Jerry Lewis is 90 and nostalgic. So are his fans a day after Labor Day, recalling the funnyman’s run from 1966 to 2010 as host of the daylong Muscular Dystrophy Telethon on the holiday.
He also was asked about the telethon’s fund-raising prowess and benefits.
“I’ll give you the exact figure,” Lewis said. “$2.7 billion, accounted for.”
CBS added: “The money led to research and longer life spans for MD patients, but it didn’t buy a cure, and at times Lewis could only watch as the disease claimed another of *his* kids.”
Lewis said: “The days and hours I spent in hospital hallways waiting for the answer of this child — was he going to live or die? And I took it very personal. ‘How could he die? Look at the work I’ve done. And what did we do with all that money? Why don’t we use it to help him?’”
“How do you answer that?” Tracy Smith asked on the show.
“You don’t. You don’t. Oh, God almighty. I could write a book on children’s reactions to meeting their clown,” Lewis said. “One child says to the coordinator, ‘If I didn’t get muscular dystrophy I’d a never met him!’ And then these children look at you like you’re some kind of god. I’m not a god; I just love people. And I love people that are well. I don’t like to see someone sick.”
No doubt viewers loved the telethon tradition as well.