02-23-2022, 04:09 PM
.....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.......?!
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.......?!
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I reject your reality and substitute my own!
I reject your reality and substitute my own!