Jerry Lewis

He made the world laugh, but Jerry Lewis, who died at 91, was more than Hollywood’s rubber-faced Clown Prince. He was a creative genius.

- Chris Nashawaty

YOU COULD TELL ALMOST EVERYTHING THERE WAS TO KNOW about Jerry Lewis, who died of heart failure Aug. 20 at the age of 91, just by stepping inside his Las Vegas office. You got a sense of his loyalty from the old-school secretary out front who had been his gatekeeper and gal Friday for so many years she couldn’t quite recall when she started working for the man she called “JL.” You could see his obsessive attention to detail in the fact that everything inside his inner sanctum was colored the same shade of cherry-red Life Savers. But most of all, you immediately grasped the epic sweep of his career from the walls of framed fan letters from filmmaking disciples such as Steven Spielberg and photos of him with American presidents, Hollywood stars, and children stricken with muscular dystrophy— the cause he reportedly raised $2 billion for with his annual Labor Day telethons. Lewis’ office was technically a place of business, but it doubled as a time capsule—a shrine to one of the greatest performers and comic minds of the 20th century.