Back from the brink

Friday, Feb. 22, 2002 | 9:36 a.m.

These days, a Popsicle is one of life's great pleasures for Jerry Lewis.

"Because of all the medication I'm taking, I get such a cotton mouth," the 75-year-old entertainer said. "It's the only thing that helps me."

Lewis, 30 pounds overweight because of the steroid Prednisone and 28 other medicines he takes daily, nursed one of the grape-flavored treats recently as he sat behind the desk in an office at his Las Vegas residence and talked about the universe of topics spinning around in his restless mind.

Among other topics, he discussed his most recent brush with death; a film he started 30 years ago (but has yet to finish); and revealed he is hard at work writing a book about his years with Dean Martin.

Random House gave Lewis a $1.5 million advance last year to write "Memories," which Lewis said should be finished by the end of this year.

He started the book under his own initiative in 1996 while on a national tour with the musical "Damn Yankees." When the tour ended he had completed 176 pages, which he said he put aside because of so many other projects that were on his plate.

Parade magazine publisher Walter Anderson, a friend of Lewis, mentioned to an editor at Random House that Lewis was writing a book.

"Bang, I got a deal," Lewis said. "So it inspired me to get back into the writing. I've been at it the last six to eight weeks, and the stuff is wonderful."

His writing style, he said, is stream-of-consciousness and the words flow easily from the well of his memory into the word processor.

"I have probably 400 single-spaced pages so far and I cannot take anything out, and I won't, because it's all too good," Lewis said. "It's hysterical stuff."

Lewis said he doesn't rewrite, punctuate or edit because it slows him down. He knocks out 120 words a minute with two fingers and lets his secretary do the editing.

He's a man who still has a lot to say, but with increasingly less time to say it -- although he vows to outlive by six months the late George Burns, who died in 1996 at age 100.

Keeping a promise

Last May Lewis didn't think he would be able to live up to his promise. He was certain he was going to die.

"I really didn't believe I was going to make it," he said.

Lewis said he felt ill returning to Las Vegas from a concert in Chicago.

"I felt so bad when I got home that I got back on a plane and went to Houston," Lewis said.

Houston is where his close friend, internationally acclaimed heart specialist Dr. Michael Debakey, practices.

"They kept me there two weeks for observation and started me with oxygen and medication, and it's been that way ever since," Lewis said. "They still don't know what to call my condition."

Initially, he said, he had pulmonary pneumonia, and then his left lung collapsed.

"They had to go in and reset the lung so it would take new air -- that was June 1," he said.

Lewis was told he would be out of commission for a year.

During the past nine months Lewis has (in addition to his regimen of pills) received six injections daily of various medications; has had a team of 18 doctors -- 12 in Houston, three in Las Vegas and three in San Diego -- working to heal him. Until the past month he was on oxygen almost around the clock.

There was one minor setback in the healing process -- when Lewis refused to be stopped from hosting his annual Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon in September. His health worsened after the fund drive, but he has since made up the lost ground.

Concerned fans saw Lewis' bloated condition on television and many called to find out what was wrong.

"Even on the pledges they wrote little notes, 'Is he OK?', 'Is he going to be all right?', 'Is he going to make it?' " Lewis said.

He wasn't sure of the answers to those questions himself.

While on oxygen, the only thing Lewis did for months on end was go from his upstairs bedroom to the den downstairs, sit in an overstuffed chair and watch television.

"I was so depressed, so down," he said.

He credits his wife, SanDee (whom he calls "Sam"), and his 9-year-old daughter, Danielle (whose nickname is "Danny"), with pulling him through his latest illness, which came on the heels of back surgery in January, and life-threatening viral meningitis in 1999.

"Sam has been a rock," Lewis said. "I call her Mrs. Walgreen, because she comes to me with shots and pills and says, 'Take this and do that.' "

He said Danny was the one who put the steel of resolve back into his heart and the air of life back into his lungs.

"I started this depression of 'I'm not going to make it,' and Sam says to Danny, 'Go tell Daddy that he's not acting like Daddy, and that Daddy has to show his real courage,' " Lewis recalled.

"My daughter sat me down and paraphrased what Sam said. She said, 'Daddy, your courage is missing,' and she wanted to say something about my tenacity but I think she said 'capacity,' but I knew what she meant. She said, 'Daddy you've always been a boxer,' but she meant fighter."

After the daddy-daughter talk, Lewis said he gained strength from the child and began to mentally push his way back to health.

Painful memories

Lewis no longer routinely needs tanks of oxygen to help him breathe; he expects to be off all of his medication by the end of April. He is dieting and exercising to take off the excess weight and is undergoing acupuncture to try to control the ever-present pain, the result of 70 years of taking pratfalls onstage.

"The pain once was so severe I lost my eyesight at one point," Lewis said. "My heart palpitation was up to 160 beats when normal is 101."

He says he is almost crippled by the pain, which has been intensified by Prednisone.

"The Prednisone is for my lungs, but it goes to wherever the pain is and inflames it," Lewis said. "It goes to all the places that have been scarred by my pratfalls."

He said he is considering allowing doctors to implant a battery-powered pain-blocking device in his body, but so far the most effective pain reliever for Lewis has been the adrenaline rush he gets from being onstage.

"I'm in pain all the time, to various degrees," Lewis said. "I step on the stage at The Orleans and I have no pain. Adrenaline is the best painkiller known to man."

Offstage, the pain is persistent but it doesn't keep him from working, now that he has conquered depression.

In addition to writing the Martin and Lewis story, Lewis is the executive producer of five upcoming films, which will be remakes of films he made around 40 years ago: "The Bellboy" (1960); "Cinderfella" (1960); "The Errand Boy" (1961) "The Ladies' Man" (1961); and "The Patsy" (1964).

Assuming he is healthy, Lewis will launch a concert tour on May 4 at Madison Square Garden in New York. After three concerts there, he will do five shows in Chicago, 15 in Paris and 12 in Berlin. In 2000 he signed a 20-year contract to perform several times a year at The Orleans.

The concerts are in addition to 21 lecture dates he has scheduled around the country.

And there's the movie he would like to complete, "The Day the Clown Cried."

Unfinished business

Based on Joan O'Brien's book by the same name, the film was begun in 1971 with Lewis starring and directing. The story is about a German clown interred in a concentration camp in World War II Germany and forced to march Jewish children into the ovens. The story is told from the point of view of the children.

Before the film could be completed, producers had a falling out and work was stopped. It has been in limbo ever since.

"All I have to do is the last half reel and then post-production," Lewis said. "I could do it in three weeks, max."

He has the film in a vault at home.

"What I'm thinking about doing is a film about why 'The Day the Clown Cried' sits in a vault," Lewis said. "That could be done and I could show everything that has been shot, but without it being in continuity. But without the last reel, there's no movie."

There's another movie made by Lewis that sits in another vault, but this one is completed.

It has no title, and while most of Lewis' films have been seen by millions of fans, this 20-minute short is only for the eyes and ears of his daughter -- the vault won't be opened until after his death.

On the videotape Lewis points out many of his accomplishments, such as being nominated for a Noble Prize in 1977 for humanitarianism, and he defends himself against his critics.

"It sounds kind of self-serving, but I had no recourse but to make up for the negative stuff that's been printed about me," Lewis said. "On the video I said, 'Dear Danny, the reason for this video is so that you hear my side.

" 'When you go and check out your father, and I hope you do, I want you to know that your father has done some stupid things ... but I want you to know my intention always was to do good and to be funny and to love my fellow man.'

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