The Untold Side of Jerry Lewis’s Personal Life and Affairs

Jerry Lewis was born Joseph Levitch on March 16th, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey. His father was Daniel Levitch was a multi-talented Vaudevillian master of ceremonies who immigrated to New York from the Russian Empire and performed under the stage name Danny Lewis. Jerry’s mother was Rachael “Rae” Levitch, a pianist and Danny’s music director from Warsaw, Poland.

Jerry’s parents’ busy schedule meant he was often left alone as a kid. As so often happens with comedians, he developed a personality that craved attention.

Jerry always kept a secret about his birth name — a secret he would take with him to the grave. To this day, no one can be certain of his real first name. His birth certificate and early census information list him as Jerome Levitch, but for decades, he claimed his birth name was Joseph Levitch.

Even in his 1982 autobiography, Jerry Lewis: In Person, he claimed he was named Joseph after his maternal grandfather. As we shall see, shape-shifting Jerry made many spurious claims throughout his life.

Jerry’s life as a performer began when he was just five years old, taking to the stage at the Borscht Belt’s summer camp theaters in the Catskill Mountains, Upper New York State. More recently, the 1980s movie Dirty Dancing and television’s Marvelous Mrs. Maisel made these summer camps famous.

Many other great Jewish American comics — such as Lenny Bruce, Rodney Dangerfield, Jerry Stiller, Woody Allen, and Joan Rivers — got their start and honed their self-deprecating comedy schtick at the Borscht Belt’s indoor and outdoor theaters.

Bored of school at Union Avenue School in Irvington, New Jersey, the young Jerry put on amateur shows for his classmates. By the time he was a teenager, Jerry was a tearaway, famous for pulling pranks, like sneaking into school kitchens to steal fried chicken and pies.

As for his schooling, well… that didn’t go too well. In the ninth grade, he was expelled from Weequahic High School and he dropped out of Irvington High School in the 10th grade.

By the time he was 15, Jerry had developed his famous Record Act, which involved miming the lyrics to popular songs from a record player. Many performers had a record act, but this was Jerry Lewis, so of course, he aped the musicians, performing in an exaggerated and daft way.

Eventually, he landed a gig at a burlesque house in Buffalo, New York. However, his performance was just too madcap and anarchic, so he ended up working as a soda server at Manhattan’s Paramount Theater.

On the verge of giving up comedy, Jerry resigned himself to a life as a soda jerk. But then, veteran comedian Max Coleman — who had worked with Jerry’s father — persuaded him to give comedy another shot. Jerry performed his Record Act at Brown’s Hotel in Loch Sheldrake, New York.

In the audience was Borscht Belt comedian Irving Kaye. This time, the audience went wild for this rubber-faced, crazed young comedian. So, Irving Kaye immediately became Jerry Lewis’ manager. Well, when we say Jerry Lewis…

When he first started performing comedy, his friends and family called him Joseph or Joey, so he went by the stage name of Joey Lewis. However, there was another comedian, actor, and singer on the circuit, Joe E. Lewis, at the time.

To further complicate matters, boxing star Joe Louis (pictured), aka The Brown Bomber, was the world heavyweight champion. As a result, our boy changed his name to Jerry to avoid being mixed up with Joe E. Lewis and Joe Lewis.

Due to a heart murmur, Jerry didn’t serve in World War II. One night in the summer of 1944 — as Allied Troops took Normandy — the 17-year-old performed at Detroit’s Downtown Theater. There, he met 23-year-old Ted Fio Rito singer Esther Grace Calonico, aka Patti Palmer. Three months later, they married on October 3rd, 1944.

Jerry and Patti went on to have six sons together — Gary (born 1945), Scott (born 1956), Christopher (born 1957), Anthony (born 1959), and Joseph (born 1964). They also adopted Ronald, who was born in 1949.

In 1946, 19-year-old Jerry met 27-year-old Dean Martin, a promising young singer from Steubenville, Ohio. Neither found success on their own, but Martin was the perfect straight man to Lewis’ frenetic, hyperactive antics. Together, they were like lightning in a bottle.

They first performed as Martin and Lewis at Atlantic City’s 500 Club on July 25th, 1946. The duo sparked off each other, improvised, and broke the fourth wall like no previous comedy act. Their nightclub gigs became hugely popular, and soon, they made the leap onto radio.

NBC gave the pair their own radio program, The Martin and Lewis Show, and they quickly rose to national prominence. Dean and Jerry first appeared on TV in a 1948 episode of Toast of the Town on CBS.

By 1950, Jerry called their act The Handsome Man and His Monkey, and they signed with NBC to host The Colgate Comedy Hour radio show. Jerry hired Norman Lear and Ed Simmons as writers, and the duo performed stand-up dialogues, song and dance, slapstick, and sketch comedy.

In 1951, Jerry and Deano performed a sell-out run at New York’s Paramount Theater, where Jerry had worked as a soda server. They were so popular they were mobbed everywhere they went. In a time before Elvis Presley and The Beatles, only Frank Sinatra had attracted crowds of screaming, adoring fans.

Martin and Lewis were so popular that between 1952 and 1957, DC Comics published a comic called The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, in which they met Superman!

When producer Hal B. Wallis saw them perform at New York’s Copacabana Club and Slapsy Maxie’s on LA’s Wilshire Boulevard, he signed them to Paramount Pictures. The King of Comedy and The King of Cool made their film debut in a 1949 film adaptation of the radio series My Friend Irma.

Over the next seven years, they starred in 16 films — including At War With the Army, That’s My Boy, Sailor Beware, Jumping Jacks, and The Stooge. But fame went to Jerry’s head, and he started sleeping around…

Around this time, Jerry had a three-year affair with 24-year-old model Lynn Dixon. Rumors claimed Lewis had fathered an illegitimate child in 1952. Lynn said her daughter, Suzan, was conceived in a room at New York’s Copacabana Nightclub. When Lynn told Jerry he was the father, Jerry spent the day future-faking that a relationship was on the horizon.

But then Jerry callously had his manager tell Lynn never to contact him again. Years later, Jerry told a reporter, “This is when I’m f*****g everybody in Hollywood.”

At the height of his fame in the 1950s and ’60s, Jerry Lewis had an affair with the world’s most desired woman, Marilyn Monroe. Jerry finally admitted his extracurricular bedroom activities with the blonde bombshell in a 2011 interview with GQ magazine, though again, Jerry did have an active imagination.

When the interviewer asked Lewis what his affair with Marilyn was like, Jerry quipped, “It was … long. I was crippled for a month!” But Marilyn Monroe wasn’t the only blonde bombshell Jerry had an affair with…

During the same GQ magazine interview, the 75-year-old comedian admitted to also having had a love affair with the German-born actress, singer, and seductress Marlene Dietrich. She was famous for playing screen sirens in classic films like Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel and Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright.

Marlene would have been in her 50s at the time, while fresh-faced Jerry was in his mid-to-late-20s. But those weren’t the only affairs he conducted while married to his put-upon, loyal wife, Patti Palmer…

The comedy duo continued appearing in Hal B. Wallis-produced movies — like The Caddy, Living it Up, You’re Never Too Young, and Pardners. However, rumors of a rift between the duo circulated, and by the time they made Hollywood or Bust in 1956, Jerry and Deano were barely speaking.

Martin and Lewis had incredible on-screen chemistry, but when the cameras stopped rolling, they were tired of each other and Wallis’ formulaic choices. They felt restricted to superficial, repetitive roles and churning out the same movie over and over.

In 1956, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin suddenly broke up in one of showbiz’s most acrimonious splits. Officially, Jerry wanted to produce more films, TV shows, and live tours, while laid-back Dean wanted to sing and play golf.

However, the real reason was that Lewis was taking over the act, and Martin hated that Jerry was getting the lion’s share of attention. They made their last appearance together at the Copacabana nightclub on July 25th, 1956 — 10 years to the day since their first gig.

After splitting up with Deano, Jerry and Patti went on vacation to Las Vegas to consider his future. Feeling alone and vulnerable, he admitted, “I was unable to put one foot in front of the other with any confidence. I was completely unnerved to be alone.”

While in Sin City, Jerry received an urgent call from his friend Sid Luft — Judy Garland’s husband and manager — saying Judy was ill and asking Lewis to fill in. Jerry hadn’t sung alone on stage for years and was lost without Dean Martin.

Wracked with stage fright, Jerry took to the stage, cracking jokes, clowning around, and ending with a song from his childhood, “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody.” Jerry later recalled, “When I was done, the place exploded. I walked off the stage knowing I could make it on my own!”

Patti insisted he invest his own money to record a single. Decca Records heard the single, loved it, and signed him up for an album. Jerry Lewis Just Sings sold a million and a half copies!

Jerry’s new singing career saw him reunite with director Frank Tashlin to make the 1958 musical comedy Rock-A-Bye Baby. Paramount Pictures signed him to a $10 million deal (plus 60% of the profits!), making him Hollywood’s highest-paid star.

While filming Cinderfella in 1960, Jerry had his first attack at the age of 34. He recovered to star in, direct, and edit The Bellboy, where he invented the video assist, a monitor that allows the director to see takes as they’re filmed… This device is still used today.

While the exact dates of his many indiscretions remain unknown, Jerry also had extramarital affairs with a series of beautiful models, actresses, and singers, including two more blonde bombshells. The first was Playboy playmate and Nutty Professor co-star Stella Stevens, and the second was stunning actress and model Jeanne Carmen.

Next on the list is the gorgeous Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida (pictured). Another of Jerry’s endless conquests was actress, singer, and MGM star Gloria DeHaven, who was married to politician Richard Fincher at the time.

In 1963, Jerry made his most famous film, The Nutty Professor, a modern parody of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He played socially awkward Professor Kelp, a chemist who creates a potion that turns him from a funny-looking nerd into a good-looking, obnoxious womanizer.

The film was a massive hit and is often cited as Lewis’ best work. Its storyline was the perfect metaphor for Jerry’s life. One minute, he was a beloved crazy comedian — the next, he was a monster who treated everyone abysmally.

Jerry always had two sides. While he was adored for his manic performances, he was entirely different off-screen. Driven, controlling, and a serial cheater, he had an enormous, out-of-control ego — but he also had a compassionate, philanthropic side.

From the mid-1960s, Jerry held annual TV telethons on Labor Day to raise money and awareness for children with muscular dystrophy. Over four decades, Jerry’s Kids raised a mind-blowing $2.5 billion. He ended each telethon by singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

While performing in Las Vegas in 1965, Jerry’s act involved a comedic pratfall fall from a piano. One night, he executed his regular fall but landed so badly that he injured his back, almost leaving him paralyzed. He made a full recovery, but it came at a huge cost…

Jerry’s doctors prescribed painkillers, and he became reliant on them for the next 13 years. Thankfully, he finally overcame his demons and quit the prescribed medication in 1978.

Lewis left Paramount in 1966 and signed with Columbia Pictures. He cameoed in the camp 1960s Batman series. Older and wiser, he reinvented himself with more serious roles like Hook, Line & Sinker. In 1972, he directed The Day the Clown Cried, but it was never released, and Jerry was “embarrassed at the poor work.”

Lewis spent half that decade absent from the big screen. But then, in 1976, producer Alexander H. Cohen signed Jerry to star in a revival of Olsen and Johnson’s musical-comedy play Hellzapoppin.

While Jerry always finished his telethons with a rousing rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” the funnyman always felt alone without Dean Martin. During the 1976 event, Frank Sinatra surprised his great friend by bringing Dean Martin out onto the stage.

Jerry and Deano had barely spoken in two decades, but any animosity instantly evaporated as they embraced each other in front of the whole world. After reuniting, Jerry and Deano spoke on the phone almost every day until Dean passed away.

However, while Jerry’s relationship with Dean was rekindled, his relationship with his wife was on the decline. He’d been married to Patti Palmer since 1944, but after 35 years, she finally had enough of Jerry’s split personality, over-blown ego, manic behavior, and controlling ways.

Patti filed for divorce in 1980, citing her husband’s infidelity and extravagant spending. As he was going through the divorce and making a comeback with Robert DeNiro in Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, 56-year-old Jerry had a second heart attack in 1982.

As soon as the divorce was finalized in 1983, Jerry married ballerina, stewardess, and actress SanDee Pitnick in Key Biscayne, Florida. We hope their honeymoon was a sandy picnic on the beach! In 1992, the couple adopted a daughter, Danielle, when Jerry was 66 years young. At 33, SanDee was half Jerry’s age.

While it seemed to the world like a rebound marriage, Jerry and SanDee were married for 34 years until he passed away. But their union wasn’t without its ups and downs…

While Jerry had become a dad again late in life, a stalker tormented the star and his family for years. The intruder first turned up at Lewis’ Las Vegas home in the late 1980s and threatened Jerry’s life. Jerry responded in kind.

After six years of harassing the retired star and one too many visits, police finally arrested the stalker in 1994. His name was Gary Benson, and he was Jerry Lewis’ former housekeeper’s boyfriend. A judge sent Benson to prison for four years, where he passed away.

Sadly, Dean Martin passed away in 1995 at the age of 78. Despite all the women in Jerry’s life, the real love of his life was Deano. In his book, Dean and Me: A Love Story, Lewis wrote, “I fell in love with him the day we met. I wish he were here. He was a miracle that God put in my life, and working with him was a feeling I’ll never ever forget.”

In an interview, Jerry once admitted, “I miss Dean … There isn’t a day I don’t think about him.”

Jerry opened up about why he and Deano split all those years ago and even took the blame — “We talked about that time, and I would say, ‘I was just too impressed with myself. I was too worried about me, I was selfish in those days, and I wasn’t thinking about anybody but me, and I ignored my partner.'”

During a 1988 reunion show for Dean Martin’s 72nd birthday, Lewis proclaimed, “Why we broke up, I’ll never know!”

From the mid-’90s, Jerry took the medication prednisone for pulmonary fibrosis. This resulted in considerable weight gain and a shocking change in his appearance. He lost much of the weight in the noughties, but in 2006, 80-year-old Lewis had his third heart attack while on a flight from New York to San Diego.

His 90% blocked coronary arteries recovered after having stents fitted, but he later developed diabetes and prostate cancer. A few years later, Jerry collapsed from hypoglycemia while performing at the New York Friars Club.

In 2009, Jerry’s fifth-born biological son, Joseph, took his own life at the age of 45. Jerry had disowned Joe 20 years prior after he got involved with illicit substances. Joe once said of his father, “Living with him was pure hell … I’ve tried therapy, and the truth still hurts; my father doesn’t love me.”

Jerry responded, “You don’t get over that.” However, when Patti and Joe’s siblings contacted Jerry about his son’s passing, he didn’t even offer to pay for his son’s funeral.

Joe wasn’t the only child who spoke out about his father’s cruel side. Jerry’s musician son Gary — who Patti had originally named Cary as she had a crush on Cary Grant — didn’t have a kind word to say about his father, either.

Despite Jerry Lewis’ public persona of doing lots of charity work, Gary referred to his father as “a mean and evil person [who] never showed him or his siblings any love or care.” Those who knew him best always knew Jerry was a complex, conflicted man.

Despite his split personality, Jerry won many honors — including Golden Globes and BAFTAs, the French Legion of Honor, and an honorary Order of Australia. He was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 for his work for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. However, the one award he had always wished for was an Academy Award…

Then, in 2009, Jerry received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar for his humanitarian work. He was so pleased he literally carried his Oscar statue around with him for the rest of his days!

In 2009, Inside Edition investigated Suzan Lewis’ long-held claim that she was Jerry’s illegitimate daughter. The show’s DNA tests Suzan undertook proved there was an 88.7% likelihood that she was the star’s daughter. Suzan later wrote a book, Jerry’s Kid: The Suzan Lewis Story, but was last seen living homeless on the streets of Philadelphia.

The comedian had never spoken out about Suzan’s claims and omitted her from his will. However, she wasn’t the only child Jerry abandoned…

In October 2016, Inside Edition interviewed Jerry, which was like a confessional. The nonagenarian acknowledged he was too old to make any more films. Then, he burst into tears as he confessed he was afraid of dying, as it would leave SanDee and Dani alone.

The next summer, Jerry was hospitalized in Las Vegas for a urinary tract infection. Two months later, on August 20th, 2017, he passed away from end-stage cardiac and peripheral artery disease at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada. Jerry was 91.

Jerry left behind a wife, eight children, and an estate worth between $50 and $75 million. He left his estate to his second wife, SanDee Pitnick, and their adopted daughter, Dani. But he didn’t leave his other kids a penny…

In his will, he stated, “I have intentionally excluded GARY LEWIS, RONALD LEWIS, ANTHONY JOSEPH LEWIS, CHRISTOPHER JOSEPH LEWIS, SCOTT ANTHONY LEWIS and JOSEPH CHRISTOPHER LEWIS and their descendants as beneficiaries of my estate, it being my intention to that they shall receive no benefits hereunder.”

Jerry’s anarchic comedy transformed Vaudeville’s slapstick into modern comedy, and he became “a virtually unprecedented force in American popular culture.” Of course, his physical comedy influenced rubber-faced comedian Jim Carrey, but he also mastered the art of deconstructing comedy.

Without Jerry Lewis, we’d have no Mel Brooks, Larry David, Andy Kaufman, or Garry Shandling. Jerry Seinfeld once said, “If you don’t get Jerry Lewis, you don’t really understand comedy because he is the essence of it.”

Then, in 2022, a Vanity Fair investigation and documentary called The Dark Side of a Hollywood Icon reported several of Jerry Lewis’ 1960s leading ladies alleged he often harassed them, put his wandering hands on them, touched himself, and made lewd propositions.

The allegations came from actresses Jill St John, Karen Sharpe, Hope Holiday, Anna Maria Alberghetti, Lainie Kazan, and writer Renée Taylor. Jerry’s awful behavior went unpunished for years. It turns out The King of Comedy was Mr. Hyde, not Dr. Jekyll.