Jack Lemmon ham, a fine ham, and with ham you have to trim a little fat." The biography quotes Lemmon as saying, "I am particularly susceptible to the parts I play... If my character was having a nervous breakdown, I started to have one." He enjoyed longtime working relationships with both Blake Edwards, starring in "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962), "The Great Race" (1965) and "That's Life!" (1986), and Richard Quine, starring in "My Sister Eileen", "Operation Mad Ball", "Bell, Book and Candle", "It Happened to Jane", and "How to Murder Your Wife". Quine also directed Lemmon's screen test when the
Jack Lemmon Night". Lemmon was Spacey's mentor, and reportedly taught Spacey that people who do well in a business have an obligation to "send the elevator back down" to help lift people starting out on the ground floor. In his autobiography, "My Life", Burt Reynolds recalls Lemmon as the quintessential gentleman who never spoke ill of anyone, even if they deserved it. This kindness backfired for Reynolds: prior to accepting the lead in "W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings" (1975), directed by John G. Avildsen, Reynolds asked Lemmon, whom Avildsen had directed in "Save the Tiger" (1973) for an opinion of Avildsen as