Deaths 2022

Deaths 2021

Deaths 2020

Deaths 2019

Deaths 2018

Deaths 2017

Deaths 2016

Deaths 2015

Deaths 2014

Deaths 2013

Deaths 2012

Deaths 2011

Deaths 2010

Deaths 2009


Full list by date of death

Jerry Lewis

Actor/comedian/director

Born - 16 March 1926, Newark, New Jersey, USA
Died - 20 August 2017

Long-faced, darkly crop-haired, squawk-voiced American zany (born Jerome Levitch) whose goofy, childlike comic creation was a big hit in the late 1940s (nightclubs) and 1950s (films) in partnership with singer/actor Dean Martin, a time when they were top box-office attractions. The partnership split acrimoniously in 1957, but Lewis's earlier solo comedies were excellent value, with marvellously funny sequences. Gradually, often under his own direction from 1960, the movies became slow, sentimental and self-indulgent, but his stock rose again in his latter years and he was given an honorary Oscar in 2009. Starring appearances in more than 50 movies included My Friend Irma (1949), That's My Boy (1951), The Stooge (1952), Jumping Jacks (1952), Scared Stiff (1953), Living It Up (1954), You're Never Too Young (1955), Pardners (1956), The Delicate Delinquent (1956), The Sad Sack (1957), Rock-a-Bye Baby (1958), Cinderfella (1960), The Errand Boy (1961), It's Only Money (1962), The Nutty Professor (1963), The Disorderly Orderly (1964), Way...Way Out (1966), The Big Mouth (1967), Hook, Line and Sinker (1969), The Day the Clown Cried (1971), Hardly Working (1980), The King of Comedy (1982), Cookie (1989), Mr Saturday Night (1992), Funny Bones (1995), Miss Castaway and the Island Girls (2004), Max Rose (2013) and The Trust (2016), his last. Much beset by illnesses from 1983, he died from natural causes.