Jerry Lewis Unhinged

By Matt Wood in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 17, 2005 4:41PM

Jerry Lewis is in town promoting his book, Dean & Me (A Love Story), about his tumultuous relationship with Dean Martin. The two were America's favorite comic duo during the 1950s, recording 16 films plus countless TV shows and club performances, but they suffered a less-than amicable split after 10 years of clashing egos. The two hardly spoke again until the 1980s, but that didn't stop Lewis from pouring his heart out in a book. He told the Sun-Times in an oboe-drenched, sepia-toned interview that writing has been his therapy in the 10 years after Martin died on Christmas of 1995. He claims to have written over 2,000 pages for the book, and wants to publish a second volume to include all the things he didn't get in the first.

Life isn't all wet kisses and baskets full of puppies for Lewis though. Protesters in wheelchairs heckled him a promotional event at the Chicago Library. Various groups have complained that Lewis takes advantage of the disabled and portrays them as people to be pitied during his annual muscular dystrophy telethon. Lewis yelled at the protesters then stormed off the stage. One witness told CBS 2 that he even said, "These people are going to walk out of those chairs and walk home tonight. I bought those chairs for them."

Jerry! Talk about biting the tube that feeds you. Okay, so maybe the protesters were able-bodied people pretending to be disabled to prove a point, but that's pretty cold. Chicagoist would go so far to say that you should never yell at someone in a wheelchair, even the guy that curses at us outside of the Cubs games, because you just never know. Definitely not a message you want to send when you've spent a big part of your career trying to help the disabled.