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 Desmonde of 11 and later became part of his family's act "The Four Sadlers". He built a career as a song and dance man in musical theatre and later toured parts of the United States in 1927-1928 with Beatrice Lillie and Noël Coward in the two-act revue "This Year of Grace". By 1934 he had married Peggy Duncan and they toured as a double act called "Peg and Jerry", largely in Scotland. In the 1940s, Desmonde was briefly a straight man for Scottish comedian Dave Willis and in 1942 he was invited to be straight man for stage comedian Sid Field