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By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Posted Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 - 1 Comment »
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[PR] Jerry Lewis to Receive Hersholt Humanitarian Award at 81st Academy Awards®

clowndraft.jpgThe Academy has spoken: “Actor, director, writer and producer Jerry Lewis has been voted the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Academy President Sid Ganis announced today. The award, an Oscar® statuette, will be presented to Lewis during the 81st Academy Awards ceremony on February 22, 2009. The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award is given to an individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry. “Jerry is a legendary comedian who has not only brought laughter to millions around the world,” said Ganis, “but has also helped thousands upon thousands by raising funds and awareness for those suffering from muscular dystrophy.”


Lewis began making local and national televised appeals on behalf of the newly founded Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) in the early 1950s. He has been the organization’s national chairman since 1952 and has served as the “number one volunteer” of the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon since 1966, raising more than $2 billion for the cause.
Born in 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, Lewis first found fame as part of a groundbreaking nightclub act with his partner, Dean Martin. The comedy team of Martin and Lewis made their screen debut in “My Friend Irma” (1949) and starred in 16 films together through 1956. Lewis went on to star in more than two dozen films, including “The Bellboy” (1960), “The Ladies’ Man” (1961), “The Nutty Professor” (1963), “The Disorderly Orderly (1964), “The Family Jewels” (1965) and “The King of Comedy” (1983). A series of lectures on filmmaking that Lewis delivered as an adjunct professor at USC was published as The Total Film-Maker in 1971.
The 81st Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Thursday, January 22, 2009, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2008 will be presented on Sunday, February 22, 2009, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center®, and televised live by the ABC Television Network. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 200 countries worldwide.
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One Response to “[PR] Jerry Lewis to Receive Hersholt Humanitarian Award at 81st Academy Awards®”

  1. ServiceDogPartner says:
    February 17, 2009 at 6:55 pm

    I’m disappointed that this article makes no mention of the protests against Lewis receiving this award. Not only have representatives of the gay community, such as media watchdog GLAAD, protested, but disability rights activists have corresponded with Academy brass about this decision and submitted a petition with over 2600 signatures requesting the award be canceled.
    Indeed, the very work Lewis is being honored for is an ongoing thorn in the side of the disability community. In the MDA telethons, Lewis uses outdated ideas of disability, portraying it as tragic, and people with disabilities as pitiable, life-long children.
    The comedian is well aware that many people with disabilities — including those who were in the telethons themselves when they were young — point out that Lewis’s tactics promote prejudicial attitudes towards disabled people that hurt, not help.
    Being pitied is, above all, dehumanizing; one ceases being a person and becomes an object of fear and “otherness.” Members of the disability rights community tried to dialogue with him about changing his tune to promote respect and rights instead of pathos and charity, but Lewis has responded with shocking venom.
    When reaching out to Lewis brought only derision, activists turned to protests. When defending his use of pity as the best marketing ploy for raising money, Lewis said to a Telethon protester during a 2001 television interview: “Pity? You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!”
    This is humanitarianism?
    More information on the current campaign and its history can be found at http://thetroublewithjerry.net.

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