Benayoun's book on Jerry

In June of 1989, Robert Benayoun published a 2nd edition of his book, Bonjour, Monsieur Lewis. This edition was much smaller both in size and in content than the 1972 publication. While Benayoun deleted the original Part 2 and the Appendix, he did add one additional chapter to Part 1, a Chapter 17. So the 1989 edition consists of 17 chapters, period. As far as I can tell, Benayoun did not alter the previous 16 chapters. Chapter 17 takes place in 1980 (a momentous year for Jerry in many aspects: the lawsuit by the franchise owners of the Jerry Lewis Cinemas, the split from Patti and her filing for legal separation, facing bankruptcy, the death of Danny Lewis), but a final footnote refers to events that took place in 1987. I have no explanation for the gaps, why Benayoun waited until 1989 to publish his narrative of events that occurred almost 10 years before. But here is that Chapter 17. In future installments, I will publish the translation of Part 2 and some of the Appendix of the 1972 book.

Ch 17.pdf (77.66 KB)

Part 2 of the 1972 edition continues with Benayoun's critiques of Jerry's films up to 1971. Since this is a very long portion of the book, I have divided it into phases of Jerry's film career. I start with Benayoun's critiques of the films of the Martin & Lewis era. You'll see that Benayoun did not think much of Dean.

Bonjour M Lewis Part 2 The Films ML era.pdf (137.16 KB)

Today I'm sending you Benayoun's critiques of Jerry's solo films in his early Paramount era, pre-Nutty Professor, i.e. from The Delicate Delinquent to It's Only Money.

Bonjour M Lewis Part 2 The Films Jerry solo....pdf (143.18 KB)

After that short last "chapter", here is a longer one, 10 pages. It covers the last films of Jerry's Paramount era after The Nutty Professor, i.e. from Who's Minding The Store to Boeing Boeing. Benayoun imparts to us his thoughts not only about these films, but about comedy in general and reiterates his opinion that Jerry was the only genius that the American film industry had produced in the last 20 years.

Bonjour M Lewis Part 2 The Films Paramount....pdf (137.59 KB) 

Finishing up Part 2 of Benayoun's book, here are the critiques of Jerry's post-Paramount films in the early 1970's, from One More Time to his TV episode In Dreams They Run. Note that Benayoun did not say anything about The Day The Clown Cried.

This is not the end of the book, although the end is nigh.   I will post translations of some items in the Appendix, so stay tuned!

Bonjour M Lewis Part 2 The Films post Param....pdf (126.14 KB)

With today's installment I am concluding my translation of Benayoun's book. Below are a text and a table on The Many Hats Of Jerry Lewis, and the true story of Irving the bicycle which was later immortalized in a revised form on one of Jerry's early TV shows.

What I omitted from the Appendix: the names of Jerry's many characters, e.g. Seymour, Harvey Miller, Clayton Poole, etc.; Jerry's "accomplices", e.g. Kathleen Freeman, Mary Treen, Fritz Feld, Del Moore, Buddy Lester, etc.; a bibliography containing mostly French publications; and a filmography up to Which Way To The Front? (motion pictures) and In Dreams They Run (TV).

I hope you enjoyed my translations. I fully admit they are flawed – as I stated before, I do not know French, I relied on Google Translator and various online French-English dictionaries, and I am not a professional translator or writer, and it showed in many cases. But I think that the reader understood what Benayoun (and I) was trying to get across. I tried to stick to his style of endlessly long sentences and references to modern and ancient literary and mythological figures. As stated before, please do not re-post or reproduce any part of these translations anywhere else. If you think something should be posted or printed somewhere, please inform me and I will take care of it.

I have two similar translation projects in mind for the future: the issue of Cahiers du Cinema (Christmas 1967/Jan. 1968) that devoted many pages to Jerry (French again), and the book accompanying the Jerry Lewis Retrospective of the 2013 Vienna International Film Festival (in German, a language I know quite well). However, this book repeated (in German translation) several articles from Benayoun's book and from the a.m. Cahiers du Cinema issue.

Last but not least: constructive comments and questions are very welcome!

Bonjour M Lewis Appendix The many hats of JL.pdf (56.04 KB)  Jerrys many hats.xls (13 KB)   Bonjour M Lewis Appendix Bicycle Irving.pdf (40.96 KB)