The Jack Lemmon Fansite
Dedicated to the legendary Hollywood actor
Biography
Born: 8 February 1925
Died: 27 June 2001
John Uhler Lemmon III was born on February 8th 1925, in Boston, Massachusetts. A beautiful and adorable child, his parents were Mildred, an infamous party girl who dreamed of stardom, and John, the owner of the Doughnut Corporation of America. At the tender age of 4, Jack (a name that has always been with him) made his stage debut in There's Gold In Them Thar Hills. And by the age of 8, Jack dreamed of becoming a professional actor.
For a brief stint, he served as an ensign in WWII before moving to New York at 18. After graduating from Harvard University, he studied drama under the supervision of legendary teacher Uta Hagen. Jack went on to star in a number of stage shows as well as appearing on radio soap operas, providing voices for both comedy and drama pieces.
In 1947, at the age of 22, Jack made his television debut. He made over 500 live television performances in just under 5 years, with the majority of the work being slapstick comedy. He was the leading star in two American sitcoms called That Wonderful Guy and Heaven for Betsy, where he met blonde TV actress Cynthia Stone. The two began dating in 1948, were married in 1950 and had a son Chris in 1953. His career was also going from strength to strength.
In 1953, 27-year-old Jack secured a contract at Columbia Pictures and starred opposite Judy Holliday in the hit romantic comedy, It Should Happen to You (1954). He was destined for big things from the start as the audience fell in love with him almost immediately.
With film work now coming in, Jack next starred in the quirky comedy Phffft! (1954) and the musical Three For The Show (1955). He then landed the part of Ensign Pulver in the war comedy drama Mister Roberts (1955), in which he won an Oscar award for Best Supporting Actor.
Unfortunately, at this point, his marriage to Cynthia was crumbling to nothing. Jack moved out of their house and wanted to take little Chris with him but Cynthia won custody. Jack moved into a plush bachelor pad in Brentwood as he filmed Fire Down Below (1957) with troubled actress Rita Hayworth in Trinidad.
That year he also starred in the wacky war service comedy Operation Mad Ball (1957) -- which won the attention of a director named Billy Wilder. Now making $80,000 a picture, Jack was filming Bell Book and Candle (1958) with Kim Novak when Billy sent him the script to a cross-dressing comedy called Some Like It Hot (1959). Jack immediately accepted the part after laughing uncontrollably at the excellent comedy script. He co-starred opposite legendary blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis -- in which he grew close to both during filming.
Meanwhile, Jack was missing his son terribly and tried every effort to visit him, to take him on holidays and pick him up from school, despite his tight filming schedules. His disastrous marriage had made him more determined to wait for the right woman to come along. Cynthia married very soon after her divorce from Jack.
After dating numerous women, Jack met a striking blonde actress named Felicia Farr. They started dating but were not intent on marriage for a while. Some Like It Hot (1959) meanwhile was a box office triumph (now an iconic legendary classic) and Jack won his first Best Actor nomination at the Oscars (as well as winning a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy).
Jack's Hollywood success continued when he next starred in the vintage classic The Apartment (1960) with Shirley MacLaine and which was directed by Some Like It Hot director Billy Wilder. He was nominated for a second Best Actor Oscar, but lost to Burt Lancaster, in which hundreds were said to have objected at. With their enormous success as a team, Jack and Billy would collaborate on many more successful projects together.
There was no doubt that Jack Lemmon was now a massive box office star and was a huge money maker for studio bosses. As the 1960s began, Jack won his third Best Actor Oscar for Days of Wine and Roses (1962), a dark dramatic movie about alcoholism. A huge risk for a skilled comedy star to take but one certainly worth while.
He soon returned to his comedy roots though and starred in the box office hits The Notorious Landlady (1962), Irma La Douce (1963), Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963) and Good Neighbor Sam (1964). At this point, Jack had married the beautiful Felicia in 1962 in Paris, where he was filming Irma La Douce on location there.
Jack was paired with tempting blue-eyed blonde Virna Lisi for his next comedy, How to Murder Your Wife (1965). Even though he is generally known as the nice guy in cinema, Jack played the deliciously villainous Professor Fate in the (pre) Wacky-Races spoof The Great Race (1965) with Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood. Directed by Blake Edwards, the movie was the sixth highest earning film of that year and is now a cult iconic movie.
Another smash hit was the comedy The Fortune Cookie (1966), which paired Jack with Walter Matthau for the very first time. It was after the filming of this movie that Jack's heavily-pregnant wife Felicia gave birth to Jack's daughter Courtney - Billy Wilder is her godfather. After the birth of his daughter, Jack started work with Walter again for The Odd Couple (1968), which was an enormous success, grossing over an impressive $20,000,000.
Now 45, Jack was still a big star and starred in The Out-of-Towners (1970) with Sandy Dennis. Now earning $1,000,000 per picture, Jack continued making the film successes including Avanti! (1972) and The Front Page (1974). But it was Save the Tiger (1973) in which Jack finally won his second Oscar award, this time for Best Actor (after being nominated several times).
Other notable film roles in the 1970s include the comedy drama The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975) with Anne Bancroft and the drama The China Syndrome (1979) with Jane Fonda. As the 1980s started, Jack's workload on movies slowed down a while as Jack returned to the theatre for a few brief stints. In 1984, there was a reunion to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Some Like It Hot (1959) - and with 25 being the age of Marilyn Monroe's character in the film, in which she describes as a 'quarter of a century', it seemed the perfect time for a celebration of the film's legacy. A huge party, attended by included Jack with Tony Curtis, Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond (Wilder's co-writer from the film) and many of the female extras, was held at the exotic Hotel Del Coronado, where parts of the movie were filmed at.
When he did return to the movies, the films consisted mainly of powerful dramas such as Tribute (1980), That's Life (1986), Mass Appeal (1984) and the box office smash Missing (1982). In a celebration of his life and career at that point, Jack received the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 1988.
In the 1990s, Jack starred in both critical and commercial successes such as the gangster thriller Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) as well as comedies Grumpy Old Men (1993), Grumpier Old Men (1995) and The Odd Couple II (1998), as well as providing a guest voice on an episode of The Simpsons.
But by 1999, Jack became unwell but that certainly didn't stop him from working. He starred in the heartbreaking TV movie Tuesdays with Morrie (1999), which won him an Emmy award. In 2000, Jack completed his last movie as a narrator in The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), which starred Matt Damon, Will Smith and Charlize Theron. Jack managed to keep his illness a secret from the media for two years.
But in 2001, the world was shocked when Jack Lemmon died of bladder cancer in an LA hospital, with his wife Felicia and his two children by his side on June 27, 2001.
He was 76.
His funeral was attended by many of his Hollywood co-stars throughout his legendary career such as Tony Curtis, Shirley MacLaine and Kim Novak as well as directors such as Billy Wilder, Blake Edwards and Richard Quine. Jack was buried in Westwood Memorial Park next to the late Marilyn Monroe (who died in 1962) and Walter Matthau (who died in 2000).