Paramount for a base of $10 million—the largest contract of its kind between a studio and performer at the time. He could hire whomever he pleased.
And Lewis was prolific—in bed (even arriving at the studio early to fit in “a little hump” before work, he later told GQ); in conception (he had six sons with his then wife, Patti, all of whom he left out of his estimated $50 million estate); and in films (The Disorderly Orderly was Lewis’s 16th film at Paramount in just eight years as a solo act). By 1959 his movies (solo and with Martin) had brought in $100 million for Paramount at a time when tickets cost less than 70 cents. He was so untouchable that Paramount’s head of production, Barney Balaban, had said, “If Jerry wants to burn down the studio, I’ll give him the match!”
All this to say that when Lewis summoned Sharpe to set to see what his leading lady looked like in costume, Sharpe might have been surprised—Lewis’s longtime collaborator Frank Tashlin was actually the director—but it would have been reckless to say no.
The movie was being filmed in a mammoth Beverly Hills mansion, which was large enough to look like a hospital (no matter the chandeliers). Sharpe reported to Lewis’s office and, with a wardrobe mistress standing nearby, began modeling her costumes while Lewis requested various nips and tucks. When Sharpe was down to her final costume, Lewis picked up a walkie-talkie and excused the guards outside his office.
Then Lewis “started moving in on me,” recalls Sharpe. “He grabbed me. He began to fondle me. He unzipped his pants. Quite frankly, I was dumbstruck.”
Sharpe protested. “I put my hand up and said, ‘Wait a minute. I don’t know if this is a requirement for your leading ladies, but this is something I don’t do,’ ” she says. “I could see that he was furious. I got the feeling that that never really happened to him.”......
link to original......Vanity Fair article.....?!
youtube clip......of documentary.......?!
Re: fallen idol?!....new story: 'Jerry Lewis' was a 'sexual harasser/assaulter'.... - Carnos Jax - 02-23-2022
What is it with these guys and power?
Re: fallen idol?!....new story: 'Jerry Lewis' was a 'sexual harasser/assaulter'.... - Bill in NC - 02-23-2022
Sounds like Hitchcock...IIRC, only Tippi Hedren successfully said no to him.
Re: fallen idol?!....Vanity Fair article: 'Jerry Lewis' was a 'sexual harasser/assaulter'.... - cbelt3 - 02-23-2022
Kudos to all those women who didn't put up with it.
And make no mistake... sexual assault still happens as part of the power game in almost all areas of all businesses. Say no. Report. Get protection. Abusers should be named and shamed, no matter why or how.
My sisters talked about the abuse they experienced in their careers in the 80's and even into the 00's. Innuendos. Unwanted touches. Blatant come ons. And they dealt with each and every one. Carefully. Legally. My daughter talks about the occasional customer who will try to 'start something'. They are tossed and banned.
I wish our society would find a way to stop this behavior. I wish mothers and fathers would teach their children that abuse is wrong, and children would learn to not abuse, and to take notice and stop abuse when they see it. I was taught that way.
Re: fallen idol?!....Vanity Fair article: 'Jerry Lewis' was a 'sexual harasser/assaulter'.... - kj - 02-23-2022
I don't doubt this is true, at least too much, but I don't trust Vanity Fair, as they are quite sensationalistic, so I'm going to wait on a verdict as more comes to light. I never liked him, so it's not a shock like Cosby.
No doubt this happens too much. I don't think it's an educational problem, but rather an incentive problem. Everyone knows they shouldn't do this stuff (or they wouldn't hide it, etc.) so they need to be held accountable. There's no perfect way to do that, but it's got to happen somehow.
Re: fallen idol?!....new story: 'Jerry Lewis' was a 'sexual harasser/assaulter'.... - Blankity Blank - 02-23-2022
Carnos Jax wrote:
What is it with these guys and power?
I think the crux of the sin to be owned is that in those times the country was fully possessed by a corrupted culture where the place and value of women was horribly distorted and damaged.
That damage was so much a part the culture, there was nothing “wrong” with such men. They were simply exercising the ‘privileges’ of power, wealth and influence that they had “earned”.
Now correctly seen as unquestionably wrong and tragic today, it was simply viewed at large as just how the powerful lived their lives.
Re: fallen idol?!....new story: 'Jerry Lewis' was a 'sexual harasser/assaulter'.... - Acer - 02-23-2022
Blankity Blank wrote:
[quote=Carnos Jax]
What is it with these guys and power?
I think the crux of the sin to be owned is that in those times the country was fully possessed by a corrupted culture where the place and value of women was horribly distorted and damaged.
That damage was so much a part the culture, there was nothing “wrong” with such men. They were simply exercising the ‘privileges’ of power, wealth and influence that they had “earned”.
Now correctly seen as unquestionably wrong and tragic today, it was simply viewed at large as just how the powerful lived their lives.
Harvey Weinstein was still doing this kind of crap in 2017.
Re: fallen idol?!....Vanity Fair article: 'Jerry Lewis' was a 'sexual harasser/assaulter'.... - Ombligo - 02-23-2022
The guys been dead for almost five years... deal with something that matters.
Re: fallen idol?!....new story: 'Jerry Lewis' was a 'sexual harasser/assaulter'.... - Lux Interior - 02-23-2022
Gosh, he always seemed so respectful of women.
"A woman doing comedy doesn’t offend me but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world."
Re: fallen idol?!....new story: 'Jerry Lewis' was a 'sexual harasser/assaulter'.... - Blankity Blank - 02-23-2022
Acer wrote:
[quote=Blankity Blank]
[quote=Carnos Jax]
What is it with these guys and power?
I think the crux of the sin to be owned is that in those times the country was fully possessed by a corrupted culture where the place and value of women was horribly distorted and damaged.
That damage was so much a part the culture, there was nothing “wrong” with such men. They were simply exercising the ‘privileges’ of power, wealth and influence that they had “earned”.
Now correctly seen as unquestionably wrong and tragic today, it was simply viewed at large as just how the powerful lived their lives.
Harvey Weinstein was still doing this kind of crap in 2017.
There’s no cultural shift that will rid us of sociopaths and the like. That magic bullet doesn’t exist. Never will.