Martin and Lewis Martin and Lewis Martin and Lewis were an American comedy duo, comprising singer Dean Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis. They met in 1945 and debuted at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 25, 1946; the team lasted ten years to the day. Dean Martin is the stage name of Dino Paul Crocetti, born June 7, 1917, in Steubenville, Ohio, while Jerry Lewis is the stage name of Joseph Levitch, born March 16, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey. Martin died on December 25, 1995, and then Lewis died on August 20, 2017. Before they teamed up, Martin was a nightclub singer,
The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon attained. Many criticisms arose against Jerry Lewis himself, and his negative impressions of disability. Activists argued that Lewis tended to only value disabled children as "poster children," yet ignoring those same "poster children" as they grow up and need genuine help rather than pity. In his 1990 essay "If I Had Muscular Dystrophy" in "Parade" (which had a longtime yearly feature about the telethon with the MDA and Lewis' cooperation), Jerry Lewis imagines himself as an adult with MD. He writes, "I decided after 41 years of battling this curse that cripples children of all ages, that I would put