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Jack Lemmon

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Image:Jack Lemmon 1967.jpg

John Uhler Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001), better known as Jack Lemmon, was a Hollywood movie star and one of the most award-winning American actors of his generation.

Contents

[edit] Life and career

He was born in an elevator in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, where his father was the president of a donut company. After attending Phillips Academy and Harvard University (becoming president of the Hasty Pudding Club), Lemmon joined the Navy, received V-12 training and served as an ensign. On being discharged, he took up acting professionally, working on radio, television and Broadway.

Lemmon's film debut was a bit part in the 1949 film The Lady Takes a Sailor, but he was not noticed until his official debut opposite Judy Holliday in It Should Happen to You (1954).

He became a favorite actor of director Billy Wilder, starring in his films Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Irma La Douce and Avanti. Wilder felt Lemmon tended to slightly overact; the Wilder biography "Nobody's Perfect" quotes the director as saying: "Lemmon, I would describe him as a ham, a fine ham, and with ham you have to trim a little fat."

The same Billy Wilder biography quotes Jack 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."

Image:Lemmon&matthau.jpg

Lemmon was the first actor to win Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. He was awarded Best Supporting Actor for Mister Roberts (1955), and Best Actor for Save the Tiger (1973). He was also nominated for Best Actor award for his role in the controversial film Missing in 1982. In 1988, the American Film Institute gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Days of Wine and Roses (1962) was one of his favorite roles. He portrayed Joe Clay, a young fun loving alcoholic businessman. In that film, Lemmon delivered the memorable line: "My name is Joe C. and I am an alcoholic." Three and a half decades later, he admitted on the television program, Inside the Actors Studio, that he was not acting when he delivered that line.

Throughout his career, Lemmon often appeared in films alongside actor Walter Matthau. They would go on to be one of the most beloved duos in cinema history. Their best-known pairing is undoubtedly as Felix Unger (Lemmon) and Oscar Madison (Matthau) in the 1968 film The Odd Couple, though they have starred together in other films including The Fortune Cookie, The Front Page, and Buddy Buddy; and both had small parts in Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK. In 1993, the duo teamed up again to star in Grumpy Old Men. The film was a surprise hit, earning the two actors a new generation of young fans. During the rest of the decade, they would go on to star together in Out to Sea, Grumpier Old Men, and the widely-panned The Odd Couple II.

At the 1998 Golden Globe Awards, he was nominated for "Best Actor in a Made for TV Movie" for his role in 12 Angry Men. He lost the award to actor Ving Rhames. Upon accepting the award, Rhames then asked Lemmon to come onstage and in a moved that stunned the audience, gave his award to Jack Lemmon. (The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who present the Golden Globes, decided to have a second award made and sent to Rhames).

Lemmon was one of the best-liked actors in Hollywood. He is remembered as taking time for people, as the actor Kevin Spacey recalled in a tribute. When already regarded as a legend, he met the teenage Spacey backstage after a theater performance and spoke to him about pursuing an acting career. Spacey would later work with Lemmon in the critically acclaimed film Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), where one of its most powerful scenes involves Lemmon's character begging Spacey's character for another shot at making a sale.

Unlike, for example, Gary Cooper who played baseball star Lou Gehrig on film -- or Henry Fonda, who played Abraham Lincoln, Jack Lemmon never played heroes from American history. But in a career spanning five decades, Lemmon was known for his intense portrayals of a wide variety of non-heroic characters.

Lemmon was married twice. His son Chris Lemmon (born in 1954 by first wife Cynthia Stone), was an actor and frequent guest on To Tell The Truth and Match Game. His second wife was the actress Felicia Farr (one daughter, Courtney, born 1966). He had a son named Chris Lemmon, who married Gina Raymond, a supermodel,. They later had 3 kids, Sydney, Jonathan, and Chris Jr. Sydney, wanting to persue the Career of acting, was born in the year 1990. Chris Jr. was born in the year 1994 and wants to be a Production Designer. Jonathan, born in the year 1992 wants to be a writer.

Jack Lemmon died of "carcinomatosis and metastatic cancer of bladder to colon" (according to his death certificate at [1]) on June 27, 2001, aged 76. He had been fighting the disease, very privately, for about two years before losing the battle.

He is interred at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, Westwood, Los Angeles, California, where Walter Matthau, who had co-starred with him in several films, was also buried. In typical Jack Lemmon wit, his gravestone simply reads 'Jack Lemmon - in'. After Matthau's death in 2000, Lemmon had joined other friends and relatives on a Larry King Live show in tribute to Matthau; a year later, many of the same people appeared on the show again, this time in tribute to Lemmon.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] TV work

[edit] Awards and nominations

[edit] Academy Awards

Preceded by:
Edmond O'Brien
for The Barefoot Contessa 		Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
1955
for Mister Roberts 		Succeeded by:
Anthony Quinn
for Lust for Life
Preceded by:
Jerry Lewis
29th Academy Awards 		"Oscars" host
30th Academy Awards (with Bob Hope, David Niven, Rosalind Russell, and James Stewart) 		Succeeded by:
Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, David Niven, Laurence Olivier, Tony Randall, and Mort Sahl
31st Academy Awards
Preceded by:
Frank Sinatra
35th Academy Awards 		"Oscars" host
36th Academy Awards 		Succeeded by:
Bob Hope
37th Academy Awards
Preceded by:
Bob Hope
40th Academy Awards 		"Oscars" host
44th Academy Awards (with Sammy Davis, Jr., Helen Hayes, and Alan King) 		Succeeded by:
Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Charlton Heston, and Rock Hudson
45th Academy Awards
Preceded by:
Marlon Brando
for The Godfather 		Academy Award for Best Actor
1973
for Save the Tiger 		Succeeded by:
Art Carney
for Harry and Tonto
Preceded by:
Johnny Carson
56th Academy Awards 		"Oscars" host
57th Academy Awards 		Succeeded by:
Alan Alda, Jane Fonda, and Robin Williams
58th Academy Awards

[edit] Golden Globe Awards

Currently, Jack Lemmon holds the record for most Golden Globe nominations with twenty-two.

[edit] External links

bs:Jack Lemmon bg:Джак Лемън cy:Jack Lemmon de:Jack Lemmon es:Jack Lemmon eo:Jack Lemmon eu:Jack Lemmon fa:جک لمون fr:Jack Lemmon hr:Jack Lemmon it:Jack Lemmon nl:Jack Lemmon ja:ジャック・レモン no:Jack Lemmon pl:Jack Lemmon pt:Jack Lemmon ro:Jack Lemmon sk:Jack Lemmon fi:Jack Lemmon sv:Jack Lemmon HE:ג'ק למון

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