If you’re a regular around here, you’ll know that for the last couple of years I have been picking classic films starring one particular actor/actress to focus on for a season.
For example, I’ve had a Summer of Paul, Summer of Marilyn, Winter of Cagney, Spring of Cary, Spring of Bette, and Autumn of ….oh. I’ve never actually done an Autumn of…anyone. So this year I decided on an Autumn of Lemmon, which means I will be watching and writing about Jack Lemmon movies.
Actually, it turns out I’ve already watched more of Jack’s movies than I realized so this one should be easier than some of these features where I was rushing to watch movies and share about them in the same week.
I thought I would kick off this two-three month feature with an introduction post about the life and career of actor Jack Lemmon.
I’ll also let you know what movies I plan to watch at the end of the post so if you don’t want to read all about Jack, you can skip to the end.
Jack Lemmon was born in a way that would have fit in a movie —his mother gave birth to him in an elevator in Boston in 1925.
He was an only child who had some of his first acting experiences in prep schools. He learned to play piano at a young age, which would help sustain him in more ways than financially over the years
Some actors change their names when they go into the profession, but Jack kept his.
According to Britannica.com, Jack attended Harvard University and was the president of the Hasty Pudding Club, which was known for annual satiric revues.
He took a break from college to serve in the Navy during World War II and then graduated from Harvard in 1947. Broadway was calling so when he left he went to NYC and picked up some theaters jobs. In between he played piano accompaniment to silent films at the Old Knick Music Hall. He later said that watching Chaplin, Keaton, and Harold Lloyd taught him more about comic technique that acting school ever could have.
“I used to play at the Old Knick Music Hall on Second Avenue in New York, way back in the ’40s when I first started,” Lemmon said. “Some weeks, we didn’t get paid, because there wouldn’t be enough people in there to give us anything. Sometimes you’d get maybe five bucks. We’d split whatever was left on Saturday night. But you got a piece of chicken and French fries every night. You got a meal.”
Lemmon leaned into music in his later years when acting became stressful, his son Chris Lemmon remembered in an interview with NPR.
“Hollywood is an enormously invasive thing, especially when you reach a level of stardom that my father did,” Chris Lemmon said. “Hollywood owns you, basically — puts you in a headlock. And is a very jealous mistress when you reach that kind of stardom, especially back then. It’s a little less now. So [music] was his escape.”
He always downplayed his musical talents, though, saying it was merely another creative outlet.
Chris was Jack’s son from his first marriage, by the way. He was married to Chris’s mother, Cynthia Sone, from 1950 to 1956. He married Felicia Farr in 1966 and they remained married until his death in 2001.
In addition to working in theater and music, before going into movies, Jack also worked on radio and more than 140 live television shows.
Like other movie actors, he started in Broadway but his debut performance was not a success. Luckily, it still led him to a contract with Columbia Pictures in 1954.
His first two films — It Should Happen To You and Phffft! — came out that same year and both set him up opposite Judy Holliday, who was already well known for her Oscar performance in Born Yesterday. The tagline they used for It Should Happen to You:
“Introducing Jack Lemmon — a guy you’re gonna like.”
And many people did in that movie and many more over the years.
It didn’t take Jack long to be recognized for all his hard work. He won an Oscar in 1955 for Mr. Rogers for Best Supporting Actor, which surprises me a little because I’m not sure if that was a strong role for him. He was much better in Some Like It Hot (1959) (to me) and The Apartment (1960) which he received Oscar nominations for (both of them) but didn’t win.
He was nominated again for Days of Wine and Roses (1962). He won an Oscar for Best Actor in Save the Tiger in 1970.
All together Lemmon had 8 Oscar nominations.
The first Jack Lemmon film I ever saw, other than Grumpy Men when I was younger and actually just remembered as I was writing this, was— Some Like It Hot with Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis.
I watched it a couple of years ago and wrote about it here.
Lemmon was known to play socially awkward, self-depreciating, slightly clueless characters who often came to a wider understanding of their world by the end of the movie.
It wasn’t the only role he played, but it was the most popular for him. Most film fans agree that he could play serious characters as well as he could comedic roles.
He had a long-term acting partnership with Walter Matthau, with their most well-known partnership in The Odd Couple from 1968, which was based on the play by Neil Simon.
According to Britannica.com, “The film established the pattern for most of their appearances together, with a fussy neurotic (Lemmon) butting heads with a carefree scalawag (Matthau).”
Other Lemmon-Matthau films included The Front Page (1974), Buddy Buddy (1981), Grumpy Old Men (1993), Grumpier Old Men (1995), and The Odd Couple II (1998).
Matthau said that he was once injured on a set of one of their movies.
“Lemmon was white as a ghost. He ran down, and he took off his jacket, and he rolled his jacket up, and he put it under my head. And he said, “Are you comfortable?”… And I said, “I make a nice living.”
No wonder those two hit it off. Jack had his own knack at witty comments, but also thoughtful ones.
“I really can’t be funny unless it’s part of the character. It really bugs me when someone thinks of me as a comic. If I read ‘comedian Jack Lemmon,’ I gag. That means I’m not an actor – which I am.
It’s better to work with a Billy Wilder once or with a John Ford once than to work with four other directors who do not have that touch of genius.
Nobody deserves this much money – certainly not an actor.
“If I’d been bright, I’d have realized that I was horribly uncomfortable, amazingly frustrated, and like any sensible person, I’d have quit. But it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be successful eventually.
And one of his most witty comments came when he died and had inscribed on his tombstone, “Jack Lemmon In:”
Now for the list of movies I’ll be watching and writing about:
Phffft! (September 17)
It Should Happen To You (September 24)
The Fortune Cookie (Oct 2)
The Apartment (Oct. 8)
My Fellow Americans (Oct. 15)
The Notorious Landlady (Oct. 22)
The Odd Couple (Oct. 29)
Irma Dey Deuce (November 5)
Save the Tiger (November 12)
Sources:
https://www.afi.com/laa/jack-lemmon/
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000493/quotes
https://www.npr.org/2011/06/11/137086345/the-secret-musical-life-of-jack-lemmon
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jack-Lemmon
https://www.tcm.com/articles/31457/jack-lemmon-profile-jack-lemmon-8-22
