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No. 86: The Bellboy

Jerry Lewis is Jewish, right?

by
Marc Tracy
December 05, 2011

1960, dir. Jerry Lewis. Even in a mid-1990s production of Damn Yankees, Jerry Lewis’ echt-Catskills routine—the jokes, the pratfalls, the faces—made him the most Jewish Devil ever. In The Bellboy, which he also wrote and directed, a mute Lewis bumbles and shticks his way from one scene to the next; the film is literally set at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.