The Associated Press obit recalled one of his infamous, caustic responses. Stay in your house! What if he had found the grace and humility to acknowledge that those of us who felt compelled to defend ourselves and others from the damage caused by the telethon had a point? Mike Ervin is a writer and disability rights activist living in Chicago. He blogs at Smart Ass Cripple. The Progressive Inc. Skip to main content. Back to Search Results.
Lewis presided over a telethon that could stretch more than 21 hours and mixed heartfelt appeals featuring sick children with classic comedy, musical entertainment and special guests. Perhaps its most famous moment came in , when Sinatra helped arrange a reunion between Lewis and longtime partner Dean Martin, with whom he had fallen out.
Ten years later, Lewis and Sammy Davis Jr. In , Lewis nearly let slip a homophobic epithet. Steven Zeitchik is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer who covered film and the larger world of Hollywood for the paper from to , exploring the personalities, issues, content and consequences of both the creative and business and, increasingly, digital aspects of our screen entertainment.
He previously covered entertainment beats at Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, has contributed arts and culture pieces to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times and has done journalistic tours of duty in Jerusalem and Berlin. While at The Times he has also reported stories in cities ranging from Cairo to Krakow, though Hollywood can still seem like the most exotic destination of all. Deborah Vankin is an arts and culture writer for the Los Angeles Times.
Her award-winning interviews and profiles unearth the trends, issues and personalities in L. Photographer Gordon Parks inspired a new generation of artists. Here are some of their stories. All Sections. About Us. B2B Publishing. Business Visionaries. Perhaps the comedian planned to announce that a scientist outside MDA had already successfully found a cure for a large set of conditions among muscular dystrophies, and this would hurt the association.
As Lewis announced new treatments and promising cures for neuromuscular conditions each year on Labor Day Weekend to his audiences around the world, new medical research companies entered the field of neuromuscular research and treatment. I discovered Fate Therapeutics in this field in It is the top stem cell therapy developer in cancer, autoimmune, and degenerative conditions like Duchene muscular dystrophy among 18 companies recognized internationally as the most successful leaders in this work for through Maia Research, Deep Research This company developed ways of regrowing muscles devastated by the diseases that Jerry Lewis campaigned to end.
Fate Therapeutics is confident they have the cure for Duchene's as well as some varieties of cancer and other conditions. Jerry Lewis served the Muscular Dystrophy Association for sixty years, and then he was suddenly removed from service. The exact reason for his ouster was never revealed, but the thousands of people around the world who appreciated his efforts were blindsided and emotionally devastated.
Longtime critic Roger Ebert also criticized the company, according to Reuters August 6, Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, Quentin Tarantino, and Alec Baldwin presented positive opinions of Lewis in a film called Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis that premiered in October , after a much-scaled down telethon was broadcast. This is a shock to the world. People are stopping me in the street. Jerry Lewis receives no pay for his tireless year-round work for MDA.
He is MDA's "number-one volunteer" and star of the Telethon. Hart's production company received an undisclosed payment for this event.
The amount of pledges was not revealed. People who did not have internet access could not see the event. I once worked as a stand-in for Jerry Lewis. For weeks our relationship was a bit awkward, but a turn of events changed everything. I'm even here to write about it only because Jerry came to my rescue in a very big way. He announced publically that he would retire and share important information about MDA.
The association had been making program cutbacks and made no excuses for quick, curtly announced cutbacks that culminated in removing Lewis from service. MDA officials stated that too many TV station affiliates had dropped the annual telethon, the entertainment acts were no longer good, and immediate cutback action was vital. After the Lewis ouster, the hour telethon was shortened to six hours, then to two hours, and then eliminated by MDA leaders had been collecting a much smaller percentage of actual funds from pledges made since , and from through , line items in the company's annual report were troubling.
Specifically, the line item listing the dollar amount and percentage of telethon pledges collected became absent. These figures were absorbed into larger line items, effectively hiding the information. Many problems seem epidemic at MDA, according to Glassdoor reviews from employees, sampled below. Testimony by staff and executives on Glassdoor.
Increasingly, other pledge and collection systems have out distanced the new MDA "telethon. MDA employees also reported that the company maintains 30 National Vice Presidents with 6-figure incomes. Development Coordinator , October : " MDA started cutting services that we were giving to families.
The benefits for employees slowly got worse. It seemed as though the higher ups were only interested in the quickest way to make money instead of helping our families. Development Specialist , September "Stop saying you provide services to families living with muscle diseases, when all you do is cut services, staff, while paying executive salaries. Executive Director , June "Morally degrading, life consuming, thankless, need a self esteem class to get back on track.
Management by fear, everyone comes to work motivated only by the fear that they will be fired. Average tenure is 2 years, and I believe that is a stretch. It's harder and harder to raise funds because the entire model is based on building relationships, but sponsors and donors are so exhausted by having to meet different employees every year, that they are just not engaged any longer and stop giving or cancel events.
While they offer lots of holidays, there is no comp time. So, there are times that I have worked 14 days in a row because of an event and they do not even allow us to come in late or have a day off. You work until the work gets done and if it takes 10 hour work days, that's what it takes. It wouldn't be so bad if they paid decent, but not only have we not gotten a raise in over 4 years, we were just furloughed for the week of Thanksgiving.
There is a revolving door - they cannot keep staff and they are not honest with staff about what the job actually entails time wise. True that! I am angry over this matter still. An article in the news yesterday shows how MDA has collected smaller and smaller amounts of donations every year in , , , and Other research accompanies will put them out of business within the decade, imo.
I don't care what the reasons were for the ouster. I thinking those behind the scenes and "in charge" are ungrateful people. They don't an ounce of compassion for a person who kept them employed all those years. During - , the MDA "telethon" received far less in pledges than Jerry Lewis had done; and - collections of those were dismal. In , MDA removed the "telethon" line item from financial statements and added it to some other category. Now, we cannot find out the yearly dollar amount. Fate Therapeutics is making more progress in muscular dystrophy cures than MDA by growing new muscle fibers.
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