| Net Worth: | $50 Million |
| Date of Birth: | Mar 16, 1926 – Aug 20, 2017 (91 years old) |
| Gender: | Male |
| Height: | 6 ft (1.83 m) |
| Profession: | Actor, Screenwriter, Film director, Comedian, Film Producer, Singer, Television Director, Writer |
| Nationality: | United States of America |
Contents
What Was Jerry Lewis’s Net Worth and Career Earnings?
American comedian, actor, singer, director, producer, and screenwriter Jerry Lewis earned $50 million during his lifetime. In the ’50s and ’60s, Jerry Lewis was one of the most-paid performers in the world.
His films always made a profit, and he was able to collect enormous fees. When Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin performed together, they became an instant hit. After that, he went on to pursue a solo career as a film and television actor, singer, director, and producer.
Jerry Lewis’s acting resume included more than seventy roles. The American Comedy Awards, the Venice Film Festival, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association all honored him for his work in the industry with lifetime achievement awards.
The Hollywood Walk of Fame honors Lewis with two stars. The Labor Day Telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association was Lewis’s claim to fame. He also served as the MDA’s national chair. On August 20, 2017, at the age of 91, Jerry Lewis passed away.
Jerry Lewis Net Worth: How Much Did Jerry Lewis Leave in His Will? https://t.co/WtV6UTaEfv
— Theactive News (@TheactiveNews24) November 1, 2022
Jerry Lewis Early Life.
Lewis entered the world on March 16, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey. Lewis was reared in a Jewish home by his Jewish parents. His Russian-born parents brought his father, Daniel Levitch, to America to pursue a career as a master of ceremonies and vaudevillian.
Rachael, his mother, was a musician and music director who had hailed from Warsaw, Poland. Lewis’s real name is Joseph, but he goes by Jerry so that he won’t be confused with the comedian Joe E. Lewis or the boxer Joe Louis. When he was in ninth grade, he dropped out of Irvington High School because of his reputation for pranks.
Jerry Lewis Career.
At the age of 15, Lewis had already developed his own mime act and was playing in New York City nightclubs, theatres, and hotels. Lewis first met the young crooner Dean Martin in 1945. Attracted to one other, they decided to create an act together, which catapulted them to national fame.
They got themselves on national shows like “Toast of the Town” and “Welcome Aboard.” In 1950, the two of them joined NBC to co-host the Sunday night show “The Colgate Comedy Hour.”
Paramount Pictures hired Martin and Lewis in films including “My Friend Irma,” “The Stooge,” and “Scared Stiff” after their performance at New York’s Paramount Theatre the next year earned them widespread acclaim. They were so well-liked that DC Comics made a comic book series on them, titled “The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis,” which ran from 1952 to 1957.
However, problems arose for the pair as time went on and the critical praise for Lewis’s film roles grew as Martin’s star declined. They performed their last concert as a group in a nightclub in 1956, after which they each went on to establish their own successful careers.
After some consideration, Lewis decided to make an album, and the result, “Jerry Lewis Just Sings,” peaked at number three on the “Billboard” charts. He then released a second CD and became a regular at the Sands Casino in Las Vegas in addition to other venues across the country.
Lewis’s stardom was boosted by these shows. The comic book series “The Adventures of Jerry Lewis” ran from 1957 to 1971, published by DC Comics.
In the meantime, Lewis’s film career was taking off, and in 1959 he signed a contract with Paramount that would make him the best-paid person in Hollywood at the time, guaranteeing him $10 million plus a share of the revenues from films over the next seven years.
As a filmmaker, Lewis debuted with the 1960’s “The Bellboy.” After that, in addition to performing in and producing films, he also made a habit of directing them. With “The Nutty Professor,” which he co-directed, co-wrote, and co-starred in, he found commercial success in 1963; the film’s success led to sequels and a stage adaptation.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Lewis landed important cinema parts and worked continuously, until he took an 11-year break before returning with the film “Hardly Working” in 1981. Despite negative reviews, this movie made $50 million at the box office.
Despite a worsening of his health in the second half of his life, Lewis continued to act, direct, and produce film and television, as well as record music. The 2016 film “Max Rose” was his last. During his later years, he was a guest on numerous talk shows and podcasts, including “WTF with Marc Maron” and “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”
Jerry Lewis Personal Life.
In October of 1944, Jerry Lewis tied the knot with Patti Palmer. Five of the couple’s children were biological and one was adopted, for a total of six.
Lewis was candid about his pursuit of other women and affairs with Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich over their 35 years of marriage. After Lewis’s infidelity and excessive spending caused his first wife to seek for divorce in 1980, she eventually did so. After Lewis and Palmer’s divorce was finalized in 1983, Lewis made sure that his children from a previous marriage did not inherit anything from him.
Lewis married former ballerina and stewardess Sandra Pitnick the same year his divorce was finalized. Meeting on the set of “Hardly Working,” a film directed by Lewis in which Pitnick had a small part, is how the two got to know one another. They were married for 34 years, during which time they adopted a daughter, and then Lewis passed away.
Lewis suffered from a wide range of ailments and health issues during the course of his life. Lewis sustained a back injury while on stage and became hooked to Percodan for thirteen years until he was able to overcome the habit in 1978. He had a number of heart issues and his first heart attack occurred when he was 34 years old, in 1960. Due to a second heart attack in 1982, he underwent bypass surgery.
Prostate cancer, diabetes, and pulmonary fibrosis all worsened in his final years. Lewis passed away at home in Las Vegas from the heart and peripheral artery disease in 2017. He was 91 years old. They (his second wife and their daughter) received his entire estate.
After his passing, Lewis’s likeness was put on a number of Las Vegas marquees in honor of his lengthy career as a star there.