Jerry Lewis leaving MDA telethon

Jimmy Kimmel's tribute to Jerry:

 

Las Vegas Review-Journal is reporting that Jerry Lewis will be on, after all....

http://www.lvrj.com/news/mda-telethon-reinstates-lewis-128144278.html

 

But the L.A. Times says otherwise:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2011/08/jerry-lewis-mda-reinstatement-las-vegas-true-untrue-telethon-story.html

 

Off-topic, but that column might contain my favorite sentence ever... and I don't know why.

Maybe it's the initial alliteration, or the fact that there's someone named Penny Pibbets. Or maybe it's Fish Circus, but can't imagine if you sat me down at a computer with 1,000 other monkeys, we'd turn that one out for a long time.

 

MDA raised about $3 Million more this year than last, and they did it without Ol' Jer.

Did anybody tune in? I did very briefly.

http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/article_1270a6dc-d82b-11e0-9102-001cc4c03286.html

The days of the "big name guest stars" are gone. The days of "pity these kids..." are gone. The days of the emcee calling for a drumroll to announce a new $$$ total are gone (even at the local affiliate level).

It was an interesting change.

Half-kiddingly, I wonder what Ol' Jer did with his night.

Comments welcome.

 

Way back in this thread, someone referenced the unseen (by most) film "The Day The Clown Cried."

This article showed up on the Mental Floss website telling the story behind the film and Lewis' supposed desire to release it. I found it very interesting.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/99163

A lot of you might recognize the author, Eddie Deezen, who made a small career of playing nerdy characters in such movies as Grease, 1941 and WarGames.

 

Allegedly.

I have as much faith in that total as I do attendance estimates released by SIDs and economic impact studies released by the Chamber of Commerce.

 

I don't understand why affiliates didn't just re-run the six hours a couple of times overnight.

 

Correct. I read somewhere that MDA has a lot of leeway in how they apply corporate donations made at various times to the telethon total. There was no way they were NOT going to make more money in the first Jerry-less year.

 

Because they can make more money running Oxy Clean infomercials in those hours. They don't want a 22-hour telethon.

 

I never understood why the FCC didn't push more for local tv stations to show how they served the public interest.
How many local stations produce local shows outside of news? How many news shows devote more than a segment or two to actual local news? In most cases it's the A block, then the rest of the show is "caught on tape video from across the nation/world", Hollywood news, weather and maybe a minute or two of sports.

 

I had forgotten about this movie -- I had heard of it. Interesting who turned it down.

Am surprised at how well put together the article is. Never been a big fan of Deezen's schtick. But as a writer of recapping a piece of film history, this was well done. He should stick to writing.