Want to know the best Jerry Lewis movies? How about the worst Jerry Lewis movies? Curious about Jerry Lewis box office grosses or which Jerry Lewis movie picked up the most Oscar nominations? Need to know which Jerry Lewis movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
“I get paid for what most kids get punished for.” – Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
Jerry Lewis Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Jerry Lewis movies by co-stars of his movies.
- Sort Jerry Lewis movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
- Sort Jerry Lewis movies by yearly domestic box office rank
- Sort Jerry Lewis movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and many Oscar® wins each Jerry Lewis movie received and
- Sort Jerry Lewis movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the search and sort button to make this page very interactive. For example type “Martin” in the search box and up pop the 16 movies that Dean Martin and Lewis made together.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Jerry Lewis
1. Joseph Levitch was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1928. He started using the name Joey Lewis when he started performing. Dropped “Joey” and picked “Jerry” to avoid confusion with comedy Joe E. Brown and boxer Joe Lewis.
2. The big break of Jerry Lewis’ career was when he met singer, Dean Martin, in 1946. Their partnership went from night clubs to radio appearances to an Ed Sullivan television appearance to movies in about 2 and half years. They would make a total of 17 movies (that includes one cameo) together from 1949 to 1956. Everyone of their movies was a box office hit….16 for 16 …you can not get better than that.
3. Jerry Lewis was a Top Ten Box Office Star 12 years. With Dean Martin…they were ranked 2nd in 1951, 1st in 1952, 2nd in 1953, 2nd in 1954, 7th in 1955 and 6th in 1956. Without Martin he was ranked 9th in 1957, 3rd in 1958, 9th in 1959, 7th in 1961, 7th in 1962 and 10th in 1963.
4. Jerry Lewis was honored for his contribution and development of the first “Video Assist” for the motion picture camera in 1966. This allowed him to view his performance while directing himself in his films. This is used extensively today in filmmaking, known as “Video Village.”
5. Jerry Lewis is beloved in France. He was presented the French Legion of Honor in 1984. Twice voted Best Foreign Director by the French film critics. In 2009, Jerry Lewis received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. His honorary Oscar® speech is in a You Tube video at the bottom of the page.
6. Jerry Lewis taught a film directing class at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles for a number of years; his students included Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.
7. Jerry Lewis hosted the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, from 1966 to 2010. The telethon has raised over 2.6 billion dollars. Lewis was nominated for a Nobel Prize for his work with the telethon. When I was younger, you could not think about Labor Day without thinking about the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon.
8. Jerry Lewis has been married twice; first to Patti Lewis from 1944 to 1983..they had six children. Lewis’ oldest son, Gary, is the lead singer for Gary Lewis & The Playboys. They had several pop hits in the 1960s. His second marriage is to SanDee Pitnick. They have been married since 1983 and they have one child.
9. Some Adam Sandler/Jerry Lewis stuff I found interesting. (1) They both have specialized in “man-child” movies. (2) Those “man-child” movies have been very successful at the box office. (3) They both starred in a movie called That’s My Boy. The Lewis movie was in 1951 while Sandler’s movie was made in 2012. (4) Darren McGavin and Johnny Depp are two actors that appeared in movies with both actors.
10. Jerry Lewis starred and directed probably the most famous movie never to be released. 1972’s The Day The Clown Cried has been locked in a Lewis vault for over 40 years now and has been seen by very few people. That might be changing in the near future (2025?). Check out this link for further information.
Check out Jerry Lewis’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globe® is a registered trademarks.
1 When Martin and Lewis split up most observers felt sorry for Dino as it was generally assumed that without Jerry his subsequent film career would not be overly successful. Indeed Dean’s detractors seemed proven right in the first year of Dean and Jerry’s solo careers (1957) as that year Martin released just one movie Ten Thousand Bedrooms which had an adjusted domestic gross of merely $43 million whereas Jerry had two smash hits, The Sad Sack and The Delicate Delinquent, which generated a healthy combined domestic gross of almost $300 million.
2 Fast forward though to the close of their movie careers and the picture is somewhat different as the Cogerson tables reveal that Dino’s total adjusted domestic career gross is approx. $6.5 billion/average $126,7 million and that Jerry’s stands at around $4.6 billion/average $100.6 million showing that ultimately Dino was the bigger “beast at the box office” as Bruce expresses it. In addition Dean had a highly successful television show and for a time was in fact said to be TV’s highest performer.
3 As a kid I loved Martin and Lewis as a team and vividly recall walking miles on separate occasions to see Scared Stiff and Money from Home at the age of 12 and trudging out the Christmas of the following year to see Living it Up. However ultimately whilst I still found Dino relaxing to watch Jerry’s brand of comedy ceased to appeal to me.
4 However I share the regrets expressed by others on this site about his death as he WAS a big star of the Classic Era, especially in my formative years, and I have therefore always maintained a keen objective movie buff’s interest in his career and I am grateful to this site for providing me with a statistical oversight of that glittering career which saw him make 21 entirely stand-alone films from 1957-1970
Hey Bob….thanks for sharing your thoughts on Lewis, Martin, their movies and how their break up was massive news back then. WoC went on a walk today and I was sharing some of your exact comments to her. Ah….one of my favorite thoughts…”beast at the box office”….the same could be said for Lewis too….RIP Mr. Lewis.
Very sad to hear he is gone. I loved ALL his movies and of course wouldn’t miss a marathon for MDA. He was truly blessed with a gift of helping others LAUGH! R.I.P.
Hey Linda…thanks for sharing these wonderful thoughts on Jerry Lewis. RIP
I’m watching ‘Scared Stiff’ on TV. Martin & Lewis, together again.
Sad news indeed. RIP.
HI STEVE
1 My own personal favourite Martin and Lewis film which I saw on a double bill with The Vanquished starring John Payne and Lizabeth Scott.
2 Scared Stiff was a remake of Hope’s 1940 The Ghost Breakers in which Robert Ryan made his film debut. You will of course notice the Dan like link in all this in that Hope made a cameo appearance in Scared Stiff.
STEVE
Correction to my last post as it was Jan Sterling and not Lizabeth Scott who was in The Vanquished. Anyway I Hope [no pun intended] you enjoyed Scared Stiff. Let me know what you think when you next send me a post.
I’ve seen it before but it’s been a few years. The Nutty Professor is my favorite of his solo films, along with The Disorderly Orderly.
🙂
Hello Bob, I’m looking at Dean Martin and Lizabeth Scott right now. Many scenes are lifted straight out of Ghost Breakers. I think Bob Hope has a cameo in this one.
Hey Bob….I will have to check that movie out. 🙂
Hey Steve…sad news indeed. Thanks for stopping by.
Great man sad to see him go could never stop laughing at his movies love love love the man
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Stacy, it is greatly appreciated.
The Nutty Professor was an awesome movie, Jerry was amazing……. so sad to hear that he has passed……
Hey Nicole…the Nutty Professor was easily his most famous movie. Sad news indeed. RIP Mr. Lewis.