The Funniest and Sweetest Person: In Memory of Richard Lewis (1947-2024)

Curbing their enthusiasm: Richard Lewis and Larry David

(Photo credit: HBO)

 

 

I. 

 

Some people think Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were the funniest duo in the history of comedy. 

 

And they were funny, no doubt about it - and hugely popular as a live act as well as on film, TV and radio - but I wouldn't call them the funniest duo in the history of comedy. 

 

At any rate, I prefer Larry David and Richard Lewis on screen together in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

 

 

II. 

 

Regrettably, I'm really only familiar with the latter due to his regular appearances on Curb throughout all twelve seasons of the show [1], where he played a fictionalised version of himself and, as in real life, an old friend of Larry's with whom he shared beautiful to watch comedic chemistry [2].   

 

However, I was very sad to read the press announcement of Lewis's death a couple of days ago, aged 76, and I shall over the next few weeks and months familiarise myself with the neurotic, self-deprecating (sometimes disconcertingly dark) stand-up comedy with which he made his name in the 1970s and '80s.     

 

Larry David paid tribute to his friend of over fifty-years by describing him as "the funniest person and also the sweetest".

 

Lewis & David (with admirers) c. 1975

 

Notes

 

[1] Richard Lewis has appeared in 41 episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm out of 114 episodes so far aired. He also appeared in the hour-long special (or pilot episode) which aired on 17 October 1999 (dir. Robert B. Weide). 

      Click here to watch Lewis and David bicker and banter their way through seasons 1-11 and here to watch their (now very poignant) appearance together in episode 3 of the twelth and final season: 'Vertical Drop, Horizontal Tug' (dir. Jeff Shaffer, 18 Feb 2024), in which Lewis tells Larry he's putting him in his will which the latter, of course, doesn't want: "If bequeathed, I will not accept."

 

[2] Richard Lewis and Larry David were born a few days apart in the summer of 1947 at the same hospital in Brooklyn, but didn't meet until they were aged twelve when attending a summer sports camp - instantly and intensely disliking one another, according to Lewis. Fast forward over a decade, and they crossed paths once more whilst on the New York comedy circuit, this time forging a firm (life-long) friendship.

 

     

My Debt to Jewish-American Humour

Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, and Phil Silvers (as Sgt. Bilko)

 

 

I.

 

Humour, said Freud, is a means of obtaining pleasure from life, no matter what. 

 

In other words, laughter is a way of overcoming suffering as well as an antidote to that all-too-human tendency to take ourselves seriously. 

  

That's why the most profound comedy is often rooted in misery and self-mockery (even self-hatred). And that's why the best humour in the world is Jewish in origin ...

 

 

II.

 

I'm certain that the tradition of humour in Judaism can be traced way back, but I'm a late 20th-century boy and so I'm mostly interested in the humour that developed amongst the Jewish community of the United States and shaped the worlds of film and television in the last seventy years, rather than the subtle theological satire expressed in the Talmud, for example.

 

Antisemitic conspiracy theorists often claim that the Jews are overrepresented in the world of banking and maybe that's true, maybe not [1]. But what cannot be denied is that a disproportionately high percentage of American comedians and comic actors have been Jewish [2].

Of course, Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to the development of the modern world in many fields - art, philosophy, science, politics, business, etc. But I'm particularly grateful for their role within the world of entertainment. 

 

For my childhood was made happier by Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, and Phil Silvers as Sgt. Bilko. And today, the comic genius of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld continues to exert a huge influence over my understanding not only of what constitutes funny, but of how I view the world (ironically and with curbed enthusiasm).

 

 

 

Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David

 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] The idea that Jews are good with (and greedy for) money is one of the oldest antisemitic stereotypes. It's undeniable, however, that Jews are well-represented in finance and business. See the article on Jews and Finance on myjewishlearning.com which nicely puts things into historical and cultural context, explaining why this is so. 

 

[2] In 1978, Time magazine claimed that 80 per cent of professional comedians in America were Jewish, even though Jews only made up 3 per cent of the U.S. population at that time. Click here to read the article 'Behaviour: Analyzing Jewish Comics' (2 Oct 1978).    

 

 

The Three Ruperts: Bear, Rigsby & Pupkin

 

 

I. 

 

The modern English name Rupert is a truncation of the Latin Rupertus, which derives from Old High German Hruodoperht (or Hruodoberht), which also happens to be the origin of the name Robert. 

 

Meaning bright with glory, it is a name to be proud of, even if it has today taken on somewhat comical connotations, which is why - as we shall see - it was so suited to Leonard Rossiter's character, Rupert Rigsby, in the seventies TV sit-com Rising Damp; and Robert De Niro's character, Rupert Pupkin, in Scorsese's 1982 film The King of Comedy.    

 

Before discussing the above, however, I want to say a few words about the most famous Rupert of all - no, not Rupert Birkin [1] - but Rupert Bear ...

 

 

II. 

 

As a child, I never much cared for Rupert Bear ...

 

Even if I quite admired his colourful fashion sense - red jumper, bright yellow checked trousers, with a matching yellow scarf - he and his chums were just a bit too boring [2], living at home with their parents in an idyllic English village. No matter how exotic or magical their adventures, the fact was they always began and ended in Nutwood.    

 

However, it was the irritating theme song which opened the 1970s TV series The Adventures of Rupert Bear [3], that really turned me against him: I fucking hated that song - which added an erroneous definite article to the characters name - although the record-buying public obviously didn't share my feelings, as it reached number 14 in the UK charts in 1971 [4].  

Rupert, of course, started life as a comic strip character created by Mary Tourtel, who made his first appearance in the Daily Express in 1920. He soon became very popular and his since gone on to sell millions of books worldwide; the Rupert annual has been published every year since 1936. 

 

And so, like his rival, Paddington Bear - who first appeared on the scene in 1958 (and who I'm not keen on either) - Rupert is firmly entrenched in British popular culture; in September 2020, Royal Mail even issued a set of eight stamps to commemorate his centenary.   

 

Unfortunately, the stamps didn't make reference to the one great scandal that Rupert was involved in; the infamous Oz magazine case which resulted in the editors and publishers being prosecuted for obscenity and put on trial at the Old Bailey in June 1971 [5]. 

 

 

III.

 

Played (brilliantly) by Leonard Rossiter in Rising Damp - a British sit-com, written by Eric Chappell, which was originally broadcast on ITV from September 1974 until May 1978 - Rigsby's first name was only revealed in one of the final episodes. 

 

In 'Great Expectations' (S4/E3), having agreed to pose as his estranged wife, Miss Jones and Rigsby dress up so as to look the part of a married couple:

Rigsby: "How d'you think I look?"

 

Miss Jones: "Very nice Mr Rigsby - though I can't call you that, what's your first name?"

Rigsby: "Err, we needn't go to those lengths Miss Jones."

Miss Jones: "Mr Rigsby we're supposed to be married, what did she call you?"

Rigsby: "Everything really."

Miss Jones: "No, I mean at the beginning, when she was being affectionate."

Rigsby: "Well, we never went in for endearments very much, not even at the beginning. No, she used to smile quietly at me, put her hand on mine and say: 'Now then ratbag.'"

Miss Jones: "Well I can't call you that. Now what's your name?"

 

Rigsby (embarrassed): "Well, it's a rather silly sort of name".

 

Miss Jones: "What is it?" 

Rigsby (mumbling): "Rupert."

Miss Jones: "Robert?"

 

Rigsby: "Rupert."

 

Miss Jones: "Rupert!"

 

Rigsby: "Yes, Rupert Rigsby."

 

Miss Jones (hiding her face and laughing): "I'm sorry Mr Rigsby, you don't look like a Rupert."

 

Rigsby: "Well of course I don't look like - he's a little wooly bear with trousers and a check scarf, isn't he? That's why I stopped using it."

 

Miss Jones (kindly): "Well I shan't, I think it's a very nice name." [6]

 

As well as being a very funny (and rather touching) scene, it also reminds me of the sixth season episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer's first name - Cosmo - is finaly revealed, much to the amusement of George, Jerry and Elaine [7].

The irony, of course, is that Rigsby isn't bright with glory - as the name Rupert suggests - but seedy with failure. Nevertheless, he's a strangely likeable character; far more so than Basil Fawlty, to whom he is sometimes compared.

IV.

 

Rupert Pupkin, on the other hand, is a far more disturbing character; a struggling stand-up comedian with mental health issues, desperate to get his big break. 

 

Long story short, in The King of Comedy (1982) he kidnaps a famous late-night talk show host, Jerry Langford (played by Jerry Lewis), in an attempt to achieve the notoriety he confuses with stardom. As he tells the FBI agents who arrest him: Better to be a king for a night, than a schmuck for a lifetime. 

 

The film was admired by critics, but poorly received by the public who - at this date - preferred to see De Niro in what they understood to be more serious roles, little appreciating the amount of work he invested in the character of Rupert Pupkin. 

 

The fact that, by the end of the film, it's impossible to tell what was real and what was fantasy, also didn't go down well with moviegoers who, as a rule, like to know what's happening and not have to figure things out for themselves.

 

Further, Rupert Pupkin is a troubling figure because he obliges us as film fans to examine our own behaviour and complicity with celebrity culture. Travis Bickle might shock us - and Max Cady [8] might terrify us - but Rupert Pupkin is the one who unsettles us most.    

Perhaps that's why Scorsese has called De Niro's role as Rupert Pupkin his favourite of all their collaborations ... [9]

  

Notes

 

[1] I have referred to and discussed Rupert Birkin - one of the four central characters of D. H. Lawrence's greatest novel Women in Love (1920) - many times in posts on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

 

[2] I make an exception for his peculiar pal Raggety, a woodland troll-like creature made from twigs, who is goes out of his way to be annoying. Sadly, in the 2006 TV revival Raggety was transformed into a friendly tree elf so as not to frighten the children of Gen Z (aka Generation Snowflake). Worse: Rupert is obliged to wear trainers! 

 

[3] The Adventures of Rupert Bear (known as My Little Rupert in the US) was a live-action puppet series, based on the Mary Tourtel character Rupert Bear, produced by ATV. It aired from 28 October 1970 to 24 August 1977 on the ITV network, with 156 11-minute episodes produced over four series, narrated by Judy Bennett. 

[4] Rupert, written by Len Beadle and Ron Roker, was sung by the Irish singer Jackie Lee and released as a single in 1971: click here. 

      Funny enough, although not a fan of Rupert, I did like the theme song written by Michael Carr and Ben Nisbet for the English language version of the children's TV series White Horses (1968), which was also sung by Jackie Lee (and released as a single in 1968 - reaching number 10 in the UK charts): click here.   

[5] Oz was an underground magazine that flew the flag for the sixties counterculture. The UK version was published from 1967 until 1973, ed. by Richard Neville, a young Australian writer and hippie radical. Issue 28 (May 1970) of Oz was the notorious Schoolkids issue and featured a Rupert cartoon in which he is shown with a large erection and engaging in illicit sexual activity. After initially being found guilty of obscenity and sentenced to harsh jail terms, the magazine's editors were acquitted on appeal. 

      For an interesting recent article by Walker Mimms in The Guardian (4 Aug 2021), discussing how the Oz trial inspired a generation of protest artists, click here. 

 

[6] This lovely one minute exchange begins at 12:20 in the second episode of series four of Rising Damp. Entitled 'Great Expectations', it aired on 18 April 1978 and was written by Eric Chappell, directed by Joseph McGrath, and starred Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby and Francis de la Tour as Miss Jones. The episode can be found on YouTube, or viewed on Dailymotion by clicking here. 

[7] See Seinfeld, 'The Switch' [S6/E11], dir. Andy Ackerman, written by Bruce Kirschbaum and Sam Kass. The episode originally aired on 5 Jan 1995. The relevant scenes concerning Kramer's first name can be viewed here. 

 

[8] Max Cady was the psychopath played by De Niro in the 1991 remake of Cape Fear, also directed by Scorsese. 

 

[9] To watch the original trailer for The King of Comedy (1982), click here.