When Jerry Lewis died on August 20, 2017, he was 91 years old and had lived one of the most thoroughly documented careers in American entertainment. He had made sixteen films with Dean Martin. He had directed and starred in solo comedies that critics in France treated as high art while American audiences debated whether to take him seriously. He had hosted the Muscular Dystrophy Association Labor Day Telethon for more than four decades, raising hundreds of millions of dollars and becoming, in the public imagination, the face of charitable generosity toward sick children. He had a French Legion of Honor medal, a Governors Award from the Creative Emmys, and a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
He also had a will.
The will had been executed in 2012, five years before his death. When its contents became public in the days following his passing, entertainment reporters and legal commentators noted one section in particular. It named six men—his sons from his first marriage to Patti Palmer—and stated plainly that each of them, and their descendants, had been intentionally excluded from any benefit under the document.
The clause did not explain why.
It did not offer a reason for the exclusion of Gary Lewis, the eldest son who had built his own musical career and scored a number-one hit before his father’s solo career had even peaked. It did not explain the exclusion of Ronald Lewis, or Anthony Joseph Lewis, or Christopher Joseph Lewis. It did not address Scott Anthony Lewis or Joseph Christopher Lewis, though by the time the will was written, Joseph had already been dead for three years, lost to a drug overdose in 2009 at the age of 45.