| Jack Lemmon | |
|---|---|
Lemmon at the 40th Emmy Awards, August 1988 |
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| Born | John Uhler Lemmon III February 8, 1925 Newton, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | June 27, 2001 (aged 76) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Colon cancer Bladder cancer |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1949–2000 |
| Spouse | Cynthia Stone (1950–1956; divorced; 1 child) Felicia Farr (1962–2001; his death; 1 child) |
| Children | Chris Lemmon Courtney Lemmon Denise Lemmon (stepdaughter) |
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts (for which he won the 1955 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger (for which he won the 1973 Best Actor Academy Award), The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing (for which he won 'Best Actor' at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival), Glengarry Glen Ross, Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men.
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Lemmon was born in an elevator at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He was the only child of Mildred Burgess LaRue (née Noel) and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., who was the president of a doughnut company.[1][2] Lemmon attended John Ward Elementary School in Newton and The Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts. He later revealed that he knew he wanted to be an actor from the age of eight.[3] Lemmon attended Phillips Academy (Class of 1943) and Harvard University (Class of 1947) where he lived in Adams House and was an active member of several Drama Clubs - becoming president of the Hasty Pudding Club - as well as a member of the Delphic Club for Gentleman, a final club at Harvard. After Harvard, Lemmon joined the Navy, receiving V-12 training and serving as an ensign. On being discharged, he took up acting professionally, working on radio, television and Broadway. He studied acting under Uta Hagen. He also became enamored of the piano and learned to play it on his own. He could also play the harmonica, organ, and the double bass.
Lemmon's film debut was a bit part as a plasterer/painter in the 1949 film The Lady Takes a Sailor but he was not noticed until his official debut opposite Judy Holliday in the 1954 comedy It Should Happen to You. Lemmon worked with many legendary leading ladies, among them Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Betty Grable, Janet Leigh, Shirley MacLaine, Romy Schneider, Doris Day, Kim Novak, Judy Holliday, Rita Hayworth, June Allyson, Virna Lisi, Ann-Margret, Sophia Loren and many more. He was also close friends with Tony Curtis, Ernie Kovacs, Walter Matthau and Kevin Spacey. He made two films with Curtis, three films with Kovacs (Operation Mad Ball, Bell, Book and Candle, and It Happened to Jane), and eleven with Matthau.
Early in Lemmon's career, Lemmon met Ernie Kovacs during the filming of Operation Mad Ball [4] and co-starred with the comedian in this film. Lemmon and Kovacs became close friends and appeared together in two subsequent films - Bell, Book and Candle.[5] and It Happened to Jane[6] In 1977 PBS broadcast a compilation series of Kovacs' television work, and Lemmon served as the narrator of the series. Lemmon discussed his friendship with Kovacs in the documentary, Ernie Kovacs: Television's Original Genius.[7]
He became a favorite actor of director Billy Wilder, starring in his films Some Like It Hot (although voice actor Paul Frees read his and Tony Curtis's "Daphne" and "Josephine" dialogues), The Apartment, Irma la Douce, The Fortune Cookie, Avanti!, The Front Page and Buddy Buddy. Wilder felt Lemmon had a natural tendency toward overacting that had to be tempered; the Wilder biography Nobody's Perfect quotes the director as saying, "Lemmon, I would describe him as a ham, a fine ham, and with ham you have to trim a little fat". The biography also quotes Jack Lemmon as saying, "I am particularly susceptible to the parts I play... If my character was having a nervous breakdown, I started to have one".
He also had a longtime working relationship with director Blake Edwards, starring in My Sister Eileen (1955), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The Great Race (1965) and That's Life! (1986).
Lemmon recorded an album in 1958 while filming Some Like It Hot with Marilyn Monroe. Twelve jazz tracks were created for Lemmon and another twelve were added. Lemmon played the piano and recorded his own versions of Monroe's trademark songs, I Wanna Be Loved By You and I'm Through With Love, for the album which was released in 1959 as A Twist of Lemmon/Some Like It Hot.
Lemmon was awarded the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1956 for Mister Roberts (1955) and the Best Actor Oscar for Save the Tiger (1973), becoming the first actor to achieve this double. He was also nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in the controversial film Missing in 1982 and for his roles in Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The China Syndrome (1979), and Tribute (1980). In 1988, the American Film Institute gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award.
Days of Wine and Roses (1962) was one of his favorite roles. He portrayed Joe Clay, a young, fun-loving alcoholic businessman. In that film, Lemmon delivered the line, "My name is Joe Clay ... I'm an alcoholic." Three and a half decades later, he admitted on the television program, Inside the Actors Studio, that he was not acting when he delivered that line, that he really was a recovering alcoholic at the end of his life.
Lemmon's production company JML produced Cool Hand Luke in 1967. Paul Newman was grateful to Lemmon for his support and offered him the role of the Sundance Kid later played by Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid but Lemmon turned it down. He did not like riding horses and he also felt he'd already played too many aspects of the Sundance Kid's character before.[8]
Lemmon often appeared in films partnered with Walter Matthau. Among their pairings was 1968's The Odd Couple, as Felix Ungar (Lemmon) and Oscar Madison (Matthau). They also starred together in The Fortune Cookie (for which Matthau won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), The Front Page and Buddy Buddy. In 1971, Lemmon directed Matthau in the comedy Kotch. It was the only movie that Lemmon ever directed and Matthau was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for his performance.
Additionally, Lemmon and Matthau had small parts in Oliver Stone's 1991 film, JFK (the only film in which both appeared without sharing screen time). In 1993, the duo teamed up again to star in Grumpy Old Men. The film was a surprise hit, earning the two actors a new generation of young fans. During the rest of the decade, they would go on to star together in Out to Sea, Grumpier Old Men and the widely panned The Odd Couple II.
Lemmon starred in Some Like It Hot, for which he was awarded Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1982, he won another Cannes award for his performance in Missing (which received the Palme d'Or).
At the 1998 Golden Globe Awards, he was nominated for "Best Actor in a Made for TV Movie" for his role in Twelve Angry Men losing to Ving Rhames. After accepting the award, Rhames asked Lemmon to come on stage and, in a move that stunned the audience, gave his award to him. (The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which presents the Golden Globes, decided to have a second award made and sent to Rhames.).
He received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1988.
Kevin Spacey recalled that Lemmon is remembered as always making time for other people. When already regarded as a legend, he met the teenage Spacey backstage after a theater performance and spoke to him about pursuing an acting career.[9] Spacey would later work with Lemmon in Dad (1989), the critically acclaimed film Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and on stage in a revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night. Lemmon's performance also inspired Gil Gunderson, a character on The Simpsons that is modeled on Lemmon's.
Lemmon was married twice. His son Chris Lemmon (b. 1954), was his first child by his first wife, actress Cynthia Stone (b. February 26, 1926, Peoria, Illinois, d. December 26, 1988). His second wife was the actress Felicia Farr, with whom he had a daughter, Courtney (b.1966).
Lemmon admitted that he was an alcoholic in the late 1960s. (Source: Los Angeles Tomes Obituary.)
Felicia Farr had another daughter from a previous relationship (her marriage to Lee Farr) called Denise, who would become Lemmon's stepdaughter.
Jack Lemmon died of colon cancer and metastatic cancer of the bladder on June 27, 2001.[10] He had been fighting the disease, very privately, for two years before his death. He was interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California where he is buried near his friend and co-star, Walter Matthau, who died almost exactly one year before Lemmon. In typical Jack Lemmon wit, his gravestone simply reads "JACK LEMMON in".[11] After Matthau's death in 2000, Lemmon appeared with friends and relatives of the actor on a Larry King Live show in tribute. A year later, many of the same people appeared on the show again to pay tribute to Lemmon.
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1949–50 | That Wonderful Guy | Harold | |
| 1950 | Toni Twin Time | Host | Episode dated May 31, 1950 |
| 1951 | The Ad-Libbers | Celebrity Panelist | Ended after 5 episodes |
| 1951–52 | The Frances Langford-Don Ameche Show | Newlywed | in 'The Couple Next Door' sketches |
| 1952 | Heaven for Betsy | Pete Bell | September 30, 1952 to December 23, 1952 |
| 1954 | The Road of Life | Surgeon | cancelled after a few weeks |
| 1956 | The Day Lincoln Was Shot | John Wilkes Booth | February 11, 1956 |
| 1957 | What's My Line? | Mystery Guest | November 3, 1957 Episode # 388, Season 9, Ep 10 |
| 1957–58 | Alcoa Theatre | Henry Coyle Steve Tyler Wally Mall Lieutenant Tony Crawford Edward King |
Episode: "Disappearance" Episode: "Most Likely to Succeed" Episode: "Loudmouth" Episode: "The Days of November" Episode: "Souvenir" |
| 1976 | The Entertainer | Archie Rice | |
| 1987 | Long Day's Journey Into Night | James Tyrone Sr. | Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film |
| 1988 | The Murder of Mary Phagan | Gov. John Slaton | Nominated — Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor – Miniseries or a Movie Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film |
| 1992 | For Richer, for Poorer | Aram Katourian | |
| 1993 | A Life in the Theater | Robert | Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film |
| 1994 | Wild West | host | |
| 1996 | A Weekend in the Country | Bud Bailey | |
| 1997 | The Simpsons | Frank Ormand | Voice role; Episode: "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson" |
| 1997 | 12 Angry Men | Juror #8 | Nominated — Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor – Miniseries or a Movie Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie |
| 1998 | The Long Way Home | Thomas Gerrin | |
| 1999 | Inherit the Wind | Henry Drummond | Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film Nominated — Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor – Miniseries or a Movie |
| 1999 | Tuesdays with Morrie | Morrie Schwartz | Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor – Miniseries or a Movie Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film |
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