I stayed up with Jerry
It’s hard to describe the now-defunct annual telethon of the Muscular Dystrophy Association to somebody who didn’t look forward to it, who didn’t spend the last part of every perfectly good summer planning to camp out by the TV over the long Labor Day weekend. Where do I begin? On the most basic level the telethon was a tricked-out variety show; there were performers, and there were musical numbers. But nobody watched it for those. You watched it for the spectacle of host Jerry Lewis, a guy whose ego and temper were towering even on a good night, slipping deeper and deeper into a mind-melting sleep deficit (remember, telethon = television + marathon) until finally, in one inevitable moment, he would unhinge the top of his skull and let the snakes out. You never knew when that moment would come, or what would light the fuse — God help the poor stagehand who moved a bit of set dressing into the wrong position, or didn’t have Lewis’s milkshake stashed in his podium when he reached for it — but you always knew it was coming. There are clips on YouTube and they give you some of the flavor; here’s one from 1987 in which Lewis gloweringly, and apparently seriously, solicits donations from the guys who control drug traffic into the port of Miami.
But clips really don’t do justice to the telethon’s deranged majesty. It was theater. It was a dumpster fire. It was a picture window straight into a famous person’s id. It was impossible to watch, and impossible to look away from. It was terrible. It was glorious.
We reference the 1987 telethon in this week’s episode, “Gorilla Position,” and the Newsweek story I wrote about it after flying to Las Vegas and sitting in the audience for over 21 hours. Here are two versions of that story: The one that got published, and the longer and considerably more nutso original draft. If you really want to experience some of the flavor of the thing as I lived it, get jacked up on espresso and chase it with cough syrup before you read. I’ll see you on the other side. /bb
