Deviled Ham Jerry Lewis Still Strong In Broadway’s ‘Damn Yankees’

After 64 years in show biz, Jerry Lewis knows how to make an entrance. Even at a press conference.

While being introduced to a room of reporters in Seattle last week, Lewis cracked a joke from the back of the room.

The man making the introduction plugged Miracle Ear hearing aids, a sponsor of the touring production of “Damn Yankees,” when Lewis piped up with a loud, nasal: “Who?”

Bah da boom.

Lewis is in Seattle through Dec. 24 with “Damn Yankees,” the musical revival in which he made his Broadway debut almost a year ago. He plays the devil, a role he said gives audiences a glimpse of the real Jerry Lewis.

“When the producer called to ask me to do the show, I asked, ‘Why me?’ He said I had been playing the devil for 64 years,” Lewis said.

Lewis is 69, but looks younger. His hair is now peppered with gray, but he’s trim and long-winded. The press conference lasted for nearly 90 minutes. Though he has had a sometimes contentious relationship with members of the media, he was forthcoming, entertaining and gracious.

Lewis is willing to put up with the “crusty old press” in order to promote his dream project.

Despite his long career - starring in dozens of movies, bouncing his wacky schtick off straight man Dean Martin for more than 10 years in the ‘40s and ‘50s and being held up as a cultural icon in France - Lewis never really felt he had made it until he stepped on the Broadway stage.

“My Dad was my mentor and my hero,” Lewis said. “Everything good and right, I learned from him. He was always supportive about everything I did, but he would get in his little digs. When I played the Palladium in London, I was told that the Queen had stood to applaud. When I heard that I said to my Dad, ‘It doesn’t get any better than that.’ And he said, ‘Well, it ain’t Broadway.”’

On opening night of “Damn Yankees,” Lewis said he felt his late father’s presence and imagined him saying: “You made it.”

The rousing ‘50s musical, which won eight Tony awards in 1956, revolves around the lackluster Washington Senators baseball team and their ardent fans. One fervent booster broods that he would sell his soul to Satan if the Senators could only pick up a hot hitter. Enter the devilish Mr. Applegate to grant his request.

During the Tuesday opening night performance at the Paramount Theater in Seattle, when Lewis made his entrance, the audience welcomed him with a solid two minutes of thundering applause. He knew just how to milk it, too.

Later, when he delivered the line “I just hate charity,” he gave the audience a knowing look and they ate it up. (Lewis, after all, has helped raise more than $1 billion over the years during his annual telethon to help find a cure for muscular dystrophy, a crusade that earned him a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.)

Critics generally praised Lewis’ Broadway performance, but some wrote that he showed too much restraint. And, reviewers wrote, audiences seemed primed to see him let loose with some of his goofy antics.

“It shows I respect the integrity of the show,” he said during the press conference. “But we do let Jerry out during a couple of bits. We have fun with it.”

Indeed, during the show in Seattle, Lewis’ trademark zaniness got plenty of exposure. During his big solo number, “Those Were the Good Old Days,” Lewis inserted a vaudeville routine during which he threw a baton in the air, and when he repeatedly failed to catch it, he reeled off jokes. Did you hear the one about the rabbi and the priest?

The audience roared.

Still, not everyone appreciates Lewis’ cross-eyed, buck-toothed brand of physical humor.

Those folks, Lewis said, are snobs.

“Burlesque and vaudeville never played well with the Park Avenue set. They felt it was beneath them,” he said.

Lewis literally cut his teeth on that kind of comedy, playing the so-called Borscht Belt in New York with his parents. He made his professional debut at 5, singing “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”

Some 60 years later, he still gets excited about performing.

“It’s nine hours until the curtain goes up and I’m getting anxious,” he said.

When someone tells him some of the Seattle Mariners are going to be in the audience the following night, he said: “Oh, now I’ll be nervous.”

Lewis recently signed on to do a five-year road tour of “Damn Yankees,” traveling around this country and also to London, Japan and Paris.

When asked if that wasn’t a bit ambitious for a man of his advancing years, he rolled his eyes.

“When Dean and I first started out, we did 56 shows a week in New York, 63 shows a week in Chicago,” he said. “Some reporter said to me, ‘But you were 20 years old then.’ I said, ‘Yeah, so I’ve cut down to eight shows a week.”’

The grueling schedule is less daunting mostly because his second wife, Sam, and their 3-year-old adopted daughter, Dani, are accompanying him on tour. (He has five grown sons and seven grandchildren, but he calls his young daughter “the air in his lungs.”)

“My daughter is wonderful. Don’t get me started. She already knows the score from the show,” he said.

Lewis had played the Paramount once before, in 1950 with Dino.

When that partnership ended bitterly, the two didn’t speak for 20-odd years. In 1976, they were reunited on Lewis’ telethon, an event orchestrated by Frank Sinatra.

Lewis reminisced about that memorable show biz moment: “Dean showed a lot of courage walking onto my turf. I think he knew that I would never hurt my partner. I was delighted to see him and we embraced, but I was thinking ‘Please, let me think of something to say.’ When we came out of the hug, I looked at him and said: ‘You working?”’

When, at the end of “Damn Yankees,” Mr. Applegate is himself bedeviled and lets that promised soul slip through his fingers, Lewis goes out with a bang - a pyrotechnics display that sends smoke out into the audience.

If Lewis’ career ends with a bang with this production, he said he’ll have no regrets.

“Except, maybe, that I turned down ‘Some Like It Hot,’ and sold my stock in Polaroid,” he said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: SHOWTIME “Damn Yankees” continues nightly at the Paramount Theater until Dec. 24, with matinees on Dec. 20 and 24. Ticket prices range from $20 to $42. For tickets, phone TicketMaster at (206) 282-6234.