--- title: Why Did Jerry Lewis Leave the Telethon? description: Not since, oh, Martin and Lewis has there been a showbiz breakup as sudden and inexplicable. Last year the Muscular Dystrophy Association announced that Jerry... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7121553/why-did-jerry-lewis-leave-the-telethon/ author: Richard Zoglin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-08-16T13:00:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-25T05:58:48.899Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Why Did Jerry Lewis Leave the Telethon? og:description: The star’s sudden departure last year from his Labor Day showcase has still not been explained. But it’s not a pretty story og:url: https://time.com/archive/7121553/why-did-jerry-lewis-leave-the-telethon/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt22e5c50c506c390e/698a8fb8b21a9c655750fcd4/culjerry.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 600 og:image:height: 338 og:image:alt: Jerry Lewis og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Did Jerry Lewis Leave the Telethon? twitter:description: The star’s sudden departure last year from his Labor Day showcase has still not been explained. But it’s not a pretty story twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt22e5c50c506c390e/698a8fb8b21a9c655750fcd4/culjerry.jpg?branch=production&width=600&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Why Did Jerry Lewis Leave the Telethon? > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with Ally. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Richard Zoglin](https://time.com/author/richard-zoglin/) Aug 16, 2012 1:00 PM UTC  Jerry Lewis, photographed at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville. Jerry Lewis, photographed at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville.Marco Grob for TIME by [Richard Zoglin](https://time.com/author/richard-zoglin/) Aug 16, 2012 1:00 PM UTC Not since, oh, Martin and Lewis has there been a showbiz breakup as sudden and inexplicable. Last year the Muscular Dystrophy Association announced that Jerry Lewis was stepping down as host of its annual Labor Day telethon, the marathon TV event he had made his personal showcase, soap box and sentimental journey for 45 years. With the show cut from 21.5 hours to just 6, Lewis was being replaced by a quartet of hosts, the MDA said, and would make an appearance only at the end of the show, to say goodbye and sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” one last time. Then what seemed the sad but inevitable end of an era became something uglier. A few weeks before the show, the MDA issued a curt announcement that Jerry Lewis would not be making a goodbye appearance after all — and was resigning from his post as MDA national chairman. The telethon went on without him (raising $61.5 million, more than the previous year with Lewis, according to the MDA) and included a filmed tribute to him and warm words of thanks from various participants during the show. But no Jerry. (**PHOTOS:** [Still Nutty: Portraits of Jerry Lewis by Marco Grob](http://wp.me/p1d6cx-dhd)) A year later, Lewis has been all but erased from the telethon’s memory. This year’s show, airing the Sunday night before Labor Day, has been further downsized, to just three hours, with no named host and a smattering of B-list guest stars (Carrie Underwood, [Will.i.am](http://Will.i.am/), Khloe Kardashian). It is no longer called a telethon, but simply an “entertainment special,” and there will be no tote board tallying the donations. In the press announcement of the event, Jerry Lewis’s name is nowhere mentioned. The story behind Lewis’s departure remains untold. But a few things have become clear in the year since the awkward public breakup. Jerry Lewis was dumped by the MDA, the charity he had been identified with since the 1950s. He’s still bitter about it. And the telethon is withering without him. (**MORE**: [Jerry Lewis’ Oscar](http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1881163,00.html)) Lewis still won’t talk about what happened. “That’s not a place I want to go. Because if I go there, you’ll never get me back,” he said when I raised the subject with him recently in Nashville, where he’s directing a new stage musical, _The Nutty Professor_. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it. But I have already ingested all that I want from that whole f—ing adventure.” The pain is not hard to discern. “This was a hurt man,” says Richard Belzer, the stand-up comic and _Law and Order_ co-star, who has developed a close, almost father-son relationship with Lewis. Jerry’s goodbye appearance was scrapped after he and the charity could not agree on its format and length. Lewis wanted to do it live; the MDA floated several pre-taped options — “all insulting,” Belzer claims. “It’s as if they were trying to provoke him to leave.” In the end, he did. “It was a moral outrage, a PR nightmare and a sad commentary on this incredible philanthropic career,” says Belzer. (**MORE**: [Top 10 Celebrity Do-Gooders](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2000036,00.html)) To be sure, dealing with Lewis, now 86, has never been a walk in the park. His annual Labor Day orgy of sentiment, self-regard and showbiz schmaltz was for many years something of a punch line. (“You know why they love Jerry Lewis in France,” a comedian told me not long ago. “In France, they don’t get the telethon.”) Still, he raised an estimated $2 billion for “Jerry’s kids” over more than a half-century with the MDA, and a well-orchestrated, celebrity-studded farewell to him on the telethon might have been a fundraising bonanza. MDA officials continue to maintain that Lewis simply retired. “We honor Jerry Lewis, we admire the work he’s done for us, and we respect his decision to retire,” says Valerie Cwik, the MDA’s interim president. (She replaced Gerald Weinberg, who was reportedly behind Lewis’s ouster and who stepped down as president last December, after 54 years with the organization.) And she insists that the changes in the telethon are part of a necessary evolution in fundraising strategy, to put less emphasis on the once-a-year event. “It has to change because the American audience has changed,” says Cwik. “A 21.5-hour show doesn’t fit in a 140-character world.” Neither, apparently, does Jerry Lewis. [**Read the full story in this week’s issue of TIME.**](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2122240,00.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7121553/why-did-jerry-lewis-leave-the-telethon/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7121553/why-did-jerry-lewis-leave-the-telethon/"},"headline":"Why Did Jerry Lewis Leave the Telethon?","datePublished":"2012-08-16T13:00:30.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-25T05:58:48.899Z","description":"Not since, oh, Martin and Lewis has there been a showbiz breakup as sudden and inexplicable. 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