The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon individual stations, airing on ABC on Sunday, September 1, 2013, and running two hours. The final edition aired on ABC on August 31, 2014, again as a two-hour special, beginning at 9PM ET/PT. It was announced on May 1, 2015 that the MDA would be discontinuing the annual event for good. Jerry Lewis began hosting telethons to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Associations of America (MDAA) in 1952 after a plea from a staff member who worked with Lewis and Dean Martin on "The Colgate Comedy Hour". Lewis had previously taken part in what has been described as the very first
Jerry Lewis "He was kind and loving and patient and limitlessly generous with his genius. He was unbelievably complicated and shockingly self-aware." Actor and comedian Jeffrey Tambor wrote after Lewis' death, "You invented the whole thing. Thank you doesn't even get close." There have been numerous retrospectives of Lewis' films in the U.S. and abroad, most notably "Jerry Lewis: A Film and Television Retrospective" at Museum of the Moving Image, the 2013 Viennale, the 2016 Melbourne International Film Festival, "The Innovator: Jerry Lewis at Paramount", at American Cinematheque in Los Angeles, and "Happy Birthday Mr. Lewis: The Kid Turns 90", at MOMA.