American comedian, actor and director Jerry Lewis was BOTD in 1926. Born in New Jersey to a theatrical family, he wrote and performed his own comedy acts by his early teens, dropping out of high school to perform in theatres and burlesque clubs. In 1944, he met singer Dean Martin at the 500 Club in Atlantic City. Two years later, they began a comedy act, with Martin playing the suave straight man to Lewis’ infantile clown. After working the East Coast nightclub circuit, they rose to public attention with a successful residency at the Copacabana Club, leading to radio and television appearances. Hollywood came calling, and the pair made their first comedy film My Friend Irma in 1949. Fifteen other films followed over the next seven years, making them both household names. While completing Hollywood or Bust in 1956, they had a monumental bust-up (described by some as a lovers’ quarrel) and parted company. Lewis pursued a solo acting career, negotiating a deal with Paramount that gave him 60% of box office profits and allowed him to write and direct his own films. He mined his natural awkwardness and physical comedy skills in self-scripted and directed films including The Bellboy, The Errand Boy and The Ladies Man. The Nutty Professor, his 1963 comic reworking of Robert Louis Stevenson‘s Jekyll and Hyde story, was a box office juggernaut, and widely considered to be his best film. His comic schtick eventually grew stale, and after the commercial failure of his war comedy Which Way to the Front, he took a decade-long sabbatical from film acting. His 1972 project The Day the Clown Cried, in which he played a clown who led children to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, was reportedly so bad that he refused to allow its release. By the 1990s, his status as a comedy legend was recognised with roles in Martin Scorsese’s film The King of Comedy, the indie film Funny Bones and a successful Broadway revival of the musical Damn Yankees. He is perhaps best known for hosting the Labour Day Telethon, a weekend-long live television variety show to raise funds for charity. First broadcast in 1966, he hosted the event for 44 years, frequently parodied for his tearful, heart-on-sleeve pleas on behalf of disabled children. He finally reunited with Martin during the 1976 Telethon, stage-managed by their mutual friend Frank Sinatra. Later in life, he received a number of honorary awards, including the Légion d’honneur, a Career Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Married twice, and with eight children, the intensity of his friendship with Martin has been of enduring interest to biographers, who continue to debate whether their fall-out was romantically motivated. He died in 2017, aged 91.