Using interviews with Jerry Lewis and many of his co-stars, this book analyzes his collaborative efforts with Dean Martin, his subsequent solo work, his writing and directorial careers, and later movies such as Hardly Working (1979) and The King of Comedy (1982). Comprehensive data are provided for each of the films, with cast and production credits, studio, release date, and running time. Lewis's own reflections on his work are included for many of the entries.

The premier study of an incomparable American director

A frank, personal story of the joys and pitfalls of making movies by a world famous film-maker.

A biography of Jerry Lewis, discussing his varied career as a performer, director, fundraiser, and standard-setting comedian, and looking at the private man and the forces that drive him.

Although books on the comedies of the silent era abound, few have attempted to survey film comedy as a whole—its history and evolution, how the philosophical visions of its greatest artists and directors have shaped its traditions, and how these visions have informed both the meaning and manner of their work. Blending information with interpretation, description with analysis, Mast traces the development of screen comedy from the first crude efforts of Edison and Lumière to the subtlety and psychological complexity of Annie Hall. As he guides the reader through detailed discussions of specific films, Mast reveals the structures, the values, and the cinematic techniques which have appeared and reappeared in comic cinema. The second edition of The Comic Mind treats the comic developments of the 1970s in terms of the traditions of film comedy set forth in the first edition, including a discussion of the evolution of Jacques Tati and the emergence of Mel Brooks and Woody Allen as the two greatest American comic stylists of the seventies. "The most comprehensive study of film comedy yet written in English. . . .The book's extensive index with references to companies from which 16mm prints of many of the cited films may be rented will be of great value to the film teacher and audiovisual librarian."—Choice

Vividly bringing to light the tradition of physical comedy in the French cabaret, cafe-concert, and early French film comedy, this book answers the perplexing question, "Why do the French love Jerry Lewis?" It shows how Lewis touches a nerve in the French cultural memory because, more than any other film comic, he incarnates a distinctively French tradition of performance style."

Enfant Terrible! Jerry Lewis in American Film is the first comprehensive collection devoted to one of the most controversial and accomplished figures in twentieth-century American cinema. A veteran of virtually every form of show business, Lewis's performances onscreen and the motion pictures he has directed reveal significant film-making talents, and show him to be what he has called himself, a "Total Film-Maker." Yet his work has been frequently derided by American critics. Book jacket.

Intended primarily for undergraduate courses in small business management or entrepreneurship, this text also provides practical content to anyone interested in starting their own business. With a practical, "hands on" approach to entrepreneurship, this text aims to provide readers with the knowledge and tools they need to launch a business so that it has the greatest chance for success.

"Portions of this book originally appeared in issues of Leonard Maltin's movie crazy"--T.p. verso.

For ten years after WWII, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis weren't only the most successful show business act in history, they were history. Starting as a fill-in for another act in Atlantic city, their improvised, anarchic routines soon sold out all the greatest venues in America. They made films, they made millions. They made a legend. But amidst the dazzling success and the late night laughter, tensions developed between the reserved straight man, Martin, and the manic goon, Lewis. When the duo, who had reinvented the comic double-act, split acrimoniously in 1956 they didn't speak to one another for the next 20 years. This is an intimate memoir of those years of fame and success by one of the only surviving legends of the rat-pack era. Jerry Lewis remembers everything - the casinos, the mobsters, the endless pranks, the cocktails, the women, the meteoric rise to stardom. Here for the first and only time and in his own inimitable, wise-cracking voice he re-lives his days of glory with Dean Martin and gives a frank account of their relationship and break-up. A hilarious ride and heart-breaking, cautionary tale of what fame and fortune can do to love and friendship.