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.
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WAW !
Is WAW! a good thing?
WAW IS THE BIGGEST COMPLIMENT YOU CAN GIVE ASK JERRY !!!
Very Cool! Then thanks for the great compliment.
Wow, Bruce you are “in the zone” – the pages just keep coming, Coburn, Ford & now Jerry Lewis in SIX days!! Tons of interesting info. As always – great job, Bruce.
Can you tell I like Adam Sandler as well?
Hey Søren….glad you found your requested “Jerry Lewis” page. I actually wrote 11 pages in August…..plus 3 You Tube videos and even one HubPage hub…..now September is here and I do not want to do anything…..lol. Thanks for the compliment….I have been knocking out the requests I should be getting to more of your requests soon.
I remember how good Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin were together. I remember when they broke up the team too and when Dean Martin lost his son Jerry Lewis went to the funeral and sat at the back of the church. Also when Dean Martin appeared on the telethon as a surprise. They both did well separately too. They both gave us hours and hours of entertainment. GOOD SITE. THANK YOU.
Hey BERN1960….the Lewis and Martin were awesome….16 for 16 is pretty impressive when it comes to box office hits. I find it said that the MDA Labor telethon is a thing of the past….as a kid I used to watch that every year. Glad you liked my page on Jerry Lewis. Thanks for stopping by.
I had never thought about the Sandler Jerry Lewis connection. Interesting stuff. The man is a legend. Does France think Sandler is a genius too?
Hey Timlin33…thanks for stopping by. Glad I could put some light on the Lewis/Sandler connection. At this time I do not think France thinks Sandler is a genius like they do Lewis.
Comedy legend Jerry Lewis gets Ultimate Movie Ranked, and one of the few Hollywood Golden Age greats still with us, they are getting fewer each year Bruce.
Whoa more films than I expected here, looking at the list… I’ve seen 16 of them, but I’m sure I’ve seen some of the others when I was young watching TV with my parents.
I expected my favorite, The Nutty Professor, to top the moviescore chart but it barely made the top 20, surely something wrong here? It’s his most famous film, a critical and box office success.
Of his other films I also liked The Disorderly Orderly Who’s Minding the Store? and Hollywood or Bust.
Watched Boeing Boeing a few months ago, I was surprised to see Lewis playing straight man to Tony Curtis. Makes a change to see him play a normal guy.
I was reading about that locked away film of his a few days ago, he refuses to have it released, maybe he’s doing us a favor. 🙂
Nice work Bruce, voted up.
Hey Steve. Thanks for commenting.
1. My tally count is sad…I am at 4 Jerry Lewis movies watched. So you have me beat 4 times over.
2. I was surprised my Nutty Professor as well. To define my ranking system…..it was a hit…but not a block buster….actually his 23rd biggest box office hit. The most recent Variety I have that list that movie is May 4th 1983….and it barely made the $4 million rental list….rentals are listed at exactly 4,000,000. On the Oscar/Golden Globe side….it got no love at all. And finally and even more surprising is the pretty low critic/audience score. It is 6th overall….but only 6.7 on IMDb….and scores of 88% from 25 critics…..but only 64.5 from audiences…..put all of that together and you end up with an overall ranking of 20th. Further reading seems to indicate that television had a lot to do with it becoming his most famous movie.
3. Boeing, Boeing got Lewis his only Golden Globe nomination….and it is one of the ones I want to see…..when I was writing the page….I started to notice that almost none of his movies had a star co-star (excluding the Martin movies)….so it was a pleasant surprise when Curtis popped up as a co-star/
4. As for The Day The Clown Cried….it might be another 10 years before it gets seen….as Lewis has finally turned the movie over….but with instructions it can not been seen until 2025.
5. He is indeed one of the last of a Hollywood long since gone. He was actually in my area a few months ago….doing a One Night With Jerry Lewis show….I did not go….but I heard it was a very entertaining show….now after getting to know his career better…I wish I had gone to that show…..maybe he will be back in a few years….as he thankfully seems like he is still doing pretty well…healthwise.
6. Thanks for your Jerry Lewis thoughts.